Distributed Storage

Scientists have proposed to use PV energy and heat pump-driven HVAC system in greenhouses conceived to grow tomatoes in the Mediterranean area. The system was found to have a payback time of only 2.9 years in southern Spain.

ESB has opened a 75 MW/150 MWh battery plant, touted as the largest of its kind in commercial operation in Ireland. Eamon Ryan, the country’s Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, has said that the site will be a core part of Ireland’s renewable energy transition.

The new products use propane (R290) as a refrigerant and have heating and cooling capacities ranging from 8 kW to 30 kW.

Scientists from China have developed a novel optimization method for medium-depth ground source heat pumps, using an improved chaos particle swarm optimization. They coupled it with either a heat storage tank or a shallow borehole heat exchanger and found that both system typologies increase the heat pump’s coefficient of performance.

A European research group has tested an energy system combining PVT collectors, a water-to-water heat pump and borehole thermal energy storage in an Italian swine farm and has found the proposed system can completely replace fossil fuel-based power generation.

Chinese inverter manufacturer Deye has developed a new all-in-one energy storage system (ESS) with 50 kW of output and 61.4 kWh of storage capacity. It features LiFePO4 batteries with a maximum temperature of less than 40 C.

Researchers in Austria have developed a new heat pump system for residential applications that reportedly achieves a coefficient of performance ranging from 2.82 to and 3.11 at an outdoor air temperature of 10 C and 20 C, respectively. They also found the system was able to supply the comfort conditions at all tested outdoor temperatures.

In partnership with utility Pacific Gas and Electric, the residential solar installer enrolled distributed batteries to serve the grid during times of peak demand.

Effective Feb. 1, the UK government has exempted retrofitted battery energy storage systems (BESS) from the 20% value added tax (VAT).

Under a new 10-year agreement, Gravity Energy Storage Solutions (GESSOL) has secured the rights to deploy Energy Vault’s gravity energy storage tech throughout the 16 nations of the Southern African Development Community region. Energy Vault CEO Robert Piconi says the deployments will smooth out load shedding and optimize grid performance.