Our ability to generate renewable energy is scaling up fast, and solutions to integrate that energy will rely on technologies like blockchain to help keep new solutions on track. Power Ledger’s executive chairman and co-founder, Dr Jemma Green, looks at the role blockchain plays within her company’s platform to integrate and automate solar energy trading and balancing.
FlexGen, an energy storage system integrator that counts GE and Caterpillar among its backers, said this week that a lithium-ion battery storage system it was supplied was used by an Indiana utility to black start a 77MW natural gas plant.
Fluence has announced that it has been contracted to deliver a large tranche of projects in Southeast Asia, but has agreed with its customer not to reveal yet which country they will be located in.
Sunrun has made a further expansion in providing grid services by choosing AutoGrid’s software to help manage its fleets of aggregated home solar and battery systems.
Industry commentators have expressed shock and surprise that NEC Corporation’s Energy Solutions business has been wound down, while an analyst said the reasons for the energy storage system integrator’s demise are likely to go back further than the COVID-19 pandemic.
Itochu, a major Japanese corporation which has sold over 330MWh of residential battery storage systems in its home market, has invested ¥1 billion (US$9.35 million) in TRENDE, a renewable energy retailer which counts utility company Tokyo Electric Power among its major shareholders, with a view to launching a range of renewable energy and storage-enabled services.
Energy storage technology provider Fluence has launched its latest systems aimed at three market segments and – according to new CEO Manuel Perez Dubuc – aimed at creating an inflection point in the global transition to low carbon energy.
QCELLS has invested AU$5 million (US$3.45 million) in SwitchDin, an Australian distributed energy resources (DERs) software company that offers capabilities including virtual power plant aggregation and microgrid-forming.
Long duration energy storage is an “essential” technology to help accelerate renewable deployment, according to the US Department of Energy’s Dr Imre Gyuk, but will require “appropriate regulatory frameworks”.
