Energy Storage

In December, pv magazine met SolaX Power president Li Xinfu and his team at the company’s headquarters in sprawling Hangzhou, in Zhejiang province. The region is a hotspot for the Chinese PV industry and SolaX belongs to the cutting edge of Chinese inverter and residential battery manufacturers.

Aiming to localize production across the electric vehicle value chain, the government wants to support battery manufacturing at a gigawatt-scale. The initial focus will be on large-scale module and pack assembly plants in the new fiscal year, followed by integrated cell manufacturing by 2021-22.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury. Having recently covered a full range of storage products for residential, commercial and utility-scale applications, today we are finally going to announce the winner of the ranking.

Following New Delhi-based Urja Global, Singapore’s Ojovati and another Delhi company – Avanze Inventive – have signed memoranda of understanding to manufactue lithium-ion cells and batteries, respectively, in the state.

Western Australia’s state-owned utility Horizon Power is preparing to roll out 13 solar and battery technology units at 14 far-flung farms in the Esperance region.

Though we’re unlikely to see a return to the days of double-figure GW annual installation levels, Japan will stay at the top table of solar. Last week, pv magazine visited PV Expo Japan, part of Tokyo’s World Smart Energy Week, and found plenty of market developments to discuss, along with healthy interest from major players.

The Northwest Territories of Canada are going to host a solar-plus-storage project that will be the first of its kind in the region. The facility will power three businesses and 32 residential units in Inuvik and Iqaluit.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference, pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury. In recent weeks we have covered self-sufficient homes, retro ceramic storage technologies, open source software for storage systems, thermoelectric energy storage and island grids in the Maldives. Now, we have nearly made it to the top of our leaderboard.

The virtual facility is monitoring approximately 1 GW of combined wind, solar, storage and flexible gas engines in the U.K. and its capacity may double in the summer. The energy managed by the plant is being sold on the British energy market.

As RP Global starts work on 11 solar hybrid mini-grids on Lake Victoria that will supply electricity to 160,000 people, analyst Wood Mackenzie has released a report stating how increased capital flows in the sector may still fall short of securing universal electricity access by 2030. Nonetheless, off-grid solar is the cheapest and most viable solution for remote areas and attracts investment from fossil fuel majors and venture capital funds.