Microgrids can offer a resilient and secure alternative for both rural and city communities. Molly Lempriere looks at some of the microgrids around the world that are transforming the way neighbourhoods produce and consume electricity.

A solar and battery storage project combining 13.5MW of solar PV generation with 8MW / 8MWh of batteries in rural Alberta, Canada, has been approved by the local provincial regulator, the Alberta Utilities Commission.

There exist opportunities for flow batteries to target areas of the market lithium-ion “can’t provide in an economically justifiable way,” the chief commercial officer of Invinity Energy Systems has said.

What’s being described as Europe’s largest electric car charging park will be kitted out with 2MWh of stationary battery storage systems from Tesvolt, charged with “green energy from the grid”.

An innovation project in Europe to “harvest” energy that would otherwise be lost from various processes, involving a mixture of academic institutions and tech companies, has been joined by ultracapacitor maker Skeleton Tech.

While the renewable energy industry has suffered significant blows such as loss of employment during the COVID-19 crisis, venture capital (VC) funding into the battery energy storage sector in the first quarter of this year nonetheless saw a significant increase over the previous year’s equivalent period.

With a quarter of all solar project proposals in the US including batteries, transmission grid operators across the country are taking a variety of steps to evaluate the role that can be played in wholesale electricity markets by hybrid power plants – defined as generation coupled with energy storage.

A roundup of news in brief from one of the world’s hottest markets for energy storage – Australia.

What is thought to be the world’s largest ‘single-stack’ green hydrogen electrolyser, a 10MW project in Fukushima, Japan, began operations on schedule in March, provider Asahi Kasei has said.

AutoGrid has struck a deal to supply its distributed energy resources management system (DERMS) platform to NRTC, a cooperative association serving more around 20 million homes in rural America.