Last week saw Intersect Power confirm the $3.1 billion financial close of one of the US’ largest ever solar-storage portfolios. Who were the individuals responsible for putting together what is not only one of the largest financings of its kind, but also one of the most innovative?
What’s the difference between potentially making millions with energy storage assets and losing millions on them? Making the best use of data. That’s the view of Quentin Draper-Scrimshire, CEO and co-founder of Modo Energy. And the fact Modo has an ever-growing roster of clients indicates that a significant proportion of the market shares his view.
Energy storage innovation is largely unsupported in the UK and woefully underfunded. Consequently, the UK is “lagging behind its peers” in the energy storage innovation race. As a result, the UK government is passing up the opportunity to become a global leader in the field.
Concerns about the fire risks posed by lithium-ion battery storage systems continue to mount. Research has shown that there have been around 40 known fires to have occurred in large-scale lithium-ion battery systems. Now a group of politicians in the UK have decided to take action.
Solar projects combined with storage have proved to be particularly attractive to investors in recent months, with the closing of financing deals focussed on the UK market being a notable trend.
With predictions that the amount of energy storage deployed globally could reach almost 500GW by 2031 – according to data from Wood Mackenzie – which battery cell manufacturers are currently best placed to capitalise?
It’s a lustrous, very hard, silvery metal and some would argue that the world’s prospects of bringing about the climate transition are being jeopardised by doubts about its future availability. Cobalt, which is found in the earth’s crust, has been identified as one of the metal ores which must be mined more extensively if storage is to play a key role in future energy systems around the globe. This is because cobalt increases both battery life and energy density. The problem is mining cobalt is fraught with difficulties.
One of the US states currently deploying the largest amounts of grid-scale energy storage is Texas. Indeed, one energy sector CEO recently remarked that the state had “one of the fastest growing markets in the world for energy storage”. So what’s driving the surge in storage deployment in the ‘Lone Star State’?