While energy storage, like the electrification of transport, is often discussed as the ‘Next Big Thing’ for first world economies, this emerging technology is starting to play an important role in developing nations too.
The first ever wind and solar hybrid project in India, completed in April 2018, is to be retrofitted with energy storage after strong winds this year led to a curtailment of solar production.
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) is supporting a 41MW hybrid solar-wind-storage project being developed by private Indian energy firm IL&FS Energy Development Company Limited (IEDCL) in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh by providing a grant to aid the plant’s technical design and planning.
A project in Jamaica, pairing utility-scale solar with battery energy storage at a microgrid could become “a model for other countries in the Caribbean and beyond”, the head of the country’s main utility has said.
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have both financed the Kennedy hybrid solar, wind and storage project in north Queensland, which is being developed Windlab and Eurus Energy.
