Home batteries in a South Australia delivered significant revenues from their first six months of participation in a virtual power plant to help balance the grid, even with only an initial 1MW – 2MW of aggregated customer systems participating.

Realising the theoretical promise of solar-wind-storage hybrids is far from straightforward, with individual projects likely to vary considerably. Ben Willis examines some of the technical complexities of combining different technologies into a single, profitable entity.

NEC Corporation representatives have said that while the domestic market opportunity for battery energy storage remains fairly small for the Japanese company, it is expected to “increase dramatically” within the next three years at commercial and industrial (C&I) and utility-scale.

“The bottom line is that this is a good business decision. We will get back our money in eight to 10 years at the current price of power. As the price of energy goes up, we’ll pay it back even quicker.”

When lithium-ion’s dominance of the energy storage market begins to wane, redox flow batteries are well positioned as a strong competitor, emerging technology market research and business intelligence group IDTechEx has said.

With industry heavyweights eyeing up developments of solar-wind-storage projects, Liam Stoker uncovers what’s really driving hybrid power plants, and the regulatory and financing hurdles that must be surpassed to deliver them.

In the past couple of weeks, national and state government organisations in Australia have announced various stages of development for solar projects with a range of advanced and innovative storage solutions attached.

While most conversation around energy storage focuses on batteries, a recent Solar Energy Corporation of India tender achieved the lowest tariffs for renewables with storage using a much more ‘old-fashioned’ technology, writes Kowtham raj VS of NITI Aayog.

The impact on supply chains during China’s most intense period of stopping the coronavirus (COVID19) from spreading had been “substantial”, contributing to a “pretty tough time,” for Oregon, USA-headquartered energy storage system maker Powin Energy.

While we have avoided risking the spreading of false information or reacting too hastily to an ever-changing situation, here are some of the latest developments. This blog will be updated as and when new information or views arrive.