A ceremony was held yesterday in Niedersachsen, Germany, to welcome the start of operations at a ‘hybrid’ energy storage plant that will use a combination of sodium-sulfur and lithium-ion batteries to stabilise the grid.

Islands around the world provide ideal conditions for trialling new approaches to energy provision. David Pratt reports on some of the work going on globally to bring the benefits of cutting-edge renewable energy, storage and smart grid technologies to the world’s geographically isolated communities. To be continued later this week on Energy-Storage.news.

After reporting last week on the findings from EMMES, the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage from Delta-ee and trade association EASE, which demonstrated a big rise in installations by MWh in 2017 across the continent, we delved further behind another record-breaking year with the report’s lead author, Valts Grintals of Delta-ee.

Jardelund, Germany, is now host to what is currently Europe’s largest battery energy storage system, a 50MWh project completed and announced just a few days ago by NEC Energy Solutions.

Ørsted, formerly DONG Energy, has confirmed its entry into the UK battery storage market with a new 20MW project near Liverpool.

Bulgana Green Energy Hub, a renewable energy project powering commercial crop farms in Victoria, Australia, including large-scale wind and battery energy storage, will be designed and constructed by Siemens Gamesa.

French renewable energy developer and independent power producer Neoen, which together with Tesla recently delivered a 100MW / 129MWh grid-supporting battery system in South Australia, has just signed a “support agreement” with local authorities for its next big project in the country.

Amidst experiencing Model 3’s “production hell”, launching a semi truck, a new Roadster and a portable battery pack, Tesla’s work on a 129MWh energy storage system in South Australia appears on track to be completed in time.

The world’s tallest wind turbine to date, under construction at a German wind farm, will be paired with 70MWh of pumped hydro energy storage onsite.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have both financed the Kennedy hybrid solar, wind and storage project in north Queensland, which is being developed Windlab and Eurus Energy.