Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought 40.1MM shares of ExxonMobil for $3.45bln, and now holds about 0.9% of the company’s stock. UK’s BG has sold additional interests in its Queensland Curtis LNG project in Australia to China National Offshore Oil Corp. for $1.93 billion, and to supply the state-controlled Chinese firm with an additional 5 million tons per year of LNG… Keep reading →
Energy storage is moving out of the laboratory and into the world of project finance, but how long that evolution will take is in question.
Experts told the Energy Storage Association’s annual conference in Washington DC last week that storage is at a “tipping point.” While storage is being incorporated into some operating projects, the technology is still struggling for recognition of its role, and financing remains a high hurdle. Keep reading →
Allowing power from electricity storage to be counted toward meeting renewable portfolio standards would boost integration of advanced storage technologies into the electricity system, speakers told the Electricity Storage Association conference in Washington last week.
Terry Boston, CEO of PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, said he’d like to see states let up to 25% of their RPS be met with storage when the storage systems are fed by clean sources like wind and solar. Keep reading →
March 2012 shattered US temperature records. What about the summer?
Electricity market operators are not generally fond of hot summers, when consumers turn up their air conditioners to stay cool, while straining the network, sometimes to the brink of disaster. This summer is no exception, especially in a few places where supplies are likely to be tight. Keep reading →
View of the Torresol Energy Gemasolar thermasolar plant in Fuentes de Andalucia near Sevilla, southern Spain, taken on October 4, 2011. Gemasolar is the first commercial-scale plant to apply central tower receiver and molten salt heat storage technology.
Electricity is a hoarder’s worst nightmare. It is difficult to capture and store on a large scale and within seconds of being created it disappears. Keep reading →
Innovations in electricity storage are needed if the US is to take advantage of clean energy resources, and two Senators have proposed an investment tax credit to accelerate storage solutions.
Senators Jeff Bingaman (Democrat for New Mexico) and Ron Wyden (Democrat for Oregon), the two ranking Democrats on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told an Energy Storage Association forum they are sponsoring a bill, S.1845, with Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins, for a storage investment tax credit (ITC). It would be similar to credits now available for solar installations. Keep reading →
West Virginia is Coal Country, but wind energy is making inroads there – with cutting-edge energy-storage capabilities, to boot. AES has announced the completion and full-scale commercial operation of its Laurel Mountain wind power plant. The 98-megawatt (MW) plant consists of 61 GE 1.6-MW wind turbine generators situated along a 13-mile stretch of Laurel Mountain near Elkins, West Virginia. But what makes this project unique is its 32 MW of battery-based energy storage – the largest advanced energy storage project of its kind.
The battery bank will allow the wind farm to smooth fluctuations in power generation, and help maintain the reliability of the power grid. The plant will supply more than 260,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy and operating reserve capacity each year to the PJM Interconnection, the largest power market in the world. Keep reading →
