Combining energy storage with generation helps to unlock the core value of batteries and other storage, the US Energy Storage Association (ESA) has said, while data is now available on the status of installed and proposed utility-scale hybrid power plant projects throughout the country.
A newly released standard creates nationally applicable guidance for DER manufacturers on how grid support functions in their products will be tested. Brian Lydic, chief regulatory engineer at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), talks about what this means for enabling the grid modernisation that will be needed to support high levels of renewable energy and energy storage.
While energy storage is still a small part of their respective businesses overall, recent quarterly financial reports from US-based geothermal company Ormat and standby generator maker Generac emphasised expectations of market growth going forwards.
AES Corporation reaffirmed its 2020 financial guidance in presenting its latest quarterly results, which showed a total backlog of renewables and energy storage contracts of 6.2GW, while the company said it will reduce generation from coal to less than 30% of its total capacity by the end of this year.
“Preventing a service event from becoming a catastrophic one,” is how Cadenza Innovation CEO Christina Lampe-Önnerud describes the way her company’s lithium-ion ‘Supercell’ battery architecture reacts to thermal runaway.
The first grid-scale battery energy storage project in the Canadian province of Alberta is on-track to go into operation this month, while TransAlta, the company behind the project, has expedited plans to retire a coal plant citing “future market conditions”.
A “first-in-the-nation” policy called the Clean Peak Standard has been launched in Massachusetts, US, whereby a proportion of electricity used on the grid at times of highest demand must be considered ‘clean’.
