Infrastructure development and engineering company Black & Veatch has just completed a microgrid project in the US for Shell which is set to help inform the oil and gas company on its next steps into distributed energy.
We asked Dr Rahul Walawalkar, executive director of the India Energy Storage Alliance, three simple questions to illuminate what was achieved in 2018 and what held the market back, if anything. We also look ahead to this year and what we might expect to see going forward.
A trucking terminal in Ohio, US, will play host to a microgrid that incorporates around half a megawatt of wind and solar generation combined with battery energy storage from distributed energy technology company EnSync.
BIRD Energy, a foundation jointly created by the US Department of Energy (DoE) and Israel’s Ministry of Energy (MoE) will invest around half the amount required to fund US$12 million of solar, storage, energy efficiency and microgrid projects in Israel.
The economics of rural electrification using microgrids should be considered an investment for the future, akin to how Silicon Valley tech providers plough money into initially loss-leading products and services, the chief of developer and manufacturer Solar Philippines has said.
The remote Isle of Eigg, one of the Scottish Hebridean islands, is now host to a hybrid microgrid which incorporates flywheels and ultracapacitors for high power functions as well as solar, batteries, wind and diesel backup.
‘Europe’s largest’ energy storage pilot project at an industrial site, combining 2MWp of rooftop solar with a total of 4.2MWh of energy storage across a lithium-ion battery system and two flow batteries has been inaugurated in Belgium.
‘Energy resilient infrastructure upgrades’ planned for a US military facility will involve the deployment of 20MW of solar PV, 4MW / 8MWh of battery storage and 4MW of gas-fired backup generation in a project worth US$133.5 million.
Luxury car brand Rolls Royce, yet to make significant strides towards electrification of its vehicles, has nonetheless made an investment in the clean and distributed energy sectors, acquiring a stake in a microgrid solutions developer.
Islands around the world provide ideal conditions for trialling new approaches to energy provision. David Pratt reports on how cutting-edge renewable energy, storage and smart grid technologies are being rolled out to geographically isolated communities. Part 2 of this feature article continues with a look at how some of these projects could provide real-time lessons for the global clean energy transition.
