Battery installations are underway at a European Regional Development Fund-backed project deploying low carbon infrastructure on the Isles of Scilly, in a model that it is hoped could be widely replicated elsewhere.

First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the first of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe learns what the flow battery industry faces in the fight for commercialisation.

Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.

Technical papers and feature articles from Solar Media’s PV Tech Power journal are now available as free downloads from this site, along with a host of other industry resources.

SunEdison founder and solar financing pioneer Jigar Shah talked to Andy Colthorpe about having the ‘freedom to invest’ for the biggest impact and why, with traditional lenders still reluctant to finance energy storage, there will always be space for frontrunners who are able to properly understand the value propositions of new and innovative sustainable technologies.

The digital ledger system blockchain has been both praised and misunderstood in equal measure and its relationship to the physical world of electrons is at its earliest stages of exploration. In the latest ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of PV Tech Power, Carsten Reincke-Collon, CTO of Younicos looks at how energy storage and management software will interact with blockchain-led or blockchain-like systems of data processing and recording.

While it may seem like an obvious choice for US states to include energy storage into their Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) commitments, in reality, standalone targets and mandates for energy storage procurement have been preferred.

Britain could be the best “scale-up” market in the world when it comes to deploying energy storage batteries, leaning on years of experience in solar PV, the chief of one manufacturer has said.

With grid-connected energy storage a relatively new technology, stakeholders are yet to fully understand many of the risks and business opportunities it presents, DNV GL’s Dr Martijn Huibers has said.

Our publisher Solar Media produces the quarterly technical journal PV Tech Power, aimed at the downstream end of the solar PV industry, and the September 2017 edition, Volume 12 in the series, is available now.