Solar Energy Storage and Battery News

On August 9, a thunderstorm caused 1.5 GW of generation capacity to go offline within seconds in the U.K. The incident caused millions of households to temporarily lose power but the situation could have been considerably worse if not for the country’s battery storage reserves.

Utility Ameren Missouri is planning three grid-scale solar facilities with energy storage, marking what is claimed will be the first ever instance of an energy company in the US Mid-West state powering its customers’ homes with batteries.

Australia needs to drastically overhaul its power market in order to harness and benefit from the country’s skyrocketing rooftop solar and battery market, according to the Clean Energy Council (CEC).

With the 200 hydrogen bikes offered to journalists and world leaders at the G7 summit in Biarritz proving popular, manufacturer Pragma Industries has received an order for 1,000 of them from Chilean president Sebastian Pinera. The company’s founder, Pierre Forté, wants the bike to have a societal impact in developing countries.

Vehicle-to-grid functions could soon become increasingly important. While policymakers discuss the necessary regulations in other nations, the Netherlands government is motoring ahead with the technology.

Energy use by air conditioning can be both expensive and taxing for the environment, with the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Queensland, Australia, set to trial a three-storey ‘water battery’ to reduce both energy demand and cost.

The 100-megawatt club is about to get a lot busier. Here are the world’s eight largest battery storage projects.

Japanese developer Eurus Energy and Australian-headquartered wind developer Windlab have signed a deal with Kenyan authorities to develop an 80MW solar-plus-wind-plus-storage facility in central Kenya.

The pressure building for the US to water down decades-old federal energy policy risks further tilting the scales in utilities’ favour, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Chile is home to a massive 10.3 million tons of lithium reserves, most of which is found in the Atacama Desert in the northern part of the country. With some of the highest solar irradiation levels on Earth, this region also boasts the perfect conditions for generating solar power. Developments in the photovoltaic market, alongside implementation of more efficient energy storage systems, are positioning Chile as a regional leader in this field. So what does the future hold for battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Chile, and what obstacles lie in their way?

The managing director of London-based energy infrastructure company Statera has told pv magazine a clean energy grid in the U.K. will require as much flexible gas plant capacity as battery storage.

Tara Doyle started her career in the solar energy industry more than 15 years ago, and today serves as the chief commercial officer at PVEL, which claims to be one of the first testing laboratories to focus on bankability for the downstream PV buyer community. The lab serves developers, financiers, O&M companies, asset owners, and insurers.

The Chinese company is ramping up R&D efforts to try and fast-track commercialization of the more productive – and more expensive – battery tech. The news was announced as part of an uninspiring first-half update thanks to falling lithium salt prices.

The state-run fossil fuel giant has partnered with an unnamed foreign start-up to produce electric vehicle batteries using raw materials easily available in India.

While the damage is largely done for cells, modules and inverters, increased tariffs on U.S. module components and 15% measures on lithium-ion batteries are not good news for either sector.