France-headquartered multinational utility ENGIE has followed up acquisitions in smart energy by incorporating three companies including commercial energy storage provider Green Charge into its parent brand, with the explicit aim of furthering its position in North American markets.
Keele University, which is near the border between Wales and England, is to become a living laboratory for emerging low carbon and smart energy technologies in what is thought to be the largest scheme of its type in Europe and North America.
The World Bank plans to make energy storage an integral part of its ‘Scaling Solar’ program, that until now has been focused purely on facilitating large-scale solar tendering, predominantly in Africa.
Centrica, one of Britain’s so-called ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers, has received planning permission for a brace of battery energy storage units at its UK headquarters in Windsor with a combined capacity of 1MW set to be built at the site.
The real-world performance of batteries paired with “Hywind” – the world’s first floating wind farm – will be analysed by the wind project’s owners, Masdar and Statoil.
New Zealand’s small handful of advanced energy storage systems will be added to with the NZ$2 million (US$1.45 million) trial deployment of a grid-scale Tesla Powerpack 2 by energy generator and retailer Mercury.
Flow batteries will take another major step towards widespread bankability with Lockheed Martin Energy launching its own system before the end of the year.
Battery Energy Storage Solutions (BESS) an independent system solutions and flexibility services provider, has taken in more than US$100 million in outside investment since November, with plans to target 100MW of UK projects.
