News in brief: Japan’s northern island tackles grid constraints for renewables with 60MWh battery; AES switches on large-scale storage in Northern Ireland; telecoms appear to be a good fit for Imergy’s flow batteries.
A UK electricity distribution network operator has signed a contract with Renewable Energy Systems (RES) to deliver an energy storage system co-located with large-scale solar, which will be used to develop ways to commercialise services to the grid.
Japanese financial services company Orix Corporation has invested in UniEnergy Technologies (UET), a US company delivering large-scale energy storage based around its own vanadium flow batteries.
Off Grid Electric, a company specialising in providing electrification to rural communities, has created a US$45 million investment vehicle, bringing its total raised this year in equity and debt financing to US$70 million.
News in brief: UK pro-solar Conservative politician Gregory Barker and film star Leonardo DiCaprio have joined the advisory board of Powerhive; Ireland’s government has become the latest to recognise the potential of energy storage in its national low carbon transition; and flow battery maker has supplied systems to projects in Europe that demonstrate the technology’s strengths in integrating PV generation.
A utility has been first off the mark to put Tesla Powerwall stationary storage systems on sale in Australia, with installations expected to begin in February.
Behind-the-meter energy storage controls based around Nissan’s EV batteries and a ‘software-defined power plant’, both designed to incorporate a range of energy resources including solar, have been launched in the past week.
The eligibility of energy storage systems for a programme financing energy efficiency and renewables through property tax assessment shows that the technology is maturing rapidly, according to the CEO of the North American arm of Sonnenbatterie.
Sonnenbatterie, Germany’s market leader for residential energy storage, has launched an energy trading platform that the company believes could make it as big as existing utility companies, rebranding itself as Sonnen in the process.
A US company which analyses Big Data for energy applications has claimed a world first with its involvement in a Dutch project to integrate multiple distributed energy resources into a single system.
