German luxury carmaker Mercedes Benz has officially launched a dedicated energy division, focusing on its range of lithium-ion storage battery systems, following a series of related announcements including tie-ups with inverter maker SMA.
An influential German think tank and a national energy storage industry association have both said that long-term solutions need to be found for residential solar-plus-storage owners’ part-time reliance on the grid.
James P McDougall, CEO of Younicos blogs on the possibilities of establishing a solar-oriented baseload – and why his company is convinced of the scaling potential of utility-scale batteries.
One research firm has welcomed predictions from a think tank that Germany’s electricity network could cope with the addition of “huge amounts” of solar-plus-storage and even benefit, but also agreed that policy changes will most likely be required to enable that scenario.
E.ON, the German utility giant with 61GW of generation assets, has announced plans to split its business in two. The company will stake its future on renewables in a major restructuring, spinning off its conventional power generation business, in part as a response to the growth in distributed generation. Cosmin Laslau of Lux Research digs deeper.
Putting value on energy storage in the UK capacity markets could help pay for deploying the technology more widely, according to the country’s secretary of state for energy and climate change.
Energy storage might not be cost effective in Germany as a method of helping the transition to a higher grid penetration of renewable energy, until that penetration level reaches as high as 90%, according to a leading think tank.
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has inaugurated a test centre at its northern campus that will pair a 1MW solar array to 100kWh of lithium-ion battery-based energy storage.
