Australian homes and businesses will soon be able to use renewable energy stored in their batteries to bid into a local energy market and provide a range of grid services using a new software platform backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.
Energy storage battery and system maker Leclanché will pilot the use of stationary energy storage to support fast charger networks for electric vehicles (EVs) in Holland.
Shifting responsibility for product safety onto manufacturers, rather than installers, of residential energy storage systems would be a positive step forward for Australia’s industry, the country’s Clean Energy Council has said.
While lithium-ion is rapidly racing ahead to become the “de facto grid storage solution” and is the most popular technology choice by far, vendors of other types of batteries are also targeting the market, with varying degrees of success.
Swiss utility and power distribution company EKZ (Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons Zürich) is building a grid-balancing and renewables integrating 18MW / 7.5MWh energy storage system and has appointed NEC Energy Solutions to execute the project.
US energy storage designer and manufacturer SimpliPhi Energy has installed a combination of solar PV and batteries to power air-conditioning units at a school in Hawaii, with a further 1.4MWh of such projects in the pipeline.
A not-for-profit utility cooperative from Texas has been awarded a contract to electrify a community in Liberia with a solar-plus-storage microgrid, to benefit around 400 homes and businesses.
Using just 351.9kW of PV and 1MWh of energy storage in a microgrid, a tiny island off the Massachusetts coast successfully met more than 50% of its electricity demand over summer.
There is no economic benefit from installing energy storage with solar PV in UK homes, a new study has suggested, adding that the cost of battery degradation would cost homeowners £400 (US$518) in the first year.
