Energy Storage

Pexapark, a Swiss consultancy, has studied energy storage drivers, value streams, contractual agreements, and regional perspectives in Europe. It says that one obstacle to deployment is the inability to properly model revenue, and notes that 15% of companies plan to use AC coupling for projects in the next three years.

The world would have been a different place today had John Goodenough accepted the Shah of Iran’s $7 million offer, in 1974, to carry out solar research. Instead, he secured a job as the head of inorganic chemistry at the University of Oxford. During his tenure, he made a lithium-ion battery discovery that would affect the lives of almost everyone.

The German authorities have announced plans to double domestic electrolysis capacity to 10 GW by 2030, BloombergNEF has reported that green hydrogen became competitive with gray hydrogen earlier than expected, and Chinese researchers have presented new research on microbial hydrogen production.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have developed a bifunctional solar battery device that enables simultaneous light charging, charge storing, and electric discharging. The device relies on a bifunctional carbon nitride photoanode to harvest sunlight and store its energy via trapped electrons.

Horizon Power, Western Australia’s regional power supplier, has revealed plans to deploy a 78 kW/220 kWh vanadium flow battery.

The Canadian battery manufacturer offers the product in two versions with a nominal energy of 35 kWh and 70 kWh, respectively. It claims a projected 25-year lifetime for one-cycle per day applications.

AES Corp. has switched on a 180 MW solar plant connected to 112 MWh of storage in Chile. The project in the Atacama Desert is Latin America’s largest solar plant to be linked to battery storage.

The Alpha 150 battery, produced in the Netherlands by Australian electronics manufacturer Redarx, has a lifespan of more than 5,000 cycles and a continuous discharge rating of 200 A.

South Korea’s LG Energy Solution says its new hybrid inverters are suitable for high-voltage and low-voltage configurations.

Brenmiller’s bGen system heat crushes rocks and then stores that thermal energy for minutes, hours, or days. The stored heat energy can be used to produce energy in the form of steam for electricity, water, or hot air for industrial applications.