Multinational conglomerate corporation GE has announced Current, a new energy company that combines GE’s LED, solar, energy storage and electric vehicle businesses with its Predix platform to single out and provide cost-effective and efficient energy solutions to customers.
The recognition by regulators of the need for an enlarged role for energy storage in the UK is a major milestone for the sector, trade associations in the country have said.
PV inverter firm Bonfiglioli has launched its RPS TL-4Q inverter series for utility-scale grid-connected energy storage systems in India, claiming there is strong future potential for on-grid and off-grid battery storage systems in the Indian market.
The UK, catapulted into being one of the world’s leading regions for solar PV deployment unexpectedly over the past couple of years, is now facing just as unexpected challenges in the form of drastic FiT cuts of as much as 87%. While this is undoubtedly bad for the industry, there are some possible avenues for policy adjustments that won’t require subsidising as well as strategies the industry could adopt to make self-consuming solar with storage a more viable option, writes Simon Daniel of Moixa Technology.
NextEra Energy’s CEO sees energy storage as one of three areas driving “tremendous growth” for the group and has said that discussions about renewables are “naturally” leading into dialogue on storage.
US utility Southern California Edison (SCE) has classified energy storage as an “eligible preferred resource” in a 100MW request for offers (RFO) it has issued to acquire renewable energy, capacity and load reduction from new sources.
News in brief: Indian PM Modi visits Tesla and talks solar-plus-storage with Musk; Scottish renewable energy group forms energy storage division; Harvard team developing flow batteries reports findings.
The €32 million (US$36 million) Hydrogen Mobility Europe programme was launched today, with Germany, the UK, the Scandinavian countries and France signing up with the aim of expanding hydrogen refuelling station coverage across the continent. Andy Colthorpe speaks to one of the companies behind the project and power-to-gas energy expert Christopher Hebling of Fraunhofer ISE about this “modern fairytale” technology.
Australia-based flow battery provider Redflow has halved the price of its zinc-bromide battery (ZBM) to the point where the cost of energy produced from its battery drops below the price of energy from the grid.
Plans by Italy’s grid operator to allow for the interconnection of energy storage to the network have resulted in the country’s first grid-connected solar-smoothing storage facility being inaugurated.
