Germany-based inverter firm SMA Solar technology has qualified lithium-based energy storage systems from commercial battery system provider Tesvolt for use with SMA’s Sunny Island battery inverter.
Energy storage solutions combined with hybrid solar PV plants and diesel generators will soon benefit communities in two starkly contrasting locations – in a luxury Maldives resort and in Australia’s Aboriginal community.
Recharge A/S, an investment fund specialising in renewables, will take a 50.1% stake in a €24 million (US$26.7 million) micro grid on a remote Portuguese island that could prove the validity of such projects as an asset class.
German utility E.On recently joined forces with German PV module and storage manufacturer Solarwatt. Energy Storage News catches up with Felix Brauer, training coordinator at SolarWatt, to discuss the partnership in detail and the benefits of a DC-coupled battery system.
Energy storage could have a ‘highly critical’ role to play in emerging economies, Aloke Gupta of Imergy Power Systems says. Gupta, who was previously with California’s Public Utilities’ Commission, the state’s regulator, talks about the uses and applications of micro-grids, from his vantage point of view as a flow battery and storage system maker.
Korean firm Kokam has supplied two lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) oxide batteries to utility Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) for frequency regulation on the South Korean grid.
The Japanese city in which the manufacturing bases of lithium-ion battery makers including Panasonic, Hitachi Maxcell and GS Yuasa are located will play host to the world’s biggest energy storage battery and system testing facility to date.
A hydro power plant in Germany has installed a 3MW lithium-ion battery made by manufacturer ads-tec to perform frequency regulation.
The anticipated growth in stationary energy storage will be dependent on a significant decrease in costs. Florian Mayr and Hannes Beushausen explain how the relative costs of different storage technologies in different applications can be compared and understood as an intial step towards increasing competitiveness.
German solar integration specialist Belectric has begun serial production of its ‘Energy Buffer Unit’ (EBU) battery system.
