A team at Harvard is pursuing a metal-free battery chemistry based on organic molecules called Quinones. The technology potentially offers an abundant and safe material to use for scaling up flow batteries, but according to the energy storage team at Lux Research in Boston, there are significant limitations based on project cost.
The first grid-connected energy storage facility in Canada, in the country’s leading solar province, Ontario, is now operational.
Earlier this year New York governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled plans for an “energy modernisation initiative that will fundamentally transform the way electricity is distributed and used in New York State”. This will include the creation of a leading energy storage marketplace, argues Bill Radvak, chief executive officer of American Vanadium, whose company recently installed a vanadium flow battery storage system for New York’s Metropolitan Transport Authority in Manhattan.
An antenna tower in Australia serving a broadcaster will be the site of a solar-plus-storage project funded by the German government and designed to deliver power 24 hours a day.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has inaugurated a test centre at its northern campus that will pair a 1MW solar array to 100kWh of lithium-ion battery-based energy storage.
DNV GL has launched the GRIDSTOR Join Industry Project, aimed at forming a recommended practice for energy storage, to which it wants to invite 15 partners from across a range of stakeholders.
Energy storage has been touted as the enabler of high levels of intermittent renewables in the electricity system – the silver bullet or Holy Grail for solar and wind. A key attribute for the technology’s deployment will be scalability, writes Melissa Lott.
Toshiba is to provide a 1MWh lithium-titanate battery for an energy storage system being developed by University of Sheffield in the UK.
In a two-part video interview with PV Tech Storage, Wolfram Walter, founder of battery manufacturer ASD Sonnenspeicher, said electricity storage suffered from an image problem. He describes to Andy Colthorpe how his company is marrying cutting-edge technology with cool design to appeal to a broader market.
Battery maker Trojan claims its new proprietary ‘Smart Carbon’ technology can improve the cycle life of lead acid batteries by as much as 15%, through effective management of the cell in a partial state of charge.
