A European consortium is to test the use of long duration storage flow machine technology with a large scale tidal energy project planned for the UK later this year.

Already this year we’ve been able to learn directly about the energy storage market in Europe from the Energy Storage Summit in London at the end of February and Energy Storage Europe in Dusseldorf, which just took place last week. Andy Colthorpe summarises what he’s seen and heard.

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.

Vertically integrated energy company Scottish Power has submitted a proposal to extend recently introduced battery de-rating factors in Britain’s Capacity Market to storage included in demand side response bids in what has been described as a latest attack on the battery market.

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.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

Australian real estate developer Mirvac looks set to put a sizeable amount of solar-plus-storage into brand new homes in Sydney and Brisbane, with help from the national Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Speakers at Energy Storage Europe were confident, despite a few reservations, that Germany’s new government which grants Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term in office will be good for the environment and for renewable energy.

The former head of the German Green Party, Dr Simone Peter, has said that the Energiewende (‘Energy Transition’) is in its second phase, and now requires more ‘sector coupling’ between electricity, heat and transport sectors.

At this week’s Energy Storage Europe event, Energy-Storage.News heard from German politician Thorsten Herdan that strong cooperation with other countries in Europe is vital for creating smarter, reliable and cost-effective energy networks.