Distributed Storage

The U.S. President’s anticipated decision to pull the country out of the COP21 Paris Agreement on climate change has been met with a healthy dose of bemusement and defiance at Intersolar Europe, where the universal opinion is that solar will find a way to thrive, in whatever political climate.

According to the German solar industry association (BSW-Solar) the prices for large and small PV storage systems have fallen by 50 respectively 40 percent. This growing market is dominated by Sonnen, Senec and LG Chem, as an analysis by EuPD Research shows.

Pu Neng claims it has now drawn more than $90 million in total investment in its vanadium redox flow battery technology, but the Beijing-based manufacturer did not disclose the terms of its deal with High Power Exploration (HPX).

The expansion of the Asian solar market in the first quarter of 2017 was broadly similar to the growth seen in the first quarter of last year, although most countries in the region have yet to reveal official installation statistics for the January-March period, the Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association (APVIA) said in a new report.

A 1.2 MW hybrid plant is currently under development in a remote area of Indonesia aiming to provide 24-hours access to electricity for about 400 households in three villages. The project will be owned by the local community, offering a model for the development of solar PV in the country.

The Japanese trading firm has started selling its new Smart Star L lithium-ion storage battery system for the Japanese residential PV market. It has designed the system in cooperation with Yokohama-based manufacturer NF Corp.

The Swiss-headquartered power electronics company is to introduce new 100 kw and 120 kW three-phase string inverters for the C&I and large-scale markets, the new 60 kW TRIO TM and a new addition to its residential UNO-DM-PLUS range.

The German manufacturer, in partnership with the No. 2 residential solar installer in the United States, will bring customizable home energy storage systems to the United States.

According to a scientific paper from the Université libre de Bruxelles, even a further reduction in storage prices may not be sufficient to make solar-plus-storage attractive in the Belgian market.

The project is the initial stage of an organic reform of the Italian ancillary services market, which is expected to be implemented in accordance with the European balancing code.