Renewable energy supplier and project developer Neoen has begun construction on the largest grid-connected energy storage system in mainland France, a 6MW / 6MWh system which will provide frequency regulation services.

Vertically-integrated solar energy company First Solar will be involved in the first megawatt-scale battery system announced in Arizona since it was revealed the state could put a 3,000MW energy storage deployment target in place.

Innovations in new distributed energy technologies are challenging conventional thinking around the most effective ways to serve electricity customers and utilise grid infrastructure. Alex Eller of Navigant Research looks at how one of the most significant expenses for electric utilities, maintaining and upgrading transmission and distribution (T&D) networks could be undercut using non-wires alternatives – including energy storage.

The digital ledger system blockchain has been both praised and misunderstood in equal measure and its relationship to the physical world of electrons is at its earliest stages of exploration. In the latest ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of PV Tech Power, Carsten Reincke-Collon, CTO of Younicos looks at how energy storage and management software will interact with blockchain-led or blockchain-like systems of data processing and recording.

A planned energy storage system backed with a diesel generator could remove the need to build an expensive undersea cable to serve the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts in the US.

One of the ‘value of energy storage’ questions that was being asked a lot two or three years ago was around the use of batteries and decentralised system architecture instead of traditional “poles and wires” grid networks. However, advancements in this area have been slow to materialise and Navigant Research’s recent ‘Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Deferral’ report sought to fill the knowledge gap. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to ask lead author Alex Eller three quick questions around the topic.

Energy storage will increasingly be deployed to save money on electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure, with nearly half of the global market to be found in the Asia-Pacific region by 2026, Navigant Research has said.