Quoting an expected doubling in installed PV capacity over the next five years, a partnership between Chinese battery storage system maker BYD and European PV inverter company SMA is targeting the USA market, identifying it – along with Africa – as having “high growth potential” for the pair’s products.
French power giant EDF has acquired a 50% stake in the Togo-focused unit of off-grid renewable energy specialist BBOXX, with EDF adding its financial clout to speed up solar home system deployments and its technical expertise to improve the energy storage offering.
As well as Elon Musk remarking that the company may have had its “best ever quarter” for solar since the SolarCity takeover, Tesla’s energy storage deployments have enjoyed a ramp up, while a fellow exec hinted the stationary battery business is constrained by cell supply.
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provider Vertiv is to use energy flexibility specialist Upside Energy’s cloud-based platform to enable its customers to provide unutilised energy to the UK electricity grid.
As Japan’s heavily regulated energy markets continue a process of liberalisation and supposedly increasing consumer choices, utility TEPCO has launched a smart electricity tariff enabled by the capabilities of residential battery storage.
The renewables investment community “needs to come to grips” with merchant risk after a decade of being “spoiled” by government-backed subsidies for wind and solar.
It’s likely a strong indication of the way the world is adopting renewable energy rapidly that just under a month ago, one of the best-established trade shows for solar in the US featured what seemed like almost as much space dedicated to national and international energy storage companies and technologies, as it did for solar.
Hecate Energy and InfraRed Capital Partners have announced a partnership to form a new energy storage company called Hecate Grid, which will develop, build, own and operate utility-scale energy storage projects across North America.
The UK’s government has shied away from supporting large volumes of solar and other distributed energy technologies through subsidies, but commercial and industrial energy storage and solar-plus-storage could be a huge market opportunity in Britain and abroad.
