Solar Energy Storage and Battery News

Australia’s green bank has found a funding partner for a new programme to support solar and electric vehicle (EV) batteries, days after pledging to back less-mature technologies more decisively.

MIT scientists have developed a class of liquid electrolyte with properties they say could open up new possibilities for improving the performance and stability of lithium batteries and supercapacitors.

According to a press release from Sandia National Laboratories, the testing lab now uses an indoor tower to drop 200-lb+ weights on lithium-ion batteries in efforts to learn more about how batteries respond to stress. This will be especially helpful in understanding how electric vehicle batteries may respond in an automobile accident.

A report produced by an AI and automation market research company says an anticipated boom in the European storage market – driven by a desire to reduce carbon emissions – will attract producers as demand outside China tails away.

An EU funded solar-plus-storage project has been tendered in the Philippines. The United Nations is seeking bids for the system, to support the for the seaweed industry on the island of Tawi-Tawi. Combining PV with aquaculture brings many advantages for both, including water conservation, a more controlled aquatic environment, and ecosystem restoration.

The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has agreed to finance a feasibility study for a 150MW hybrid solar, wind and battery plant in northern Zambia.

Since the beginning of August the Flemish government has granted a €250/kWh rebate for the purchase of domestic batteries. The program is set to run until the end of next year.

The energy company will build a 38 MW solar, 22 MW wind and 12 MW battery project on one site. The first fully renewable hybrid power plant could be a blueprint for post-subsidy Germany. Vattenfall has an eye on German coalfields in particular.

Researchers in the US have published a study that brings 20 years of renewable energy (solar PV and/or wind plus storage) generation into line with historical energy-demand profiles, to ascertain at what storage cost point renewables can cost-effectively consistently meet 100% demand.

The Rural Areas Electricity Company wants to build hybrid plants in 11 non-interconnected areas of the sultanate. The projects will have a total of 48 MW of solar power generation capacity and 70 MW of diesel and the storage component will have total installed power of 28 MW and a storage capacity of 14 MWh.

A dispute holding up a solar project backlog of nearly 600MW in Michigan is now one step closer to resolution, under a truce brokered with the help of industry representatives.

San Jose Clean Energy (SJCE) and EDP Renewables SA (EDPR), through its fully owned subsidiary EDP Renewables North America, signed a 20-year power purchase agreement for 100 megawatts of new solar energy and 10 MW of battery storage at the Sonrisa Solar Park in Fresno County, California. The project is anticipated to be operational in 2022.

A new report from analysts at Wood Mackenzie forecasts 6.6 GWh of residential energy storage to be installed across Europe by 2024. The economics of the technology are at a tipping point, increasingly reaching grid parity in European markets. With rising electricity demand and falling battery system costs, the trend will further spread across the continent and fuel an uptick in demand.

A new Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) report finds that the U.S. energy storage market is healthy and primed for continued growth, with interconnected capacity growing significantly in 2018.

The largest U.S. residential solar installer hit deployment expectations and built out its battery business in the second quarter.