Walking around Energy Storage Europe this year it was obvious that the show, like the market, has grown from a small handful of “strong believers” as one source put it, to a forward-looking show focused on a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.
Sales of battery storage units to residential households in Germany are booming, but it’s the value of services the batteries can provide, rather than the hardware itself that offers a long-term economic opportunity, a Siemens representative has said.
Nippon Koei, one of Japan’s largest engineering firms, has formed a joint venture with a British battery storage firm to construct two 50MW behind-the-meter energy storage projects in the UK.
With Brexit day less than a month away and still no certainty around what the final deal will look like, the time is now for the energy storage sector to prepare for every eventuality so it can play to its increasing strengths, writes Stephen Irish, co-founder of Hyperdrive Innovation.
Saba Electric Company, sole supplier of electricity to the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba, celebrated as the island ran on 100% solar for the first time ever this month, with the switch-on of a solar-plus-storage microgrid.
This year’s Energy Storage Europe event marked something of a culmination of “more or less 10 years of continuous evolution” in the industry, Energy-Storage.news has heard.
In the hierarchy of grid needs, peaking power is often a priority in terms of providing resiliency and balance to the network. This is usually provided by natural gas turbines, which come at a high environmental and economic cost. Andy Colthorpe charts the rise of the solar-plus-storage peaker plant.
Insurer Munich Re has launched what it claims is the world’s first long-term insurance plan for battery performance, signing up ‘all-iron’ flow battery maker ESS Inc as its first customer.
Topics previously off-limits due to commercial sensitivity or just a lack of experience from the field, were explored in depth at this year’s Energy Storage Summit in London.
