Tesla reported losses of around US$0.36 per share in its quarterly earnings announcement yesterday, despite a flurry of activity around its stationary storage launch last week – yet the company still outperformed the expectations of the investment community.
Ecotricity, a UK-based supplier of renewable and clean energy, will trial a home energy storage box later this year.
More details have emerged on inverters for Tesla’s new home battery system, to be made by Fronius and SolarEdge, while the EV-maker’s energy storage will be installed at demonstration and commercial projects for US utility Edison International.
Tesla’s Powerwall home energy storage system will join the US market at a “remarkably low price”, according to one analyst PV Tech has spoken to following the announcement from Silicon Valley last night.
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.
Along with cost reductions in balance of systems (BoS) components and US$1 billion of investment, energy storage technologies can reduce the cost of commercial solar and drive the market segment forward in the US, a SolarCity spokesman has said.
An academic based in north east England has called on the UK government to give energy storage “its own asset class with accompanying rules for appropriate regulatory treatment” as well as investing in the technology in order to enable future energy bill savings.
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.
An advanced microgrid comprised of four smaller, interlinking grids has been unveiled in Texas by power electronics firm S&C and energy management company Schneider.
