Home storage systems have been considered an ‘early adopter’ market in many parts of the world, perhaps more important as a way that individuals can control their own green energy use and save energy than as a means of generating big money returns.
Shell, which has just participated in an investment round for sonnen, is one of the big players in the incumbent energy industry that “really acts” on clean energy, rather than just talking about it, sonnen’s CEO has said.
Shell has continued to scale-up its interest in distributed energy by participating in a €60 million (US$70.23 million) investment round by German battery storage firm sonnen.
Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units – and other distributed energy equipment – into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.
Virtual power plants (VPPs) can greatly increase the value of home energy storage systems for a range of stakeholders including grid operators, utilities and their customers, according to SolarEdge, which has just launched a VPP software platform.
TEPCO, one of Japan’s national utilities and grid operators, will roll out home solar-plus-storage systems for its customers as part of a drive to create a renewable energy retail business.
Simply Energy, the Australian retail arm for ENGIE, will aggregate 6MW of Tesla household batteries together with 2MW of demand response at commercial premises in Adelaide in a project supported by the government-backed Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
UK demand response and energy resource aggregation company Kiwi Power has unveiled its largest behind the meter battery to date with the completion of the 4MW / 4.8MWh Tesla battery at Cenin Renewables in south Wales.
The CEO of ‘intelligent energy storage’ provider Stem Inc, has said a recently-awarded project in Japan will lean on business models the company has used in the US, while artificial intelligence (AI) technology makes that same transference possible.
A unanimous vote taken by the US regulator FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) which would allow energy storage and other distributed energy resources to play into wholesale markets has been hailed as a “significant step” forward.
