The COVID-19 crisis is bringing into the public eye the US’ dependency on importing goods, particularly batteries for advanced energy storage and electric vehicles, the CEO of a battery materials startup has said.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is planning to host a technical conference on ‘hybrid resources’ – energy storage paired with generation – in July this year.

With everything going on right now around COVID-19, there has been an increase in installers’ and customers’ desires for information. Aric Saunders of Electriq Power, based in California, goes back to basics to support the large group of installers that are just now trying to get into the storage business.

Utility company RWE has begun marketing a tech solution through which data centres, which already integrate batteries for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, can use their UPS to “help stabilise the grid”.

Home batteries in a South Australia delivered significant revenues from their first six months of participation in a virtual power plant to help balance the grid, even with only an initial 1MW – 2MW of aggregated customer systems participating.

Realising the theoretical promise of solar-wind-storage hybrids is far from straightforward, with individual projects likely to vary considerably. Ben Willis examines some of the technical complexities of combining different technologies into a single, profitable entity.

Technology provider Sinexcel has announced the successful commissioning of a 72MWh pair of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery energy storage projects in Illinois and West Virginia in the US, to deliver frequency regulation services to the PJM Interconnection service area.

An optimal power system portfolio for the US state of California that would drive the world’s fifth largest economy towards greenhouse gas reduction goals for 2030 and then to zero carbon by 2040, includes 1GW of long duration energy storage.

Production of commercial energy storage systems has begun at Tesvolt’s new 255MWh annual capacity factory in Wittenberg, Germany, with staff working in isolation due to the risk of COVID-19 infection.

Jan Andersson, market development manager at Wärtsilä, explores the need for large-scale energy storage solutions to aid the proliferation of electric vehicles and their necessary charging infrastructure.