This Friday Briefing looks at the rich prospects for putting batteries onto brownfield power plant sites, with regard to news stories from South Africa and New England, US.
South Africa’s electricity minister has said the largest solar-plus-storage project in the Southern Hemisphere is evidence of efforts to mitigate the country’s difficult energy security situation.
Clearway Energy has put two large solar and storage projects into operation in California, it announced on the same day as an industry letter asking Congress to reform siting, permitting and transmission before this year’s elections.
Rapid technology improvements and trade policy risk pose a dilemma for US battery storage procurement decision-makers, write George Touloupas and Jeff Zwijack of consultancy and market intelligence firm Clean Energy Associates (CEA).
The six US states comprising New England have banded together to request federal government funding for large-scale electricity transmission and storage projects.
Netherlands’ climate minister has allocated €100 million in subsidies to the deployment of ‘time-shifting’ battery storage with solar PV projects for next year, an acceleration of a larger €400 million-plus programme.
Australian energy minister Chris Bowen has said tenders for 500MW of renewable energy backed with energy storage will open in the middle of this year in Western Australia (WA).
The forthcoming introduction of the European Union (EU) Battery Passport could result in a 2-10% reduction in procurement costs, according to the consortium tasked with its implementation.
