Putting value on energy storage in the UK capacity markets could help pay for deploying the technology more widely, according to the country’s secretary of state for energy and climate change.
Imergy Power Systems, the California-based energy storage specialist, has received an order for four of its ESP5 vanadium flow batteries from Hawaiian renewables firm, Energy Research Systems.
Toshiba is trialling a PV hybrid storage system in Japan for use in emergency situations.
The solar industry should be wary of thinking that there will be a support mechanism-fuelled “gold rush” on energy storage in the UK, according to the director of the Electricity Storage Network (ESN).
Axion Power International, a maker of lead carbon battery systems, has been selected to supply energy storage and frequency regulation to a 9.1MW solar farm in Pennsylvania, the company has announced.
A ‘double zero energy’ home with energy storage and solar PV systems has been launched in the US, as a result of the partnership between solar manufacturer and developer SunPower and homebuilder KB Home.
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.
The developing economies of the world are largely located in geographical regions that have abundant renewable energy resources, be they solar, wind, hydro or in some cases geothermal, yet paradoxically at the individual and rural community level, access to energy is often a very real issue. Establishing a continuous chain of temperature controlled cold environments from the point of harvest to the marketplace and on into the home, a ‘cold chain’, is what is required in order to avoid produce spoilage and to connect farmers with higher value market options in distant urban centres or overseas.
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.
SunPower CEO Tom Werner says that the idea of solar power users combining their systems with battery storage to become fully independent of the grid is “naïve”, echoing the views of one of SolarCity’s founders.
