Energy Storage

Plug Power has issued a warning about its 2023 financial performance due to supply challenges in North America, while Air Products says it is cementing its collaboration with Chengzhi in China.

Green Gravity, an Australian energy storage startup, says it will explore opportunities to deploy its gravitational energy storage technology in Europe, after signing an agreement with Romanian state-owned energy producer Complexul Energetic Valea Jiului SA.

Australia’s Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has signed a supply deal with Chinese battery manufacturer CATL that is expected to support the deployment of more than 10 GWh of energy storage systems over the next five years.

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has determined that Antora Energy’s solar-plus-storage system meets the US military’s stringent standards, as it significantly outperforms emergency diesel generators in survivability probabilities.

The latest edition of China’s SNEC Energy Storage & H2 event showed an impressive range of new products and technology. pv magazine was there to check out the most interesting solutions.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have developed a quasi-solid-state magnesium-ion battery with a voltage plateau at 2.4 V and an energy density of 264 Wh/kg. It surpasses the performance of current magnesium-ion batteries and almost matches the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

A British-Chinese research group has developed a novel heat pump concept consisting of a heat pump, the PCM tank, and tube solar heat collectors. Intended for demand shifting in space heating and domestic hot water (DHW) applications, the system is reportedly able to achieve a higher coefficient of performance than conventional heat pumps.

Air Products has announced plans for Europe’s largest blue hydrogen production plant, while RAG Austria says it has commissioned “the world’s first 100% hydrogen storage facility in a porous underground reservoir.”

Plans to connect around 10 GW of battery energy storage projects in England and Wales are now in the fast lane. This comes on top of 10 GW of capacity unlocked at distribution level, including shovel-ready solar farms, onshore wind, and battery storage projects.

As the cost of generating clean energy continues to fall, producing green hydrogen in Europe, rather than importing it from Africa – with all the transport costs and raised carbon footprint that would entail – is beginning to look like an increasingly viable option.