What is thought to be Canada’s first virtual power plant (VPP), aggregating the capabilities of a small fleet of solar PV-plus-storage systems with energy management software, has been deployed in Ontario.
Roundup: Activist-entrepreneur Danny Kennedy seeks innovative solutions for international showcase, Statoil and Scotland look at batteries for offshore wind, Tesla stops selling 10kWh Powerwall.
For over a decade, net metering has been a crucial component of the economic puzzle for renewable energy, allowing both residential and commercial rooftop PV owners to realise favourable returns on their solar equipment investment. John Merritt of Ideal Power Conversion looks at some of the arguments and counter-arguments and says solar-plus-storage could be the natural successor to the policy – starting at commercial and industrial (C&I) level.
Two initiatives have got underway in Europe, one in Germany and the other in Britain, aimed at accelerating battery development for electric vehicles and stationary storage respectively, while vacuum cleaner company Dyson has pledged a US$1.44 billion commitment to batteries – for cordless cleaning devices.
Energy Storage News visited the offices and production facilities of Sunamp, a maker of heat batteries, in East Lothian, Scotland to hear how the systems are made and how they were developed.
Germany-based inverter firm SMA Solar technology has qualified lithium-based energy storage systems from commercial battery system provider Tesvolt for use with SMA’s Sunny Island battery inverter.
Energy storage solutions combined with hybrid solar PV plants and diesel generators will soon benefit communities in two starkly contrasting locations – in a luxury Maldives resort and in Australia’s Aboriginal community.
Ontario’s successes in creating and fostering a market and industry for energy storage owes a lot to policy makers taking a coherent, long-term view of its entire energy sector, according to a representative of Canada’s only energy storage trade association.
The potential for integrating energy storage, wind and solar energy in India is to be investigated under a new US-backed study, which will help India design its future grid.
The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has invited expressions of interest for what may be India’s first utility-scale energy storage project to be combined with a solar and wind hybrid project at Rangreek in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh.
