Energy Storage

IHS Markit is predicting the world will add 30% more solar capacity this year.

A new report establishes the feasibility of wind-solar-storage hybrid projects over new coal plants in the Indian States with high renewable energy potential. Tamil Nadu was chosen for the techno-commercial assessment.

A new Wood Mackenzie report suggests that costs for front-of-the-meter battery storage systems in the Asia-Pacific region could fall by 30% by 2025. The declining costs are already having a palpable impact, as 2021 has opened with a slew of large-scale battery project announcements.

Falling module prices will help PV post another record year after an estimated 132 GW was installed worldwide in 2020, according to an energy transition investment trends report published by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The private-sector arm of the World Bank, which claims to leverage $3 of its own capital and $8 from third parties for every dollar invested in its blended finance funds, has attempted to quantify what devoting Covid recovery funds to green investment would mean for emerging economies.

A report by McKinsey & Company reinforces the widely-held view renewables will supplant fossil fuels in the energy system but also joins the chorus of voices warning the world is on track to fall well short of limiting global temperature rises this century to 1.5C.

The National Solar Energy Federation has asked the State to consider a 15-year electricity duty exemption, transmission charges on the entire capacity instead of per-kWh basis, and delinking of the secondary RE source capacity from the rated power capacity of the primary RE source to promote hybrid project deployment.

The use of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells as backup power generation in solar microgrids could drive down costs and improve efficiency, according to an international group of researchers. They have proposed a new energy management system that could be ideal for hybrid solar-hydrogen microgrids in remote locations.

Scientists in Japan demonstrated a hard-carbon electrode that can greatly increase the capacity of a sodium-ion battery. With further work on the long-term performance, the discovery could make sodium-ion batteries better able to compete on energy density with their lithium-ion counterparts.

Researchers in Finland have demonstrated the technical feasibility of an off-grid residential PV system combined with short-term battery storage and seasonal hydrogen storage. The proposed model is applicable only to northern climates, as higher levels of solar radiation in southern locations would mean a reduced need for seasonal storage. It was tested in an existing single-family house in Finland with a 21 kW rooftop array and a ground source 6 kW heat pump.