Energy Storage

Venture capital firm Aster Capital, sponsored by Alstom, Solvay Rhodia and Schneider Electric, has announced a €4 million investment in SolarFuel GmbH. This is part of a €7.5 million financing round that Aster Capital is leading. The investment round includes Ventrex Automotive GmbH from Austria.

As a part of its plan to facilitate better demand-side management of electricity usage, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has launched its Green Button Connect system. The software aims at providing electricity usage data to customers and to solar installers, to allow for more integrated photovoltaic and demand-side electricity solutions.

Japan’s Kyocera Corporation has opened the first international smart grid demonstration project on U.S. soil at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Grid connection and stability issues can be overcome to encompass a more electricity-intensive energy mix in Europe, with photovoltaics supplying up to 25% of that demand by 2030. The findings have been released in a report by EPIA on the first day of the EU PVSEC tradeshow, which began today in Frankfurt.

GE Energy Storage and turnkey energy storage and power management system solutions provider, Xtreme Power have formed a partnership under which they will develop energy storage solutions for the grid.

The 10 top technologies industry analysts expect to be developed in Brazil’s photovoltaic sector over the next 15 years have been unveiled in a new study commissioned by the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI).

At the end of Q2 2012, China continued to dominate the worldwide renewable energy market, with Germany and the U.S. nose-to-nose in second place, and India and the U.K. just behind, according to Ernst & Young’s latest quarterly Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indices (CAI) report. Activities centered strongly around the smart grid.

Solon Corporation’s new VP and GM of power plants, Jared Schoch discusses his plans for growing the company’s North American photovoltaic business, the financing landscape in the region, and the impact of Microsol’s recent takeover of Solon SE with pv magazine.

Automated demand response, or AutoDR could cost-effectively help combat intermittent renewable energy supply, particularly in light of the current high costs of grid-connected storage batteries.

Hailed as “historic”, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Queensland have been awarded a AU$40.7 million grant to establish two photovoltaic research programs.