solar PV

ENGIE has started commercial operations of its 100MW Kathu Solar Park (KSP) to “provide clean and reliable energy to 179,000 homes” in South Africa.

KSP is a greenfield concentrated solar power project with “parabolic trough technology” and equipped with “a molten salt storage system that allows for 4.5 hours of thermal energy storage”.

The project has been realised under round 3.5 of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) programme, a competitive tender process launched “to facilitate private sector investment in renewable energy generation”.

In a “first” for Australia, a 105kW/420kWh Tesla PowerBank will be installed to provide 52 homes with shared access to energy storage for a 24-month trial.

The 52 shares of the community battery in Mandurah, Western Australia— which will be jointly owned and operated by Western Power and Synergy— sold in less than two weeks.

Each of the customers will be allocated a maximum of 8kWh of virtual storage— at the cost of AUD1 (US$0.72) per day— which they will use to store energy from solar panels during the day, and drawn down the power to avoid evening peak charge periods.

Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST) has installed two new advanced lead battery microgrid systems at its campus EcoVillage, to test advancements in lead battery energy storage for use as a renewable resource in communities of the future.

The microgrids will supply two student-occupied homes in the EcoVillage— a ‘living laboratory’ of homes designed and created by Must students who competed in the US Department of Energy’s biennial Solar Decathlon—with stored electricity from the systems, which run off charging algorithms from a 24-hour, cloud-based control system.

German battery manufacturer Tesvolt has delivered a 4 megawatt storage system to a solar plant in West Sussex, UK, BEST Battery Briefing’s own home county.

The solar facility is on a 35-hectare former landfill site in the village of Westhampnett. Power generated at the 7.4MW solar park is sold on the electricity wholesale market; the 4.4MW lithium-ion battery will generate additional income from price arbitrage, frequency services, and triad management, by which stored power will be retained and then sold during one of the three daily periods of peak demand.