Utility Scale Storage

The solar-plus-storage facility will reduce heavy fuel oil consumption by 13.1 million liters per year.

The contest is over. Faster, cheaper, more flexible than gas turbines – battery energy storage must be the future peaking energy service provider of choice, according to a new paper by Australia’s Clean Energy Council.

The nascent hydrogen economy has seen a good amount of developments in a week that showed an increasing number of players taking part in the game. In the UK, British Airways has invested in hydrogen-electric aircraft developer ZeroAvia with a focus on hydrogen-electric power solutions for 50-plus-seat aircraft. In Brazil, Petrobras has joined forces with Siemens to develop green hydrogen solutions. In Portugal, the government and the European Investment Bank signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for hydrogen cooperation.

The New York Power Authority will deploy a battery to provide peak shaving capability. It aims to validate the system’s performance reliability to help determine O&M and life-cycle costs.

BloombergNEF has shown that solar PV is the key driver of declining green hydrogen costs. The forecast shows costs falling by 85% by 2050, undercutting natural gas and blue and gray hydrogen production.

Scientists in Russia have designed a whole series of new compounds that could serve as catholytes and anolytes in organic redox flow batteries. The materials promise to open up new pathways for further research, and overcome some of the challenges for organic redox flow batteries in commercial, large-scale energy storage projects.

Sinopec wants to build 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations by 2025. Ways2H is building a facility in the Tokyo area that will convert daily 1 ton of dried sewage sludge into 40-50 kilograms of hydrogen for fuel cell mobility and power generation. Ørsted wants to deploy two renewable hydrogen production facilities for a total of 1 GW by 2030. Wacker Chemie is planning to produce green hydrogen and renewable methanol at its German site.

AGL Energy has revealed plans for a floating PV project at its Loy Yang power station in Victoria, Australia. The energy giant is already producing brown hydrogen for export to Japan, and has applied for a 200 MW battery at the Loy Yang site.

The Greek government has published its plan for a post-Covid economic recovery. The strategy aims to mobilize at least €10 billion towards the green energy sector, with the prospect of further EU loans on top.

Australia’s Sun Cable is planning a factory that could produce PV modules for the world’s biggest solar+storage project – the Australia-ASEAN Power Link.