Utility Scale Storage

Minister of the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Elisabeth Borne told a teleconference of renewables representatives the results of a recent slew of clean energy tenders which allocated 1.7 GW of generation capacity and also revealed new measures being taken to support the industry.

Australian company Infinity Lithium has signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Battery Alliance to promote its lithium mine project in San José, Extremadura. It would be the first lithium project to obtain European financing but has already raised the hackles of local environmentalists and residents.

pv magazine rounds up the latest Covid-19-related stories likely to affect the world of solar and energy storage.

Another big solar event has joined the list of those canceled because of Covid-19. The next edition of The Smarter E event will take place next year.

Researchers led by Monash University have made a discovery that will dramatically reduce lithium-from-brine extraction times. The innovative breakthrough is as simple as a sieve.

Researchers in Italy extensively analyzed four different configurations of their proposed system to assess its potential, including under non-optimal, ‘off-design’ conditions and concluded that, for now, subsidies would still be required for the commercial production of synthetic natural gas.

The country’s power utility has completed the pre-selection process to seek developers for a 20 MW solar project in the Banjul region. The project will feature up to four PV plants and will be developed under the national Electricity Restoration and Modernization Project.

Scientists in China claim to have identified a special cathode material that could be utilized in more stable potassium-ion storage systems. According to the group, this new material could enable the development of storage systems able to retain 94% of their capacity after 2000 cycles, with 0.003% capacity fade per cycle.

A slump in demand would weigh more heavily on the storage industry than a temporary production shutdown and IHS Markit analysts say that is where the risk lies, rather than with a temporary shortage of battery cells. A similar prediction has been made for the PV market.

The airline industry has been among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic; carriers are in ‘freefall’ as Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environment Research in Oslo recently wrote, with governments mulling stimulus packages for airline bailouts. How we react to the coronavirus outbreak is crucial for society as a whole and the solar and energy storage industries can lead the charge in rewriting the status quo.