SunPower CEO Tom Werner says that the idea of solar power users combining their systems with battery storage to become fully independent of the grid is “naïve”, echoing the views of one of SolarCity’s founders.
Reborn Chinese manufacturer Suntech is to spend US$25 million to acquire a 30% equity interest in US energy storage company, Powin Energy.
Samsung SDI will supply its lithium-ion batteries to a Japanese company building a 1MW solar farm, with the deal expected to then go on to furnish an initial 20 solar farms with batteries.
The Canadian province of Ontario is preparing to install a variety of new energy storage technologies after finalising details of a 34MW commercial-scale storage trial.
A team at Harvard is pursuing a metal-free battery chemistry based on organic molecules called Quinones. The technology potentially offers an abundant and safe material to use for scaling up flow batteries, but according to the energy storage team at Lux Research in Boston, there are significant limitations based on project cost.
One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the USA is looking to use a series of measures that are likely to include customer-side energy storage in order to stave off the need for US$1 billion worth of infrastructure investment.
India looks to be the latest country to examine installing energy storage at the top level, with the Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL) actively seeking demonstration projects and the country’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) inviting comments from stakeholders ahead of similar plans.
French battery manufacturer, Saft, has been awarded a contract to supply a lithium-ion battery system for use in a 12MW solar plant being built in Hawaii.
The emerging availability of storage and smart-grid technologies allows communities to meet their energy demands locally. As Andrew Jones of S&C Electric writes, community-owned micro-grids will become an increasingly important element of the future energy system.
The first grid-connected energy storage facility in Canada, in the country’s leading solar province, Ontario, is now operational.
