United States

The hype surrounding green hydrogen is real, but does the cost-reduction outlook for its production technologies live up to it? Christian Roselund looks at the technology, transportation, application and enabling policies behind the promising green energy carrier.

Malta announced a partnership with Betchel to deploy electro-thermal energy storage systems that are capable of durations of 10-150+ hours.

As power systems integrate more digital and inverter-based devices, the guidelines and technical standards for these resources are evolving, and none as quickly and urgently as cybersecurity standards. New approaches to cyber defence are now needed to protect more interconnected systems with diverse owners, manufacturers, and system architectures. However, current cybersecurity standards for energy devices are still patchy. Upcoming efforts are aimed at changing that, reports NREL’s Connor O’Neil.

Melbourne-based company Green Peak Energy has attracted the backing of one of the world’s largest investment firms, CBRE Investment Management. While deal’s details remain confidential, the Australian company, which focuses on operating renewable systems in the C&I segment and providing power purchasing agreements (PPAs), described the agreement as an endorsement of the problem it set out to solve.

Scientists in the United States pieced together data from hundreds of different sources, looking to establish the key factors that have led to consistently falling prices for lithium-ion technology since their commercialisation thirty years ago. They find that public-funded research, primarily in chemistry and materials science, has made the largest contribution to cost reduction. And they offer suggestions on policy and investment to ensure that the research can continue to make these important contributions to reduction in battery costs.

NREL scientists have unveiled a storage system based on a phase-change material that can store both thermal energy and electricity in a single device. According to the researchers, the new technology may be used to store excess electricity produced by on-site solar or wind operations in large scale buildings.

At the risk of stating the obvious, PV performance will always be inextricably linked to the weather. Cloud cover significantly influences power output and severe weather events – including high winds, heavy snowfall, fire, and hail – can lead to module or structural damage. And with climate change making extreme weather events more common, the value of forecasting and understanding the worst Mother Nature can throw at a solar array is increasing.

A new Ernst & Young power and utilities overview report shows that utilities and other deep-pocketed investors are putting financial support behind their environmental, social and governance initiatives.

Hydrostor’s plant would be able to deliver 400 MW of electricity for 8 hours, and would be comparable in size to some of California’s largest fossil fuel power plants.

Developed by a U.S.-based start-up, the new manufacturing process is claimed to reduce silver consumption and improve solar module performance by up to 3 watts. It consists of connecting sub-cells in series within a single cell in order to increase the device voltage and without requiring cells to be physically broken and rewired.