Tesla and Fluence are to supply the south-east Australian state of Victoria’s first two large-scale, grid-connected energy storage batteries, one of which will be connected to an existing solar farm.
Some of the “world’s biggest insurance companies” are investigating the advantages of pairing lithium batteries with ultracapacitors in energy storage systems, which can lower costs and extend battery lifetimes, the CEO of an ultracapacitor maker has said.
The UK’s first listed fund for energy storage is setting out to raise £100 million (~$139 million) for investment in battery projects, with a seed portfolio of an estimated 18MW/20MWh already arranged.
UK demand response aggregator Flexitricity has successfully secured gas and electricity supply licences from regulator Ofgem, giving the demand response aggregator the green light to enter the country’s balancing mechanism.
Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow has leaned on its joint venture with Samsung SDI to supply both inverters and lithium batteries to a large-scale energy storage project in Japan.
A subsidiary of Enel is jointly developing a large-scale lithium-ion battery system project with wind power developer ENERTRAG, in what will be the multinational utility’s first energy storage project in Germany.
A unanimous vote taken by the US regulator FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) which would allow energy storage and other distributed energy resources to play into wholesale markets has been hailed as a “significant step” forward.
A 3,000MW energy storage target, proposed in Arizona as part of a grid modernisation policy, recognises the role of the technology in reducing the need for fossil fuels to stabilise the grid, a consultant has said.
New Zealand’s small handful of advanced energy storage systems will be added to with the NZ$2 million (US$1.45 million) trial deployment of a grid-scale Tesla Powerpack 2 by energy generator and retailer Mercury.
Northern Ireland’s Queens University Belfast (QUB) has found that battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than thermal generation. Dr Marek Kubic at Fluence, which is working with QUB, explains.
