Australian utility AGL is now inviting tenders to procure battery storage which will help it meet climate and sustainability goals – but the company expects to be economically dependent on coal as well as gas for years to come.
A “first-in-the-nation” policy called the Clean Peak Standard has been launched in Massachusetts, US, whereby a proportion of electricity used on the grid at times of highest demand must be considered ‘clean’.
Eskom, the state-owned electricity utility of South Africa, has begun tendering for a battery energy storage system (BESS) of minimum size and capacity 80MW / 320MWh.
US developer and utility NextEra Energy has said there is currently a “terrific opportunity” for wind, solar and battery storage while Texas-based CPS Energy plans to add up to 900MW of solar, 50MW of battery storage and 500MW of new technology solutions to its portfolio.
The 20MW / 80MWh Pomona battery energy storage facility, in operation in California since a fast-track process brought it online in partial response to the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak, has been bought by Ormat Technologies.
Wärtsilä has been contracted to deliver a hybrid solution combining battery energy storage with liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and light fuel oil (LFO) engines on the US Virgin Islands.
Public utility NV Energy has announced plans to build three solar parks with battery storage and a large-scale transmission line project in Nevada, as it looks to transform the state’s clean energy landscape.
Vectren, owner of utility firms in the US states of Indiana and Ohio, has unveiled plans to ditch more than 700MW of coal generation and partly replace it with up to 1GW of solar PV.
A project to create performance standards for residential and small-scale commercial battery energy storage systems in Australia has been completed, with project leader DNV GL raising hopes that the rules can inform the global market too.
A project demonstrating aggregated solar-plus-storage in Louisiana involving energy storage company SimpliPhi Power, technology partner Heila and local utility SWEPCO has started off small, but is “expected to transition into a larger network of distributed systems, soon”.
