Energy Storage News – Piriyathep Kanchanadul flicks a switch to set a bank of light ablaze, fed by electrolyte that shoots round a tentacular array of tubes. He shuts the power off moments later — but the bulbs stay on.

Here, in the unlikely setting of a Bangkok high-rise located next to an industrial-scale massage parlour, scientists and their business backers are pressing to solve a riddle that has long held back the spread of renewable energy. Mr Piriyathep is managing director of Cellennium, a start-up hoping to roll out an affordable battery that can harvest solar, wind and wave energy and store it for later use.

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Leading investment bank Morgan Stanley believes the Australian energy market is seriously underestimating the grow of solar and battery storage, and says the technology will be installed at rates four times quicker than the incumbent energy industry expects.

In a new detailed report, Asia Insight: Solar and batteries, Morgan Stanley expects the market for battery storage to grow from about 2,000 Australian homes now to one million by 2020. But its “high case” suggests the take-up could be double that – up to 2 million homes by 2020.

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Energy Storage News – Delta-Montrose Electric Authority (DMEA) is not only responsible for keeping the lights on and the books in the black. As a member-owned rural electric cooperative in southwest Colorado, DMEA is also responsible for living up to the seven cooperative principles, including principle 7: concern for community. 

So when hundreds of Delta County residents were laid off in a series of coal-mine closures, DMEA staff and leadership were looking for ways to meet their fiduciary responsibilities while also staving off an economic downturn. One obvious source of economic development was local renewable power. Nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains on Colorado’s Western slope, Delta and Montrose counties are blessed with abundant sunshine and swift streams, rivers, and irrigation canals.

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Energy Storage News – The world’s cargo fleet is moving from fossil fuels to electrons. But powering them won’t be simple. With today’s technology, driving a semi-truck 500 miles (804 kilometers) would require a 23-ton lithium-ion battery, half the weight of the truck itself. Fuel cells would need a massive, $2 million hydrogen fuel tank to go the distance. Embedding wireless charging coils in roadbed would be expensive and inefficient.

But an invention first deployed in 1870 to power trains and streetcars might be the perfect fit: catenary, overhead electrical wires commonly found around the world. The German engineering company Siemens, presenting at an electric vehicle conference in Montreal this month, argues it can power unlimited-distance electric trucks with intermittent overhead wires that provide enough energy for fast-moving, long-haul highway journeys.

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The new platform is a unique system combining battery energy storage with Power-to-Heat technology – The solution targets the primary control reserve power reducing capital expenditure by 30 % and possibly more, depending on installation.

AEG Power Solutions, a global provider of power electronic systems and solutions for industrial power supplies and renewable energy applications, today announced it has developed a unique Hybrid Energy Storage System which combines standard battery storage with power-to-heat technology to reduce the total cost of energy storage operation.

The solution can be installed in any type of facility which uses thermal processes, including local heat networks in combination with an electrical distribution network.

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Energy Storage News – The White House on Thursday announced commitments by government agencies and US companies and organisations that would result in at least 1.3 GW of energy storage capacity in the next five years.

A Summit on Scaling Renewable Energy and Storage with Smart Markets yesterday gathered together regulators, power and energy groups and municipalities seeking to promote smart electricity markets and greater grid integration of renewables and flexible resources such as energy storage. The procurement, deployment, and investment commitments made are expected to lead to some USD 1 billion (EUR 889m) in investments in energy storage, the White House said in a Fact Sheet available here. 

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Greensmith Energy, one of the largest providers of energy storage software and integration services, today announced that the company has been awarded a total of 63 megawatts (MW) in new orders in 2016 and is on track to install over 100 MW of energy storage by the end of the year. According to Greentech Media, the U.S. storage market grew 243% in 2015 and is projected to surpass the 1 gigawatt mark in 2019, and by 2020 it will be a 1.7 gigawatt market valued at $2.5 billion.

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Utility companies or others planning to install renewable energy systems such as solar and wind farms have to decide whether to include large-scale energy storage systems that can capture power when it’s available and release it on demand. This decision may be critical to the future growth of renewable energy.

The choices can be complicated: Would such a system actually pay for itself through increased revenues? If so, which kind of system makes the most sense, and which features of the system are most important? If not, how much cheaper do storage technologies need to be?

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The market for energy storage systems for renewable energy integration is expected to reach 45.1 GW between 2015 to 2025, according to Navigant Research.

The new report from Navigant Research, Energy Storage for Renewables Integration, examines the market for energy storage systems for renewable energy integration (ESRI) — energy storage systems designed to mitigate somewhat the variability of renewable energy powerhouses like wind and solar, “By far the fastest-growing forms of renewable energy in the last several years.”

At present, the levels of wind and solar being fed into the grid are slight, and are not affecting the mechanics of a centralized electricity grid much. However, in years to come, as the percentage of wind and solar generating electricity into the grid increases, “serious issues regarding the grid’s stability can arise” — issues which can, in part, be solved by energy storage systems which help to level out the variability.

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The White House recently announced that a number of federal actions and commitments from the private sector could result in 1.3 GW of new energy storage installations or procurements over the next five years. It also said that — with all the potential procurements, deployments, and private sector activity — it could be possible the total value reached might be $1 billion in energy storage investments.

If the White House’s vision is achieved and 1.3 GW is added to current energy storage capacity in the US, there will have been quite a surge in the rate of installations. In the first quarter of 2016, about 18.3 MW was installed, so if that amount remains steady for each quarter, the annual total will be around 72 MW. The White House’s target, if achieved, would mean about 260 MW would be installed each year for 5 years, in addition to the amount from the other sources.

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