Keele University, which is near the border between Wales and England, is to become a living laboratory for emerging low carbon and smart energy technologies in what is thought to be the largest scheme of its type in Europe and North America.
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.
Flow batteries will take another major step towards widespread bankability with Lockheed Martin Energy launching its own system before the end of the year.
AES Energy Storage and Siemens, which between them have delivered 500MW of energy storage worldwide already, will target 160 different countries and build a 400MWh battery system in California through new joint venture Fluence.
“A comprehensive agenda to combat climate change” unveiled on Tuesday by New York governor Andrew Cuomo, includes the setting of a state-wide energy storage deployment target of 1,500MW by 2025.
While acknowledging that the economics “vary significantly” by region and application, Navigant Research has forecast that energy storage for integration of renewables and co-located with solar or wind could be worth more than US$20 billion by 2026.
Power equipment supplier and system integrator Alfen is putting energy storage and EV chargers on a football stadium in its Dutch homeland, while the company is reportedly considering a stock market flotation.
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.
Battery storage and smart technologies are to be rolled out to homes in the Irish town of Dingle as part of a new trial to test their potential to support the use of variable renewable energy supply resources and smart connection to the Irish electricity grid.
