Energy Storage

With South Africa holding 63,000 of the world’s estimated 69,000 metric tons of platinum reserves – according to the Statista.com website – and Russia and Zimbabwe a further 5,100 between them, the European Commission has cited the metal as an example of a potential supply chain bottleneck that could handicap its grand plans for renewables-powered hydrogen production.

The new electrolyser with anion exchange membrane technology is expected to produce 450 kilograms per day and will be available on the market in 2022.

Australia’s Redflow has unveiled its new Energy Pod Z module.

Furthermore, Canadian integrated energy company Suncor and Canadian holding company ATCO are looking into a potential “world scale clean hydrogen project” in Alberta, and Japanese energy company Eneos and Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer Toyota Motor, are exploring hydrogen applications at Woven City, a prototype city in Japan.

Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels will not be able to move forward fast enough to replace fossil fuels and tackle climate change, according to a German-Swiss research team that claims direct electrification alternatives are cheaper and easier to implement. The scientists cite too-high prices, short-term scarcity and long-term uncertainty, as the main reasons for their skepticism.

The US electric car manufacturer is reportedly shifting to cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for its utility-scale battery.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) may become an interesting solution for countries with weak interconnection with their neighbors, according to scientists from Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT). North America and sub-Saharan Africa were found to have the largest portion of suitable areas for this kind of storage technology, and Western Canada in particular, to have the world’s strongest potential.

Agilitas Energy says that it is building a new 3 MW/9MWh storage system to avoid the costly reconstruction of existing transmission lines in parts of Rhode Island.

A new South Australian big battery will show the value of diverse storage deployments in the National Electricity Market.

Australia and Chile are both granting funds to green hydrogen projects and Denmark is exempting pilot power-to-gas projects from complying with its energy legislation. Furthermore, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research IAP is working to find solutions for private customers to produce hydrogen.