Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.
Shifting responsibility for product safety onto manufacturers, rather than installers, of residential energy storage systems would be a positive step forward for Australia’s industry, the country’s Clean Energy Council has said.
Australian battery company Redflow Limited has repeated its largest-ever sale of its ZBM2 zinc-bromine flow batteries after receiving an international order worth about US$600,000.
Legislation recently introduced in California to cut red tape and reduce permitting times for energy storage systems and currently awaiting the state Governor’s rubber stamp could also halve the costs associated with paperwork, commercial system provider Stem has said.
While lithium-ion is rapidly racing ahead to become the “de facto grid storage solution” and is the most popular technology choice by far, vendors of other types of batteries are also targeting the market, with varying degrees of success.
Centrica has completed the installation of a 3MW battery in the North-East of England for local authority Gateshead Council, which the multinational utility’s Distributed Energy and Power business has dubbed one of the country’s largest commercial battery storage schemes.
China-based technology giant BYD has installed the first of its residential high-voltage B-Box energy storage systems in Germany and is aiming to launch the system into the US later this year.
TerraE Holding, a collaborative initiative to establish large-scale production line manufacturing of lithium-ion cells at a European ‘Gigafactory’, has signed a raw materials deal for anode materials with Australia’s Magnis Resources.
Jigar Shah has said that the addition of backup power helped persuade a California school district to add energy storage as well as going solar and that adding batteries can help “decision makers” see the true value of PV.
Officials from 56 Muslim-majority nations have come together to pledge new climate-related technology goals that included promoting microgrids, energy storage and renewable energy targets.
