Energy Management Systems

The virtual facility is monitoring approximately 1 GW of combined wind, solar, storage and flexible gas engines in the U.K. and its capacity may double in the summer. The energy managed by the plant is being sold on the British energy market.

As RP Global starts work on 11 solar hybrid mini-grids on Lake Victoria that will supply electricity to 160,000 people, analyst Wood Mackenzie has released a report stating how increased capital flows in the sector may still fall short of securing universal electricity access by 2030. Nonetheless, off-grid solar is the cheapest and most viable solution for remote areas and attracts investment from fossil fuel majors and venture capital funds.

A 60 kW floating array was deployed by New Southern Energy at the reservoir of a fruit farm near Franschhoek, in the Western Cape Province. A second phase of the project will also include storage.

Having launched a residential storage system, the German giant announced plans last week to acquire inverter maker Kaco and start a new smart infrastructure business from April 1. In light of those moves, pv magazine spoke to IHS Markit’s Cormac Gilligan about the new kid, albeit huge, on the block.

The capacity comes from two solar parks and five wind power plants awarded firm energy obligations for 2022-2023. The Reliability Charge auctions were created by the Colombian government to ensure power supply during water shortages.

Owners of residential PV systems increasingly want more features. Virtual power plants, smart EV charging and self-consumption measured by ever higher percentages of self-sufficiency have been buzzwords in the industry. The result has been a new breed of smart bidirectional inverters, sometimes dubbed hybrid inverters. And with utilities having found business models that also work out in their favor, could a new dawn of residential installations rise over the world of suburbia?

Maybe. But you’d be better off using a laptop. And no, Huawei inverters aren’t going to cause a blackout.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury of experts. Yesterday we entered our top five, with MAN’s thermoelectric energy storage.

With Europe set to return to solar power levels last seen during the PV boom seven years ago, a wave of mergers and acquisitions is taking place as the oil and gas majors splash the cash to buy the expertise needed to participate in PV’s new dawn.

In the run-up to the Energy Storage Europe conference pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury of experts. Last week we revealed #6, a ’70s revival of a ceramic high temperature battery.