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.
Flow battery maker Avalon has initiated a novel business model aimed at lowering the cost of deployment of its energy storage units, effectively ‘renting’ the electrolytes in the devices to a customer in California.
In the previous instalment of this blog, we looked at how our respondents from across the energy storage industry had viewed 2018’s biggest challenges. This time out we look at what some of 2018’s biggest successes were.
‘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.
Despite the growing interest and deployment figures for lithium-ion batteries for stationary energy storage, its ‘predecessor’ lead acid still has a strong role to play in enabling more and more people to go solar, a representative of Trojan Battery has argued.
A veteran of Kenya’s renewable energy industry has argued strongly in favour of lead acid batteries over lithium-ion, in response to a recent Energy-Storage.news article on off-grid solar PV in Africa.
Increasingly, solar energy and behind-the-meter battery storage assets are being deployed on an ‘as-a-service’ basis and system integrator Younicos has decided to replicate the strategy for microgrids.
The huge increase in demand for safe and reliable batteries to store energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind heralds a new lease of life for advanced lead batteries, argues Dr Andy Bush of the International Lead Association.
