Energy Storage

SMA says its new product will offer digital services such as monitoring and automatic notifications to perform maintenance as well as offering an emergency supply system. According to analysts, the varied applications of new inverters signal an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Germany-based PV-storage provider sonnen has closed a new funding round from a group of investors led by Shell Ventures. Sonnen has already began to draw on the funds as it continues to expand market shares in the U.S. and in Australia. Shell Ventures is now a major sonnen investor and future cooperation agreement has been agreed to.

In this op-ed for pv magazine, Clean Coalition’s Frank Wasco explores how microgrid projects by Solar Saves Lives and other organizations show that communities can build back right and prepare for natural disasters.

Several scientist have joined to rebut an Australian article that questions the feasibility of a global energy transition. For this purpose, they have gathered hundreds of studies on energy systems and conclude, that there are neither fundamental technical nor financial barriers to achieve 100% renewable energy supply.

A much heralded report shows solar and wind will lower wholesale prices, but it also shows a coming evolution in the pricing profile of the grid. These shifts in timing, shape, regularity and length will drive energy storage demand.

PV inverter shipment volumes have gone up recently, but an increasingly competitive market has seen declining prices, forcing manufacturers to think out of the box to find new business applications for their products.

To smoothen this transition, the country needs to build fast solar PV-powered charging stations. In 2017, there were only 220-250 operational charging stations in India, compared to 56,000 petrol stations.

Autarsys reports the roll-out of two off-grid battery systems in Madagascar. Thanks to crowd investment, its order books are full. Streamlining the process of investment, the Germany-based start-up will cooperate with crowd investment platforms, Greenvesting and Ecoligo.

The plant, which consists of a 300 kW solar installation and a 1 MW storage system, was built by local power utility Cemig in partnership with Grupo Algar. The project is located in Uberlândia, in the state of Minas Gerais, which is the Brazilian region with the highest penetration of solar and renewables – and a grid that is in a urgent need of improvement.

Kaco developed its Blueplanet gridsave 50.0 TL3-S battery inverter based on experience gained from storage projects in Europe. In pv magazine‘s recent webinar in partnership with Kaco, a number of questions were raised about the device, which the experts now answer.