The energy industry is evolving towards more ‘enterprise platform’-based business models, enabling energy storage to play a vital role for businesses and the grid, NEC Energy Solutions (NEC ES) CEO Steve Fludder has said.
Projects being delivered for the University of Hawaii will allow various campus buildings to eliminate 70% to 100% of fossil fuel use as the state races towards its 100% renewables by 2045 target.
California’s recent droughts and ongoing need to economise water use have inspired more commercial energy storage at a local water board, with ENGIE Storage delivering a project for the San Diego Water Authority.
US utility Florida Light & Power (FPL) has followed up the US’ first DC-coupled grid-scale battery system with the announcement of a solar-plus-storage project pairing 10MW / 40MWh of energy storage with an existing 74.5MW PV plant.
While research published this week demonstrates that the US as a whole is embracing energy storage technology, with regulator FERC’s recent wholesale market ruling likely to have a “significant impact”, the picture varies greatly when looking from state-to-state, an analyst has said.
ELM FieldSight has partnered with power conversion specialist Ideal Power on a number of microgrid and related projects, designing and supplying the control system that makes the system tick, balancing the different distributed energy sources plugged into it. Vice president of operations Jason Petermeier shared his thoughts on recent projects, not-so-recent projects and where microgrids are heading.
Islands are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of natural disasters such as hurricanes. John Merritt of Ideal Power looks at some of the emerging solutions to building more resilient energy systems through the deployment of microgrids that combine multiple energy generation and storage technologies.
A project in Jamaica, pairing utility-scale solar with battery energy storage at a microgrid could become “a model for other countries in the Caribbean and beyond”, the head of the country’s main utility has said.
