The success of efforts to decarbonise economies in the UK and elsewhere could hinge largely on how governments and business communities – particularly large commercial lenders – engage with the sector in 2020, a UK-based financier of solar and storage has said.
While lithium-ion batteries get most of the headlines, long-duration solutions of various types are gaining ground. Alice Grundy and Andy Colthorpe profile some of the established and emerging concepts in this increasingly important field.
Sungrow has supplied a 1500Vdc, DC-coupled PV-plus-storage system to support SolarSmart, a programme run for customers unable to put solar on their own homes by Florida municipal utility Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA).
While recycling of lithium and other materials such as cobalt from batteries will greatly increase in the coming years, the potential availability of second life batteries should not be underestimated, according to new research and data.
By the middle of the 2020s, using hybrid ‘portfolios’ of batteries and renewable energy sources will economically outperform existing gas power plants, while the combination of technologies is already cost-competitive with building new gas plants, a new report from the US-based Rocky Mountain Institute has said.
US utility Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) has issued request for proposals (RfPs) for a mix of technologies across solar, energy storage, wind and others to meet requirements for extra power generation identified under its Integrated Resource Plan (2018 IRP).
The business models and technologies underpinning the development of stationary energy storage markets are evolving rapidly. Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Jan Figgener and David Haberschusz of RWTH Aachen University look at some of the key trends driving the sector forwards, in a paper which first appeared in PV Tech Power’s Energy Storage Special Report 2019.
Despite the huge strides energy storage has made, significant hurdles remain before the technology in its many guises can be claimed to have fulfilled its massive potential. E-S.n editor Andy Colthorpe assesses the key successes and ongoing challenges for this indispensable part of the future power system.
