As battery owners and operators seek to maximise the returns from their assets, they simultaneously face the Herculean challenge of managing degradation.

Some choice words from conversations with Scott McGregor, CEO at redT, Avalon Battery president and chief product officer Matt Harper and NEXTracker’s chief technology officer, Alex Au.

First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the second of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe dives deeper into questions of bankability, market segmentation and manufacturing strategies with four very different providers of flow energy storage technology.

The fact that lithium-ion batteries experience degradation over time with use should not necessarily be a limiter for their widespread use in stationary storage systems, but requires long-term strategies for their management.

Andres Cortes and Ben Kaun of the Electric Power Research Institute discuss some of their recent work looking into the issues of the attributes and operations of co-locating energy storage with renewables

Virtual power plants, flow batteries and the economics of lithium-ion battery degradation are the focus of three feature-length articles, available now in the latest edition of Solar Media’s quarterly journal PV Tech Power.