Tesla will acquire Maxwell Technologies, it was announced this week, although it is not clear yet which of Maxwell’s product lines, including ultracapacitors, are of most interest to the Silicon Valley automaker and new energy company.
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.
India-based solar manufacturer and EPC player Vikram Solar has signed a collaboration agreement with the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), while at the founding ceremony of the International Solar Alliance (ISA).
The real-world performance of batteries paired with “Hywind” – the world’s first floating wind farm – will be analysed by the wind project’s owners, Masdar and Statoil.
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.
While energy storage can be considered “critical” to Australia’s transformation to a distributed, low carbon energy mix, a lack of investment and planning for the technology could have negative consequences for the network.
Two US Senators introduced a bill in Congress at the beginning of this week that would require the national Secretary of Energy to establish research and demonstration programmes and deployment strategies for energy storage, if passed.
