Solar cell and battery hybrid technology could become a commercial success as long as it clears the “valley of death” out of academia, a scientist working on the project has claimed.

The latest claimant to the crown of ‘largest flow battery installation in North America and Europe’ has emerged, with the award of a 2MW project in Canada to US manufacturer Vizn Energy.

Competition generated in part by the transport sector has catapulted lithium to its position as storage technology frontrunner, according to Volker Wachenfeld, senior vice president for hybrid and energy storage integration at SMA Solar Technology.

Following the announcement of a ‘virtual power plant’ pilot in Australia, Sunverge energy storage systems have been selected for another trial project to test the capabilities of customer-sited storage, this time in the US.

Through a brief history of batteries and some findings from his own team’s work, Volker Wachenfeld of SMA Solar Technology answers a frequently asked question in energy storage; how can compatibility with the existing variety of batteries in the market be put into practice?

Construction has begun on what is claimed to be the world’s first modular large-scale battery storage system, a 5MW device at a research university in Aachen, Germany.

Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) released a hefty report on global energy storage and how it relates back to the domestic situation last month. Tom Kenning investigated one of the report’s main conclusions – that the value for energy storage in Australia, initially at least, will most likely be found behind-the-meter.

Effective ways of assigning economic value to services provided by aggregated storage systems must be found to progress the use of such technology, according to a technical consultant involved in a recent report assessing Australia’s energy storage landscape.

Production of stationary storage systems has already begun at Tesla’s facilities in Fremont California, while the company’s Gigafactory is “on track” and could even be expanded beyond original plans, company executives said yesterday.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has invited expressions of interest (EOI) for energy storage demonstration projects to integrate renewables, recognising that the technology “has the potential to become highly attractive for both grid-connected and off-grid renewable energy applications”.