Utility Scale Storage

Analyst WoodMac has spelled out the urgent need to decarbonize the global hydrogen production industry. While the fuel can offer a sustainable grid balancing act for intermittent renewables, in its current fossil-fuel driven form it is pumping out more than 800 megatons of carbon into the atmosphere every year.

The long-duration energy storage provider plans to eventually build a portfolio of 50 MW/250 MWh liquid air systems throughout the United Kingdom.

In this op-ed for pv magazine, Roy Torbert and José Juan Terrasa-Soler, of the Rocky Mountain Institute and Resilient Power Puerto Rico, respectively, analyze the cost of Puerto Rico’s energy recovery and the role that microgrids play in reconstruction and resiliency.

In January, the U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy opened consultation on its solar-plus-storage proposals. To date, systems with a capacity bigger than 50 MW are classed Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

The Chinese e-mobility company has been hammered since Beijing’s abrupt reduction of electric vehicle subsidies in the summer. Korean outfit LG Chem’s shipment volumes have gone in the opposite direction.

Automotive Electronics Power Private Ltd. (AEPPL), an India-based lithium-ion battery manufacturing venture between three Japanese companies, aims to produce 30 million cells per year by 2025.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has suggested minimum 25-year power purchase agreements, while also opening up the option to include energy storage in solar-wind hybrid generation projects that are procured under its public tender regime.

Two German companies will develop one of the largest off-grid PV and storage projects to date. The low cost of the technology and expense of conventional generators is likely to see the hybrid plant recover its costs in three to seven years.

New company NGEN appears to have introduced the Powerpack battery to central Europe in a €15 million, 12.6 MW/22.6 MWh project in the northwest of the country which is the first of two planned utility scale systems due for completion by July.

European partners have submitted a joint proposal to use EU-made solar modules and wind turbines to power green hydrogen for use by heavy industry. The partners hope to secure designated status and backing from the bloc’s deep coffers.