Africa’s largest private equity firm has led a round of financing for Off Grid Electric to fuel the microgrid provider’s expansion in the continent, with investors including an arm of General Electric (GE).
The World Bank plans to make energy storage an integral part of its ‘Scaling Solar’ program, that until now has been focused purely on facilitating large-scale solar tendering, predominantly in Africa.
Flow batteries will take another major step towards widespread bankability with Lockheed Martin Energy launching its own system before the end of the year.
Major oil company Shell and European utility ENGIE are among investors to have pumped US$20 million into Husk Power Systems, a developer of microgrids which is expanding its efforts in Asia and Africa.
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.
The first ‘smart neighbourhood’ in the US state of Georgia is being created by utility Georgia Power and homebuilder PulteGroup, with each home equipped with solar PV, battery energy storage and other smart, clean and distributed energy resources.
Median bids received by US utility Xcel Energy in a solicitation for energy resources for energy storage paired with solar came in at US$9 per megawatt lower than the previously observed record.
Adding energy storage gives solar developers and the industry in general the ability to “keep going”, while offering both lithium and flow battery systems covers a “wide-range of use cases”, NEXTracker CEO Dan Shugar has said.
Developer INRG Solar is plotting a 120MW solar array near Scunthorpe, northern England, in what could be the country’s second proposed solar farm of “significant infrastructure” status.
