New Zealand’s small handful of advanced energy storage systems will be added to with the NZ$2 million (US$1.45 million) trial deployment of a grid-scale Tesla Powerpack 2 by energy generator and retailer Mercury.
While energy storage can be considered “critical” to Australia’s transformation to a distributed, low carbon energy mix, a lack of investment and planning for the technology could have negative consequences for the network.
Two US Senators introduced a bill in Congress at the beginning of this week that would require the national Secretary of Energy to establish research and demonstration programmes and deployment strategies for energy storage, if passed.
In the UK, a new, quarter of a billion-pound innovation competition for batteries has been launched, while plans for overhaul of the energy sector promising a “determined, joined-up, far-sighted and deliberate approach from government” appear to have been met with relish by the industry. Consultant Robert Ede goes beyond headlines to look at what this might really mean in practical terms.
Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU), arms of US firm PPL Corporation, have developed a research centre for energy storage at a power plant in Kentucky.
O&M analytics software provider QOS Energy has delivered its energy management system to an R&D project run by French aggregator Sun’R Smart Energy’s examining grid integration of renewables using pumped hydro storage.
South Africa’s main utility Eskom said it has identified a need for as much as 2,000MW of energy storage on its networks, and has opened a testing facility to find the technologies most suitable.
Projects that demonstrate how energy storage can benefit a wide range of stakeholders and the electric grid can compete for US$15.5 million of funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
