Intended to “kick start concrete projects”, the European Commission is set to allocate a further €200 million (US$235.53 million) towards supporting the scale-up of lithium battery manufacturing on the continent.
Centrica has revealed plans to build a single 100MW battery energy storage system in Ireland for delivery by 2022 to take advantage of capacity market and grid services opportunities currently under development.
A new solid state electrolyte for lithium batteries developed by Panasonic and nano-electronics and digital tech innovation hub imec has achieved “exceptionally high” ionic conductivity at room temperature.
What is thought to be the largest operating containerised vanadium redox flow machine system in the UK has been connected to the grid by manufacturer redT energy, with the 1MWh project becoming the first to sign up to a local energy market being set up by British multinational utility Centrica.
Home battery storage company Moixa is to expand its GridShare aggregation platform to include third party units for the first time after securing over a quarter of a million pounds from the UK government.
Schneider Electric and NGK Insulators have reached the conclusion of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under which both companies will explore global opportunities to jointly market NGK’s NAS (R) battery and Schneider Electric’s inverter (Conext Core XC ES).
The UK government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has refused to provide any clarity over when a decision on the potential de-rating of energy storage assets within the capacity market (CM) will be made despite a senior policy advisor stating the judgement is “imminent”.
A representative of National Grid, the UK’s transmission system operator (TSO), has said that energy storage will be “integral” to the network’s flexibility strategy – while urging developers not to rely solely on early frequency regulation contracts.
While decreases in costs continue to make energy storage more and more competitive, financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard has highlighted just how variable project economics can be, citing examples of US projects with 9%, 11% and 21% IRR (internal rate of return).
