Some of the “world’s biggest insurance companies” are investigating the advantages of pairing lithium batteries with ultracapacitors in energy storage systems, which can lower costs and extend battery lifetimes, the CEO of an ultracapacitor maker has said.
Technical papers and feature articles from Solar Media’s PV Tech Power journal are now available as free downloads from this site, along with a host of other industry resources.
Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow has leaned on its joint venture with Samsung SDI to supply both inverters and lithium batteries to a large-scale energy storage project in Japan.
Utility Enel has been offering the reward of collaboration and testing agreements to “new technologies, architectures and control strategies” that maximise the value and effectiveness of energy storage.
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.
Germany’s sonnen introduced a scheme a while back in which customers pay a flat, reduced rate for their electricity each month while the company aggregate their batteries together to benefit the grid – and now the offer has been extended to electric vehicle owners.
