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.

First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the second of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe dives deeper into questions of bankability, market segmentation and manufacturing strategies with four very different providers of flow energy storage technology.

The Australian state of Victoria has been given a “taste of what’s possible” with the launch of utility Origin Energy’s first virtual power plant (VPP) project to date.

Virtual power plants, flow batteries and the economics of lithium-ion battery degradation are the focus of three feature-length articles, available now in the latest edition of Solar Media’s quarterly journal PV Tech Power.

Recent moves in California to develop large-scale energy storage with four hours’ storage duration are just the beginning of a move towards using batteries as a capacity resource, the president of flow battery company CellCube has said.

Battery installations are underway at a European Regional Development Fund-backed project deploying low carbon infrastructure on the Isles of Scilly, in a model that it is hoped could be widely replicated elsewhere.

First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the first of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe learns what the flow battery industry faces in the fight for commercialisation.

Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.

Technical papers and feature articles from Solar Media’s PV Tech Power journal are now available as free downloads from this site, along with a host of other industry resources.

SunEdison founder and solar financing pioneer Jigar Shah talked to Andy Colthorpe about having the ‘freedom to invest’ for the biggest impact and why, with traditional lenders still reluctant to finance energy storage, there will always be space for frontrunners who are able to properly understand the value propositions of new and innovative sustainable technologies.