An impending €950 million (US$1.07 billion) acquisition of battery manufacturer Saft will enable French oil major Total to “span the value chain” and exploit synergies with EV and solar markets, an energy market expert has said.
Silicon Valley’s Green Charge Networks, which mainly delivers energy storage systems for commercial customers and is involved in a deal to re-purpose ‘second life’ EV batteries, has been acquired by Engie.
Germany, until recently the leading European nation for installed PV capacity, extended a scheme to support purchases of lithium-ion energy storage systems for solar at the beginning of this year.
It would be unfair to put the burden of paying for the rollout of smart meters onto German households with PV-plus-storage when the devices would primarily benefit grid operators, trade association BSW Solar has said.
Microinverter maker and energy management specialist Enphase has started taking orders from installers for its AC battery for home PV systems in Australia and New Zealand, with shipments to start arriving in August 2016.
Oil and gas company Total has proposed to buy battery company Saft, which produces devices for the stationary storage industry as well as for transport and other applications.
SolarReserve eyes 1GW solar thermal storage deal in China, first bi-directional inverter launched and proposed Australian pumped hydro site up capacity to 450MW.
News in brief: Korea’s main utility and Samsung SDI have overseas markets in their sights, Leclanché subsidiary targets US and Canada, UK lead acid maker moves to Li-Ion with new crowdfund drive.
Deploying battery storage at grid level is relatively uncharted territory, but a number of pioneers’ projects are now in the ground. Patrick Leslie and colleagues at RES, which built some of the first wave of storage projects, teases out the key technology, finance and regulatory lessons the industry can learn from these early experiences.
Registration opens today for Tesla’s Model 3, the longer range, cheaper electric vehicle (EV) that the company hopes will repeat the success of its existing luxury models.
