Distributed Storage

Seaborg Technologies, a Danish manufacturer of molten salt nuclear reactors, has turned a technology that was originally developed for nuclear power into a large-scale storage solution for wind and solar. It has developed a storage system that uses renewable energy to heat salt with electrical heaters, based on two-tank molten salt storage designs developed for concentrated solar power plants.

The selected developer will be required to set up a 25 kW green hydrogen project at Sonam Norboo Memorial (SNM) Hospital in the Leh district, for the supply of electricity, heat, and oxygen to the hospital. Bidding closes on March 10.

A pair of researchers from UC San Diego has proposed to precompute certain data when the grid is flooded with solar or wind power, and then store it on servers for later use.

U.S-based solid-state battery start-up Sparks has opened a pilot plant for its patented lithium battery technology based on zero cobalt cathodes. The company wants to challenge China’s dominance in next-gen battery development.

Tata Power has signed the deal to set up electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at Apollo Tyres’ 150 branded retail outlets. In addition to the customers visiting these tyre retail outlets, the charging stations would be open for use by the general public as well.

Researchers in Portugal have tested how vanadium redox flow batteries can be integrated with rooftop PV to balance the system load to ensure firm power output. They proposed a 5 kW/60 kWh battery configuration for a 6.7 kW building-integrated PV microgrid. According to their findings, the battery can be used in different energy management strategy scenarios to better complement solar photovoltaic generation.

An international research team has investigated how solar could be combined with thermoelectric coolers (TECs), which are small solid-state heat pumps used either for heating or for cooling. A system was built with six solar panels, an air duct system, four batteries, a charge controller, TECs, an inverter, heat sinks, a test chamber, and condenser fans.

Power minister RK Singh recently met with renewable energy developers and industry representatives to discuss the draft Policy on energy storage systems. He informed the participants the government is looking to delicense the setting up of energy storage systems not co-located with renewable energy generation facilities.

The hype surrounding green hydrogen is real, but does the cost-reduction outlook for its production technologies live up to it? Christian Roselund looks at the technology, transportation, application and enabling policies behind the promising green energy carrier.

Exide Leclanche Energy Private Limited, the joint venture with Swiss energy storage specialist Leclanché, has a lithium battery pack and module assembly factory in Gujarat.