Almost US$700 million of corporate funding went into energy storage in 2015, including US$397 million from venture capital (VC) investment, according to the latest report from Mercom Capital.
Although Britain’s government has cut support for renewable energy severely in the past few months, controversially claiming a need to balance the transition away from fossil fuels against the cost to consumers, energy storage may face less of a challenge at the top level, according speakers at a conference in London.
The US Department of Energy is to fund six projects trialling the combination of solar and energy storage.
Flow battery manufacturer ViZn Energy Systems has won a contract to provide a 128kW/320kWh system for a US department of energy project.
California’s CalCharge is a partnership between public and private sector, aiming to accelerate the adoption of energy storage in the state. Andy Colthorpe of Energy Storage News spoke with CalCharge president Danny Kennedy, the Australia-born former chief of US residential PV installer Sungevity who has a colourful background in eco-activism and the programme’s recently appointed manager, Alex Luce.
Corporations and utilities are already interested in energy storage but must collaborate to advance deployment and lower costs, avoiding some of the past mistakes of the PV industry, according to the heads of one California-based industry group.
Globally, energy storage is developing rapidly. Businesses that are shaping the market are being asked to nominate themselves to join the Energy Storage 100, a new industry initiative from Energy Storage News’ publisher, Solar Media.
A team of teachers volunteering to educate refugees and displaced peoples among the camps of Calais in northern France, will power a mobile school with a solar-plus-storage system.
News in brief: Japan’s northern island tackles grid constraints for renewables with 60MWh battery; AES switches on large-scale storage in Northern Ireland; telecoms appear to be a good fit for Imergy’s flow batteries.
Japanese financial services company Orix Corporation has invested in UniEnergy Technologies (UET), a US company delivering large-scale energy storage based around its own vanadium flow batteries.
