Recharge A/S, an investment fund specialising in renewables, will take a 50.1% stake in a €24 million (US$26.7 million) micro grid on a remote Portuguese island that could prove the validity of such projects as an asset class.

The developing economies of the world are largely located in geographical regions that have abundant renewable energy resources, be they solar, wind, hydro or in some cases geothermal, yet paradoxically at the individual and rural community level, access to energy is often a very real issue. Establishing a continuous chain of temperature controlled cold environments from the point of harvest to the marketplace and on into the home, a ‘cold chain’, is what is required in order to avoid produce spoilage and to connect farmers with higher value market options in distant urban centres or overseas.

SunPower CEO Tom Werner says that the idea of solar power users combining their systems with battery storage to become fully independent of the grid is “naïve”, echoing the views of one of SolarCity’s founders.

PV Tech Storage interviews Paul Bundschuh of Ideal Power, whose company will supply Sharp’s new Smartstorage system with power converters and has also developed a three-port hybrid battery converter to better enable grid-resilience and micro grids.