Itochu, a major Japanese corporation which has sold over 330MWh of residential battery storage systems in its home market, has invested ¥1 billion (US$9.35 million) in TRENDE, a renewable energy retailer which counts utility company Tokyo Electric Power among its major shareholders, with a view to launching a range of renewable energy and storage-enabled services.
Vectren, owner of utility firms in the US states of Indiana and Ohio, has unveiled plans to ditch more than 700MW of coal generation and partly replace it with up to 1GW of solar PV.
US residential solar installer Sunrun is deploying aggregated rooftop solar-plus-batteries in partnership with utility Southern California Edison (SCE), in a demonstration project of the systems’ capabilities to run as a virtual power plant (VPP).
A new service from Photovoltaik Institut Berlin (PI Berlin) looks to solve a pitfall that often awaits solar industry stakeholders when adding energy storage to their projects: making sure the production quality of the batteries they choose meets their requirements.
Energy storage technology provider Fluence has launched its latest systems aimed at three market segments and – according to new CEO Manuel Perez Dubuc – aimed at creating an inflection point in the global transition to low carbon energy.
A project to create performance standards for residential and small-scale commercial battery energy storage systems in Australia has been completed, with project leader DNV GL raising hopes that the rules can inform the global market too.
After securing a US$225 million financing facility, US solar developer 8minute Solar Energy has said the “vast majority” of projects in the company’s pipeline “are solar-plus-storage”.
Yet another major green hydrogen initiative has seen the light in Australia, joining a recent flurry of activity in a year where countries are betting on the renewable gas as a COVID-19 recovery pillar.
A project demonstrating aggregated solar-plus-storage in Louisiana involving energy storage company SimpliPhi Power, technology partner Heila and local utility SWEPCO has started off small, but is “expected to transition into a larger network of distributed systems, soon”.
