Utility Scale Storage

In the latest of a series of interviews about the geopolitics of renewable energy, Indra Overland, head of the Center for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, explains how storage could change the global energy landscape by eliminating entrenched strategic dependencies. The impact of storage, he says, will be stronger in regions dependent on fossil fuels.

The asset manager has seen good returns on the 70 MW it has already acquired. Despite the U.K. government cutting subsidies for renewable energy, the fund manager believes the country will be a high growth market for storage.

Researchers from the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne have developed a device which they say could “provide a pathway for device scalability aimed towards the large scale deployment of photo-electrochemical hydrogen production”.

Australia’s federal Labor party has pledged to roll out PV generation and batteries at schools across the nation, and to create VPPs supporting up to 365 MW of capacity.

A new project is in line with the target of the Island Council of Tenerife to cover all electricity demand with renewable energy. The development of electromobility and storage is key to the ambition.

Selected projects will be expected to start commercial operations on June 28, 2021. The auction is open to both conventional and renewable energy sources, as well as proposals for hybrid projects or power plants linked to storage.

The government is planning to replace the price offered to PV projects that have a capacity of 3-9 MW with hourly tariffs. Solar association Acesol agrees with some of the suggestions but rejects the proposed tariff change. The current system has been the main market driver for Chilean PV for the last two years.

Despite outperforming rivals in terms of revenue and curtailment levels, solar apparently didn’t do enough to deflect the board away from plans to focus on energy-from-waste.

Narendra Modi’s BJP party is seeking re-election with the aim of ensuring the electrification of all railways by 2022 and turning renewable energy into a popular movement with steps including an emphasis on solar farming. Even if the elections spring a surprise, however, the renewable momentum is unlikely to slow as no government can afford to roll back the clean power tide.

The storage supplier will set up a mixed-asset virtual power plant that will initially aggregate up to 2 MW of capacity as the first phase of a planned smart local energy system in southern England. Moixa aims to eventually scale the VPP up to 17 MW.