Japanese consumer electronics giant Panasonic has partnered with Tesla Motors to construct batteries in the United States at the electric vehicle company’s new battery manufacturing plant, the Gigafactory.
French battery manufacturer, Saft, has been awarded a contract to supply a lithium-ion battery system for use in a 12MW solar plant being built in Hawaii.
The first grid-connected energy storage facility in Canada, in the country’s leading solar province, Ontario, is now operational.
DNV GL has launched the GRIDSTOR Join Industry Project, aimed at forming a recommended practice for energy storage, to which it wants to invite 15 partners from across a range of stakeholders.
Sunverge, a California-based provider of distributed energy storage and control systems, has closed a US$15 million funding round that it said would support its expansion.
SolarCity looks likely to resume its programme of deploying residential energy storage systems in California, following a preliminary ruling by the state’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) appeared to rule in the company’s favour.
Fees being charged to interconnect residential storage systems to the grid in California are “arbitrary” and “punitive”, while some may even be illegal, according to US installer SolarCity.
Electrical storage has been much hyped as a key technology in the ongoing deployment of solar. But as Andy Colthorpe reports, with take-up of the technology so far only patchy, the coming year will be a crucial one for storage to prove its worth.
