Some news in brief from around the world of energy storage this week: UK residential storage company chases scale with crowdfunder, Younicos could hire 150 more employees by 2017, and Southern California Edison is set to flick the switch on a grid-stabilising storage system from NEC ES.
Utilising renewable energy instead of traditional diesel generators on islands and in remote areas would bring “substantial socio-economic benefits”, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
Lilia Xie of Lux Research spoke with the founders of 24M, which claims to have reduced lithium cell costs by 50% over existing technologies and is targeting US$100 per kWh by 2020.
In less than a week, more than 180,000 Spanish citizens have signed a petition against plans for a new ‘sun tax’ on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain.
A New York-based project proving the ability of solar paired with storage to provide power in the event of natural disasters and other causes of grid outages is now underway at City University of New York (CUNY).
Energy storage developer Imergy Power Systems has announced the installation of a 30kW, 120kWh ESP30 vanadium flow battery to be tested with PV systems at the SunEdison and Global Academy of Technology (GAT) solar research and testing centre in Bangalore, India.
John Grimes of Australia’s Energy Storage Council reports back from a recent visit to China, where he took a look at the processes and state of play of some of the country’s battery manufacturers.
A proposed “sun tax” on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain could increase payback time from around 16 years to 31 years under a new draft Law put forward by the Spanish Government. Hefty fines for infringement, capped at €60 million (US$67.7 million), have also been proposed.
There is a greatly expanded amount of energy storage on offer at the European edition of the Intersolar trade exhibition and conferences this year, including the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) Europe show hosting its own conference for the first time. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to canvas opinions on the big trends and topics from a number of industry figures.
A new solar-plus-storage division is to be launched by DNV GL, the expert advisory group and certification body announced at Intersolar Europe on Wednesday.
