Swiss-headquartered power and automation specialist ABB is to use its PowerStore technology, involving flywheels with wind and batteries plus solar, to integrate renewable energy and reduce reliance on diesel fuel in two separate micro-grid projects in Africa.

Tom Tipple, regional VP for Imergy Power Systems, a flow battery maker headquartered in Fremont, California, recently visited the PV Tech Storage offices to share his thoughts on the global market for energy storage.

News in brief: Younicos partnership on Bavaria’s renewables integrating flow battery, Greensmith raises US$12.3 million including investment from utility AEP, UK virtual power plant triallist Moixa extends crowdfunding period.

The International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA) recently released its electricity storage technology roadmap, looking at how electricity storage can support the increased deployment of renewable energy.

While a project to run a Spanish island off renewable energy which gathered media attention this week might only have successfully met the region’s energy demand continuously for four hours, the project is nonetheless “very significant”, an expert with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has said.

News in brief: Australia gets its largest battery storage system to date, Tesla man persuaded to go back to Sonnenbatterie and Gildemeister installs PV-linked flow battery systems in Czech Republic.

Solar cell and battery hybrid technology could become a commercial success as long as it clears the “valley of death” out of academia, a scientist working on the project has claimed.

Through a brief history of batteries and some findings from his own team’s work, Volker Wachenfeld of SMA Solar Technology answers a frequently asked question in energy storage; how can compatibility with the existing variety of batteries in the market be put into practice?

Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) released a hefty report on global energy storage and how it relates back to the domestic situation last month. Tom Kenning investigated one of the report’s main conclusions – that the value for energy storage in Australia, initially at least, will most likely be found behind-the-meter.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has invited expressions of interest (EOI) for energy storage demonstration projects to integrate renewables, recognising that the technology “has the potential to become highly attractive for both grid-connected and off-grid renewable energy applications”.