Energy Storage

New measures introduced by the government allow households, businesses and public entities to produce and trade clean electricity in low-voltage grids. The new framework is open to power projects with a generation capacity no larger than 200 kW.

The announcement by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of an auction which will include solar next year appears to back prime minister Boris Johnson’s claims to be serious about the nation’s net-zero carbon ambition.

Scientists at Germany’s Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin have made a discovery they say could greatly increase the energy storage capacity of titanium-based ‘MXene’ pseudocapacitors, ultimately leading to faster-charging batteries. The group found adding urea molecules between MXene layers increased the material’s storage capacity by up to 56%.

The OneBox, from Indian manufacturer Vision Mechatronics, consists of a lithium battery, hybrid inverter and solar charge controller to give a ‘hassle-free’ solution for electricity back-up during power outages. Solar rooftop owners are offered a grid feed feature to maximize net metering income from any excess power generated.

In just three years, Northvolt has progressed from a startup to become Europe’s response to the Asian dominance of global battery manufacturing. pv magazine investigates why Northvolt is setting up units in Sweden, Germany, and Poland, what the firm’s goals are, and how it is attempting to achieve them.

Researchers at MIT say the immense hydropower resources of the Canadian province could be used as storage to even out the supply of intermittent renewables generation in New England and New York state.

As the sector continues to grow rapidly, delays in manufacturing scale-ups, difficulties sourcing raw materials and a separate path taken by the electric vehicle sector could all chuck ‘sand in the gears’, according to analyst Wood Mackenzie.

Rules published in the official journal provide certainty on how storage systems will have to be connected to the grid and who will take care of the process on behalf of governmental institutions. The regulations are expected to benefit rooftop PV and up-to-1 MW ‘unlicensed’ projects

Texan start-up Yotta Energy has a potential solution for residential solar-plus-storage. Will the micro-storage company become the next SolarEdge or Enphase or suffer the fate of JLM Energy? And whatever happened to SolPad?

An international group of scientists has developed a comprehensive method to track the microscopic processes at work in lithium batteries. Employing a ‘virtual unrolling’ model developed for ancient manuscripts too sensitive to be opened, the group peeked inside the layers of a commercial battery to gain a better understanding of the processes at work and the degradation mechanisms affecting them. Their findings, the group says, could provide a benchmark for battery characterization.