British vertically-integrated utility Scottish Power has come under scrutiny from the demand side response (DSR) sector after proposing to national regulator Ofgem that de-rating factors applied to large scale battery storage should be extended to those used to provide DSR in the Capacity Market.
Energy storage in the state of South Australia has continued its prolific pace of development with the announcement of two new grid-scale projects and a sizeable commercial and industrial (C&I) installation.
New Zealand’s small handful of advanced energy storage systems will be added to with the NZ$2 million (US$1.45 million) trial deployment of a grid-scale Tesla Powerpack 2 by energy generator and retailer Mercury.
Hospitals, schools and railways in South Australia will be powered by an electricity retailer started up by billionaire steel trader Sanjeev Gupta, following the signing of an agreement between the state government and Gupta’s SIMEC ZEN Energy.
Melbourne-headquartered mining giant BHP, in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), has projected 500MW of potential capacity combining solar, wind and energy storage at its old North American mining sites.
ZEN Energy’s newly appointed chairman has said he believes there is a “great future for energy-intensive industries in Australia,” as his company approved a 1GW plan for dispatchable renewables aimed at South Australia’s commercial and industrial sector.
While headlines about energy storage in Australia have been dominated by news of batteries in large-scale utility projects and the residential sector, the country’s government and renewable energy agency have identified numerous possibilities for developing pumped hydro storage assets.
