Australia’s energy and environment minister has hailed the country’s accelerating residential energy storage sales as a report has emerged from Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel which says the “financial equation is straightforward” for adding batteries to home PV systems.
Australia could be getting its first lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’, with some progress made in the past few days for a facility proposed to be built in Queensland.
A new consortium, V2GB (Vehicle to Grid Britain), will develop driver-centred business models to support the rapid roll out of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies, enabling millions of electric car batteries to become a vital part of the UK energy system. National Grid, carmaker Nissan’s European Technical Centre, Moixa and energy consultancy Element Energy have come together to help work out how to reward drivers who use electric vehicle (EV) batteries to support the power network. Chris Wright, the Chief Technology Officer of UK home battery company Moixa, talks us through the mission behind V2GB and the potential impact of the study.
Simply Energy, the Australian retail arm for ENGIE, will aggregate 6MW of Tesla household batteries together with 2MW of demand response at commercial premises in Adelaide in a project supported by the government-backed Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Members of the public in South Australia are being given the chance to participate in creating the biggest ‘virtual power plant’ of solar PV and batteries the world has ever seen.
Four projects have been awarded £42 million (US$59.6 million) of UK government money between them to conduct research aimed at overcoming battery challenges, mainly focused on electric vehicles.
While headlines about energy storage in Australia have been dominated by news of batteries in large-scale utility projects and the residential sector, the country’s government and renewable energy agency have identified numerous possibilities for developing pumped hydro storage assets.
British government minister Greg Clark today unveiled the first phase of a £246 million (US$320 million) investment in battery technology with the launch of the Faraday Challenge, designed to boost research and development and position the UK at the forefront of energy storage.
