Battery storage technology costs will have to fall by a further 30% before projects in the UK are feasible without lucrative frequency response revenues, a leading investor has said.
Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil’s Batwind project in Scotland, combining wind turbines with energy storage, will have a battery system installed by system integrator Younicos.
Australian large-scale renewables investor Lyon Group has confirmed it is selling three projects under development, totalling 800MWh of energy storage and 545MW of PV generation capacity, in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.
Swiss institutional investment group SUSI Partners has agreed to finance C$120 million (US$94.56 million) of commercial and industrial (C&I) sector energy storage projects by Canadian project developer/owner NRStor.
Battery Energy Storage Solutions (BESS), an investor and would-be asset owner in the UK, has raised more than £50 million (US$66.18 million) of outside investment, setting its sights on making energy storage project acquisitions in Britain.
Panellists at the opening day of Solar and Off-Grid Renewables Southeast Asia event in Bangkok warned that investors who come on board quickest are going to gain a huge advantage as solar-plus-storage starts to become viable at scale.
While energy storage can be considered “critical” to Australia’s transformation to a distributed, low carbon energy mix, a lack of investment and planning for the technology could have negative consequences for the network.
Narada Power, which makes batteries and complete energy storage systems as well as acting as a project system integrator, is establishing a subsidiary for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.
Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) will help finance the country’s first “unsubsidised large-scale grid-connected battery”, co-located with a wind farm in South Australia.
An Indian state-owned energy services and energy efficiency company is set to invest in 14MWh of grid-scale storage in Canada through a joint venture (JV) with UK company EnergyPro Limited (EP).
