Energy Storage

With folks housebound by Covid-19 restrictions and more conscious of their home energy needs, April proved a banner month for companies generating digital leads through their own accelerated transition to a new way of working.

Nidec has deployed a 12 MW/24MWh storage system for French grid operator RTE. The battery – part of a 72 MWh project to prevent grid congestion in peak demand periods – is in an area with abundant renewables, including wind.

The state government of Western Australia is expanding its range of solar-smoothing energy storage systems with plans to deploy a big project at the old Kwinana fossil fuel power station near Perth.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has issued a call for expressions of interest to supply clean energy to isolated off-grid communities and warned components will probably have to be transported manually.

A small-area trial of artificial intelligence and blockchain-based energy trading software demonstrated big improvements across all renewable energy performance metrics. The port authority now wants the system across all its premises.

As some parts of Australia’s distribution networks threaten to black out under the flow of rooftop solar exports, ARENA announces funding for a trial that will enable flexible exports in line with what the networks can bear. Smart software is the answer.

SmartHelio claims to have witnessed a near 200% jump in demand for its deep-data driven solar asset management solution, which plugs into solar panels or energy storage systems. Sales of the internet-of-things enabled, cloud product have leapt in the last six months.

Ingeteam said its Ingecon Sun Storage 1Play hybrid inverter is now compatible with second-life batteries from BeePlanet Factory electric vehicles.

Austrian researchers have replaced heavy metals and rare earths with conventional vanillin in a redox flow battery. The Graz University of Technology team now wants to bring this technology to market.

German scientists have developed a new electrolyte material that can cope with temperatures of up to 60 C. The material is based on ferrocene, an organometallic molecule known for good redox stability that is commonly used as an internal standard for electrochemical measurements.