Energy Storage

The winners of Uzbekistan’s latest renewables tender were Masdar, Voltalia, and a consortium led by PowerChina. Voltalia submitted a bid of $0.02888/kWh for a 100 MW solar facility in Uzbekistan’s Khorezm region.

Equium has developed a new thermo-acoustic heat pump core that reportedly produces 3 kW to 4 kW of heat for every kilowatt of power it consumes. It says the refrigerant-free device could generate domestic hot water at temperatures of up to 80 C.

China’s Three Gorges New Energy has started building the first 1 GW phase of solar-plus-storage capacity for a planned 16 GW mega-project in Inner Mongolia’s Kubuqi Desert. Upon completion, the massive installation will include 8 GW of solar, 4 GW of wind, and 4 GW of upgraded coal capacity.

Hyundai Heavy Industries has revealed plans to develop a hybrid engine with more hydrogen by 2023, and a complete hydrogen engine by 2025. Japan, meanwhile, has signed hydrogen-related agreements with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

The first part of this review covered solar-wind hybrid projects, offshore floating PV, and islandable microgrids. The second part covers trends in projects and applications.

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has sharpened its focus on long-duration storage in Australia with the acquisition of the proposed Bowen Renewable Energy Hub project, which is expected to combine 1.4 GW of pumped hydro storage with huge solar and wind generation.

Masdar said it has started operating the 5 MW Ile de Romainville PV project in the Seychelles. The installation is backed by 3.3 MWh of storage capacity.

Robestec has connected a 220 MW/440 MW battery storage system to the grid in Ningxia, China. It is reportedly China’s largest standalone energy storage station, and uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries from Hithium Energy Storage.

The Flemish government will halve the solar panels premium from a maximum of €1,500 ($1,594) in 2022 to €750 from Jan. 1, 2023. It will also end the home battery premium earlier than initially announced, from April 2023. The premium for heat pump boilers, on the other hand, will be retroactively doubled.

Mitsubishi Power Americas will supply batteries for the development of three battery energy storage systems in the southeast US. The three hybrid projects are being developed by Origis Energy as part of 1.5 GW of operational and contracted assets in the region.