Utility Scale Storage

The Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCO) has announced the start of construction on a new hybrid storage facility set to provide spinning reserve power to the country’s grid. The project, according to JPSCO, is the first of its kind in the Caribbean and will be completed by April 2019.

A year of transition is perhaps the best way to characterize 2018’s PV Expo show in Tokyo, as Japanese module, inverter and storage firms hedge their bets while foreign innovation takes center stage.

German equipment supplier, Schmid Group has announced the successful delivery and installation of three of its Everflow energy storage systems to a leading PV cell manufacturer in China. These are the first storage systems delivered to China by Schmid, and will be used in combination with large-scale PV projects.

The head of Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has said that the Japanese company remains committed to renewables development, and has vowed to expand the regional utility’s business beyond its home market in the coming years.

The EU Battery Alliance is calling on industry to take advantage of the expected 2025 €250 billion battery market by establishing between 10 and 20 European giga battery factories. Saft, meanwhile, has announced an alliance with Siemens, Manz and Solvay to work on advanced lithium ion and solid-state battery technology.

As Energy Storage Europe approaches, pv magazine counts down the five highest-ranked energy storage highlights, selected by our independent jury, that visitors to the exhibition can lay their eyes on. In fifth-place was Electrochaea’s scalable methanation plant: A rather quirky hydrogen-to-methane storage innovation that won plaudits for delivering large-scale power-to-gas capability.

The South Australian Labor Party has increased its Renewable Energy Target (RET) to 75% by 2025. It also plans to introduce a target of meeting 25% of the state’s peak electricity demand with stored renewables – equating to 750 MW of storage capacity.

The project is scheduled to come online by mid-2019 and will help the local grid better manage the increasing power generation from wind and solar facilities, which at the end of 2017 had reached a combined capacity of 500 MW.

The three companies want to jointly install a 22 MW storage facility that will provide primary control power and grid services. The planned investment for the project is €17 million.

Investors throughout the world made 406 investments in large-scale renewables in 2017, collectively valued at roughly €40.1 billion (US$49.5 billion), but solar is set to grow more in terms of capacity than any other clean-energy technology over the next half decade, according to a new report. Battery storage will play a crucial role in this, it found.