What will the impact of COVID-19 be on the energy storage market? And how best to learn to adapt to whatever the ‘next normal’ will be? Florian Mayr at cleantech advisory and consultancy group Apricum examines the bigger picture of “energy storage vs the virus”.
Battery system integrators must navigate a broad array of technologies and varying market drivers when putting systems together. Andy Colthorpe speaks to Powin Energy and Sungrow about the engineering challenges involved in building lithium-ion battery storage.
More than 500 residential energy storage batteries will be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) by US utility Portland General Electric (PGE), with some participating households offered US$5,000 rebates on battery system purchases as well as money off their monthly electricity bills.
Powin Energy VP Danny Lu has said that attaining what is considered the highest standard in safety means that projects using the company’s Stack 225 battery storage system products can be executed faster and pack more capacity onto a single site.
FlexGen, an energy storage system integrator that counts GE and Caterpillar among its backers, said this week that a lithium-ion battery storage system it was supplied was used by an Indiana utility to black start a 77MW natural gas plant.
Arizona utility Tucson Electric Power (TEP) has set out plans to provide 70% of its power from solar and wind by 2035, backed up with investment in new energy storage capacity.
When most people think of the metals that power today’s energy storage systems, vanadium and lithium are at front of mind. Ron MacDonald, president and CEO of Zinc8, argues the case for another metal playing an important role.
Sunrun has made a further expansion in providing grid services by choosing AutoGrid’s software to help manage its fleets of aggregated home solar and battery systems.
