The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is set to launch a technology roadmap for electricity storage at the solar industry conference and exhibition Intersolar Europe next month. IRENA technology roadmap analyst Ruud Kempener spoke to Andy Colthorpe about the project.
The UK is lagging behind many other countries in both private and public investment into the deployment of modern electricity storage. Despite some measures which represent a good start, the new British government needs to act to remove the “roadblock” to this activity, blogs Anthony Price.
Tesla’s grand entrance to the stationary storage market has been (largely) welcomed but question marks remain over the company’s business model. Andy Colthorpe gauges the latest reaction and explores the options facing Elon Musk.
Raj Prabhu of cleantech research and communications firm Mercom Capital talks through some of the interesting findings and trends highlighted by his company’s recent “Smart Grid, Battery/Storage, Efficiency Funding and M&A” report for Q1 2015.
The hotly anticipated announcement tomorrow of two products in the Tesla’s stationary storage range, teased and trailed by a series of cryptic and not-so-cryptic tweets and interview snippets, has led to mainstream media taking an interest in the stationary storage sector and what it could offer like no other news we’ve heard to date. And there hasn’t even been any actual news yet. Andy Colthorpe spoke to energy storage expert Cosmin Laslau at Lux Research, about what to expect.
One firm exploring the possibilities of contributing to grid stability by installing energy storage at solar farms is German PV plant technology provider Belectric. The company will install two large-scale energy storage projects in the UK and connected an energy storage system at a large-scale solar power plant in Germany late last year. The system at Alt Daber is the first such installation in Europe to operate on the primary operating reserve market. Andy Colthorpe interviewed Belectric’s UK managing director Duncan Bott and Tim Mueller, chief executive of Belectric’s solar research and innovation subsidiary, Adensis, about the Alt Daber project earlier this year.
Following February’s Guest Blog which looked at factors- barriers, boundaries and benefits- that can influence its widespread adoption, SMA’s Aleksandra-Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer and Volker Wachenfeld focus on the discussions behind designing and implementing home solar-plus-storage.
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is like King Canute, standing on the shore commanding the tide of renewable energy and energy storage not to come in. But no matter how much he rails against the future, this prime minister is way too late to stop the tide of progress. A range of factors are coming together at the same time that will see distributed solar PV combined with energy storage move into the early mainstream in the coming years – and sooner than later, says John Grimes of the Australian Storage Council and Australian Solar Council.
PV Tech Storage interviews John Jung of Greensmith, an energy storage system and software provider which claims to have been involved with one third of all storage deployed in the US last year. Jung discusses ‘killer apps’, opening up new business models in new markets, software and battery agnosticism.
More than two-thirds of the population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is still without electricity, with the figure rising to more than 85% in rural areas. Andrew Jones of S&C Electric looks at how energy storage could play a crucial role in realising the continent’s solar potential.
