A rapid and significant increase in battery storage capacity will be among factors contributing to an improved energy security position for California’s electricity networks this summer, but the grid is still vulnerable to stress during any extreme heatwaves.
Construction has begun on more than a gigawatt of large-scale renewable energy projects with battery storage attached in Texas, by Enel Green Power North America, the regional renewable and clean energy arm of European utility Enel.
A massive “green hydrogen hub” adjacent to a coal power plant in Utah could get over half a billion dollars in US government loans to support its development.
US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) funding has been allocated to feasibility studies for large-scale battery storage projects co-located with wind power in Senegal, west Africa and Mozambique, in southeastern Africa.
A long-term power purchase agreement has been signed for the output of a 50MW solar farm with 200MWh of battery storage, by Desert Community Energy, one of several Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) energy suppliers in California.
Foresight Solar Fund, a UK-based investment company with over a gigawatt of solar PV assets in its portfolio, has made its first move into the battery storage space.
Google will procure energy from a US$600 million portfolio of renewables and energy storage assets specially-designed to enable the search engine company’s data centres in Virginia to run on 90% carbon-free electricity.
Mitsubishi Power Americas and Powin Energy have been appointed to retrofit 640MWh of batteries to solar PV plants in California, while a community energy group in the state has just signed a power purchase agreement for a 100MW solar plant with 150MW / 600MWh of storage.
Germany’s second ‘Innovation Tender’ for clean energy projects combining different technologies has awarded 258MW of capacity to solar-plus-storage across 18 bids.