Corporate funding into the battery storage sector in the first quarter of this year totalled US$4.7 billion across 17 deals, a huge leap from the equivalent period of last year, according to a new report from Mercom Capital.
An off-grid hybrid energy system at Fekola, a gold mine in Mali, Africa, has gone online incorporating solar PV, battery storage and the site’s existing fossil fuel generators, project partners Baywa R.E and Suntrace have said.
Fluence will deploy Lithuania’s first grid-scale battery project, aiming to prove the advantages of using batteries as an alternative to building out expensive transmission infrastructure.
The opening up of independent system operator (ISO) services as a result of FERC 841 has led to a “huge difference” in storage dispatch strategy for merchant markets with concurrent bidding now the typical strategy.
An energy storage project pipeline of 500MW in Texas’s ERCOT market is being developed by Dallas-headquartered distributed energy resources developer and operator Hunt Energy Network.
The challenges of explosion prevention – with flammable gases needing to be vented “very rapidly” – in the event of a battery fire have been highlighted at this week’s Energy Storage Summit USA.
Based on the value it provides to grids as shares of renewable energy grow, energy storage is a “very exciting market,” the VP of Goldman Sachs Renewable Power has said.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said yesterday that flow batteries are “good for grid storage” as her Department of Energy (DoE) announced funding to support domestic manufacturing for the energy storage technology.
This year’s Winter Storm Uri caused havoc in Texas, particularly in the energy sector, where extreme weather and a resultant set of generation problems and transmission grid issues led to loss of power and even loss of life across the US state. Ricardo F. Rodriguez, a senior consultant from analysis and research group Guidehouse looks at another aspect of the situation: the impact on the state’s telecommunications infrastructure and how battery energy storage could provide a greater degree of certainty and resilience to this vital network.
The success of an auction for fast reserve grid services held by Italy’s transmission system operator (TSO) indicates a strong appetite for battery storage, but market rules and regulations need some revision to capture that opportunity.
