Energy Storage

A joint venture between leading solar developers Wirsol and Hive Energy has launched a proposal for a solar park ‘in excess of 350 MW’ to be located on Britain’s North Kent Coast. While the proposal is in its initial stages, the developers state that the project will be built without any subsidies.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have made progress with cathodes made from ‘disordered’ materials, a technology which could greatly increase the storage capacity of lithium batteries.

A team at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a type of battery which it says could store energy for long durations at a fraction of the cost of current storage technologies.

AGL Energy is planning its very own big battery, considering a 250MW battery storage facility at the Liddell coal plant in the Hunter Valley as part of a suite of investments designed to replace the capacity and output of the ageing generator that is due to close in 2022.

PanaHome, a unit of Panasonic, has revealed plans to connect 117 homes in western Japan to a solar-powered microgrid system, in cooperation with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

More than 80 energy experts, coders and product designers from across Southeast Asia gathered in Bangkok today for the Smart Energy Hackathon, a 30-hour competition that aims to foster the development of new digital energy solutions such as public blockchains for the provision of PV generation data.

A report published by New Zealand national grid operator Transpower offers a mixed outlook for energy storage in the south pacific nation.

The Smart Electric Power Alliance said the vast majority of the utilities they surveyed plan to offer behind-the-meter storage programs for their residential and commercial customers.

In order to help policymakers come up with an energy framework that would better reflect the solar power generation potential across Europe, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service Joint Research Center (JRC) has produced a dataset of solar energy production at national, regional and local level, by the hour for the last 30 years, based on the existing PV fleet at the end of 2015.

Standards Australia wrapped up public consultation last week on a draft standard for battery storage, setting the stage for the development of a comprehensive framework for future deployment.