Danny Kennedy (pictured on left) heads up CalCharge, focusing on accelerating the commercialisation of storage, and the California Clean Energy Fund. Image: flickr user: energy.gov
Danny Kennedy’s California Clean Energy Fund to showcase clean energy innovations at ministerial event
23 March 2016: California Clean Energy Fund and CalCharge, two groups affiliated with environmental activist-turned solar CEO Danny Kennedy, will showcase technologies from start-ups and innovators at the Clean Energy Ministerial in San Francisco in June.
Kennedy, who until recently was chief of Sungevity, told Energy Storage News at last week’s Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue that the showcase will demonstrate workable innovations in clean energy technologies across various areas including energy efficiency, renewables and energy storage.
The seventh edition of the CEM event (www.CEM7.org), which has been previously hosted in the UAE, UK, India, Korea and Mexico, hopes to engage policymakers in an official dialogue about energy solutions. Kennedy said the side event, to be hosted in a large tent opposite the main venue, would be a “can-do celebration of clean energy”.
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“We are pulling off a side event opposite the fancy hotel that they’ll [ministers will] be meeting in, on Union Square in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown,” Kennedy said.
“We’ll have a tent with a hundred kind of solutions and start-ups, demonstrating real technologies, real companies that are doing deployable, commercial businesses to address clean energy.”
Read an interview with Kennedy and Calcharge programme director Alex Luce about the group, which looks specifically to accelerate innovation and development in energy storage.
Statoil to develop memorably-named wind storage pilot in Scotland
21 March 2016: Norway-headquartered oil and gas giant Statoil has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with parties including the Scottish government to develop Batwind, a large-scale battery storage system for wind power.
Also signing the MoU for the pilot were the UK’s research accelerator for offshore wind, wave and tidal power technologies, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult and Scottish Enterprise, which fosters economic development in England’s northern neighbour.
Statoil claimed it is hoping to make a scalable, commercial solution using a 1MWh lithium-ion battery, to be installed in 2018. The wind farm it will be attached to, Hywind Scotland, uses five floating wind turbines and is currently under construction, expected to be completed in 2017.
Statoil’s proposed Batwind project. Image: Statoil.
Tesla to focus on Daily Cycling Powerwall – reports
18 March 2016: Tesla confirmed that it is no longer marketing the larger, 10kWh model of its Powerwall system, Greentech Media has reported.
The 10kWh version was the model designed to provide backup power in the case of outages. The company has instead chosen to focus its attention on the 7kWh ‘Daily Powerwall’, for daily cycling, which it said has enjoyed “enormous interest”.
Greentech quoted one of its affiliated analysts, Ravi Manghani of GTM Research, who said that for backup applications – meaning the battery is not designed for frequent cycling and will only withstand 500 cycles during its lifetime – cheaper battery options such as lead acid remain viable competitors.
