“The elimination of solar energy’s intermittency and ensuring its 24-hour availability at grid-competitive cost is the holy grail and RayGen has found it”.
Energy use by air conditioning can be both expensive and taxing for the environment, with the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, set to trial a three-storey ‘water battery’ to reduce both energy demand and cost.
Work is underway on an energy storage project in South Australia that will use biogas to generate power to be stored in modules of molten silicon, from startup 1414 Degrees.
Just over US$28 million has been awarded by the US Department of Energy to projects that could deliver energy storage durations of up to 100 hours, while also committing US$120m to the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).
Leclanché and VRB Energy, two providers in very different areas of energy storage, have struck up joint ventures (JVs) intended to assist them in scaling up and hitting new markets, while Ice Energy has netted fresh funding.
Axiom Exergy, a US manufacturer of energy storage units that use stored energy for cooling buildings and produce, has netted close to US$8 million from investors including Shell’s venture capital unit and Tesla battery guru JB Straubel.
1414 Degrees, an Australian startup manufacturing thermal energy storage systems using a proprietary silicon storage medium is preparing to launch an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and build a 200MWh ‘module’ at a renewable energy facility.
Calmac, a provider of ice-creating thermal energy storage systems – and ice rinks – has been bought out by a subsidiary of major US manufacturer Ingersoll Rand.
Heating and cooling uses more than half of Europe’s energy, but the potential “immense value” of thermal energy storage has barely been explored, the head of an energy storage trade group has said.
