After a recent tender process, up to 1,300MWh of grid-connected energy storage will be deployed in combination with renewable energy in South Africa through a number of large-scale projects.

Major Australian utility company AGL has signed a 15-year contract for “operational dispatch rights” to a 100MW battery storage system to be built in Queensland.

In the hierarchy of grid needs, peaking power is often a priority in terms of providing resiliency and balance to the network. This is usually provided by natural gas turbines, which come at a high environmental and economic cost. Andy Colthorpe charts the rise of the solar-plus-storage peaker plant.

From the outside, the VPP looks like a single power production facility that publishes one schedule of operation and can be optimised from a single remote site. From the inside, the VPP can combine a rich diversity of independent resources into a network via the sophisticated planning, scheduling, and bidding of DER-based services. Peter Asmus examines the role energy storage can play within this architecture.