Tesla’s much talked about Gigafactory should be up and running in 2017. PV Tech Storage spoke to analyst Dean Frankel of Lux Research about some of the details and talking points of the EV maker’s ambitious plan to hit ‘500,000 battery packs by 2020’.
Scientists at Ohio State University claim to have developed a hybrid device which combines a solar cell with a rechargeable battery, as part of a US Department of Energy funded research programme.
German mechanical engineering company Manz has supplied a lithium-ion battery production line to a research centre for the commercial production of the batteries, initially for the e-mobility sector, at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW) in Ulm.
French battery manufacturer and designer Saft has been contracted to supply a 1MW/3MWh lithium-ion storage system at an educational facility in California, aimed at mitigating the impact of variable solar generation.
A large scale ‘battery park’ has gone online in West Meklenberg, Germany, designed to stabilise grid frequency in an area where a large amount of power generation comes from wind and other renewable energy.
Australian solar and energy storage company ZEN Energy has received a AUS$200,000 (US$184,000) grant from local government toward the development and commercialisation of its energy storage technologies.
Tesla’s lithium-ion ‘Gigafactory’ will be built in Nevada, after company officials including chief executive officer Elon Musk appeared alongside the US state’s governor at a press conference held yesterday afternoon.
Researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) in Germany working with lithium-ion batteries claim to have observed lithium plating taking place at close quarters while batteries are in use, gaining insights into the phenomenon in the process.
An unnamed utility in California is preparing to test a grid storage system and look at the potential value streams it could provide, according to NEC Energy Solutions, which is providing the system.
A research project aimed at validating technologies for the “industrial scale” storage and dispatch of solar generated electricity in Switzerland has received CHF2 million (US$2.17 million) in funding from a local government agency.
