Energy Storage

Storage has long been expected to be the handmaiden of a renewable energy world and its long awaited advances started to finally emerge in the third quarter as researchers posited R&D achievements ranging from potentially potent tungsten disulfide nanotubes to the business case for 10-year solar panels.

Intersolar Europe is always a key date in the solar calendar but this year’s show had it all, including three panel-smuggling arrests. Elsewhere, wafers were getting bigger, efficiency records were tumbling and new technologies were emerging. There was also more news on the solar car ports fad and Hanwha’s ongoing legal tussle.

A monastic community on the Mt Athos peninsula this year installed a solar-storage-diesel mini-grid which is set to be augmented by a biomass combined heat and power system in March.

The first part of pv magazine’s review of 2019 considers Q1, when solar early adopter Italy offered an optimistic start to the year by fleshing out its plans for PV but uncertainty still clouded the world’s biggest solar market. The potential for household solar installations to rocket the world over – helped by ever cheaper panels – prompted strategic decisions in the inverter market and analyst expectations were confounded as the cobalt and lithium price plummeted, bringing the EV revolution a big step nearer.

Evergen, a solar and battery optimization specialist, and battery supplier Solar Service Group have joined forces to connect thousands of residential batteries across Australia. By delivering significant benefits to consumers, the joint venture hopes to boost the uptake of home batteries across the nation.

The British company, which has tested its liquid air energy storage technology in the U.K., says it is preparing to deploy its first plant on U.S. soil. Highview claims its CRYOBattery is half the price of utility scale lithium-ion storage.

With its app already present in Belgium and the Netherlands, start-up Jedlix is introducing smart charging in France. The solution enables Tesla drivers to optimize their charging strategy.

The government of the Caribbean island is planning two solar parks with large scale storage with the help of the Inter-American Development Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. Inter-American is seeking technical help with tendering the projects.

Scientists from Penn State University have developed a self-heating battery for electric vehicles which is said charge in only 10 minutes at 60 degrees Celsius.

The Italia Solare Forum event held in Rome laid bare the difficulty of securing permits for large scale projects at national and regional levels. Fast-tracking the process for big solar parks appears necessary to get Italian PV back on track.