During Irma's Power Outages, Some Houses Kept The Lights On With Solar And Batteries
Adele Peters for Fast Company: The ability of some residences and businesses to stay functioning as the power went out around them shows the growing potential of local generation and microgrids. Now those batteries just have to get a lot cheaper.
Tesla Faces Stiff Competition In Energy Storage War
Irina Slav for OilPrice.com: Siemens and AES launched a joint venture that focuses exclusively on battery storage systems.
New Tool Predicts the Cost Effectiveness of Electric Energy and Storage
Dom Galeon for Futurism: "An informed understanding of the potential future costs of electricity storage technologies is essential to quantify their uptake as well as the uptake of low-carbon technologies reliant on storage," the researchers wrote.
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Scientists propose better battery system for smart home use
Phys.org: Smart homes need smart batteries. Current systems overuse power, which can shorten the life of batteries and the devices they power. Future batteries may get an intelligence boost to mitigate the problem.
Mercedes-Benz Energy and Vivint Solar Team Up to Bring Automotive Battery Innovation to the U.S. Residential Solar Market
Exclusive collaboration marks entrance of Mercedes-Benz Energy products into U.S. market
Empower Unveils the Genesys 8Kâ„¢ Modular Smart Home Energy Platform
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Mercedes energy storage units headed for UK homes
Scott Collie for New Atlas: Tesla has made its Powerwall plans clear, and Mercedes-Benz Energy has been talking a big game with its energy storage systems, which will soon be finding their way into homes in the UK.
US Energy Storage Installations Grow 100% in 2016
Mike Munsell for GTM:  "The fourth quarter marked a turning point in the U.S. utility-scale energy storage market reflected by the burst of deployments over an extremely short period from inception to interconnection," said Ravi Manghani, GTM Researchs director of energy storage. "California will play a significant role in the future as utilities there continue to contract energy storage under the states 1.3 gigawatt mandate. While California took over the pole position in 2016 from PJM, the market shift was also transformational in terms of applications -- from short duration ancillary services to longer duration capacity needs."
As a result, even though the market stayed roughly flat in megawatts, it grew 100 percent in megawatt-hours. Â Cont'd...
Stanford engineers create a low-cost battery for storing renewable energy
Jackie Flynn for Stanford News: A battery made with urea, commonly found in fertilizers and mammal urine, could provide a low-cost way of storing energy produced through solar power or other forms of renewable energy for consumption during off hours.
Developed by Stanford chemistry Professor Hongjie Dai and doctoral candidate Michael Angell, the battery is nonflammable and contains electrodes made from abundant aluminum and graphite. Its electrolyte’s main ingredient, urea, is already industrially produced by the ton for plant fertilizers.
“So essentially, what you have is a battery made with some of the cheapest and most abundant materials you can find on Earth. And it actually has good performance,” said Dai. “Who would have thought you could take graphite, aluminum, urea, and actually make a battery that can cycle for a pretty long time?” Cont'd...
Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops
James Vincent for The Verge: Tesla completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries that will supply "nearly 100 percent" of power needs for Ta’u’s 600 residents.
The project seems intended to show off the potential benefits of the SolarCity acquisition, with Ta’u’s microgrid comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. But buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that's far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales). Nevertheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk describes the acquisition as "blindingly obvious" — a necessary step in his so-called "Master Plan" to integrate clean energy generation and storage. Cont'd...
Is The Best Analogy For The Energy Storage Business--Eeek!--Hard Drives?
Michael Kanellos for Forbes: The optimism in the energy storage industry is based on soaring demand, rapid technological advances, expanding capacity and, for some, what will likely be a scary competitive environment.
First, the good news. Lithium ion battery packs over the last ten years have declined faster than the cost of solar, said John Carrington, CEO of Stem, which makes behind-the-meter storage systems for hotels and other commercial customers looking to shave peak power costs, during a hallway meeting at Finance West sponsored by the American Council of Renewable Energy this week.
Solar panels have declined by 50% or more in the last five years. Batteries have declined by 80% in three years, he said. Battery packs hit the under $300 per kilowatt hour mark last December, Carrington added. By 2020, battery pack prices could drop to $190 per kilowatt hour. (In 2007, lithium ion battery packs in the wholesale markets sold for around $1,000 per kilowatt hour.) Cont'd...
Is 2016 The Turning Point For Energy Storage?
Michael McDonald for OilPrice.com: In the future, when investors look back at the year that represented the turning point for clean energy, 2016 may be it. The industry overall is growing at a breath-taking pace, but perhaps not for the reason that some investors think. Energy storage rather than solar power and wind power are the real factors that are driving a revolution across the electrical power industry.
Energy storage changes the equation, not only in the renewables space, but in the conventional utility space as well. The concepts of spin/non-spin reserve costs, peaker prices, and a variety of other conventional concerns for utilities, lose meaning in the context of efficient and cost-effective energy storage. While energy storage was available previously, it’s only today that costs are coming down substantially. Tesla’s economies of scale on battery storage are well-known, but small start-ups like Orison are finding ways to lower costs in innovative ways as well. The graphic below from a recent EPRI presentation highlights the role that multiple layers of costs savings can play in creating economical battery storage. Cont'd...
Why Every Rooftop Solar System Needs Energy Storage
John Petersen for Investor Intel: Rooftop solar is an odd duck. A consumer buys an expensive capital asset with the expectation that he’ll recover his investment through lower electric bills. As a matter of metaphysics, he’s decided to go into the power business with the primary goal of satisfying the most important and discriminating customer on the planet. The value proposition he currently offers his local electric utility is:
I’ll buy less electricity from you because of my solar panels, but I need you on standby 24/7 to supply my nighttime needs and fill any weather related power production gaps;
Since my solar panels will frequently produce more power than I need, I want you to give me credit for any excess power production, let me draw equivalent power from you when I need it, and structure it all as a tax free swap;
You can, of course, bill me for any difference between what I deliver and what I take;
I’ll have no duty to buy a fixed amount of power from you or deliver a fixed amount of power to you, but you must supply whatever I need and take whatever I don’t need; and
You will be required to pay all of the costs associated with weather related production gaps and pass those costs through to your other customers.
Full Article:
24M's Batteries Could Better Harness Wind and Solar Power
Elizabeth Woyke for MIT Technology Review: Lithium-ion batteries power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles. They’re well suited to the job because they are smaller and lighter, charge faster, and last longer than other batteries. But they are also complex and thus costly to make, which has stymied mass adoption of electric transportation and large-scale energy storage.
Yet-Ming Chiang thinks his startup 24M has the answer. The key is a semisolid electrode. In a conventional lithium--ion battery, many thin layers of electrodes are stacked or rolled together to produce a cell. “Lithium-ion batteries are the only product I know of besides baklava where you stack so many thin layers to build up volume,” says Chiang, who is a cofounder and chief scientist at 24M as well as a professor of materials science at MIT. “Our goal is to make a lithium-ion battery through the simplest process possible.” Cont'd...
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