Battery storage producer NEC Energy Solutions is winding down its energy storage operations and will no longer pursue new projects, according to a report from Bloomberg News. "As the market is growing, it is becoming increasingly cost-based — developers are looking further up the value chain to see if they are able to integrate systems at lower costs," Yayoi Sekine, head of decentralized energy at BloombergNEF told Utility Dive in an email. NEC Corp could not find a suitable buyer for the Westborough, Massachusetts-based subsidiary due to market conditions in grid-scale energy storage and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to Bloomberg News. The energy storage market is both shrinking
Tesla's battery supplier says it's made a huge breakthrough in battery technology that could power electric-vehicle sales for years to come. Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., the Chinese car-battery giant that supplies Tesla and Volkswagen, is ready to produce a battery that can last 16 years and 2 million kilometers, or 1.24 million miles, the company's chairman, Zeng Yuqun, told Bloomberg over the weekend. Zeng said the company was ready to start fulfilling orders for the battery but didn't disclose whether anyone had bought any yet. He added that the battery cost about 10% more than average EV batteries. read the full article on businessinsider.com
A new way of making large sheets of high-quality, atomically thin graphene could lead to ultra-lightweight, flexible solar cells, and to new classes of light-emitting devices and other thin-film electronics. The new manufacturing process, which was developed at MIT and should be relatively easy to scale up for industrial production, involves an intermediate "buffer" layer of material that is key to the technique's success. The buffer allows the ultrathin graphene sheet, less than a nanometer (billionth of a meter) thick, to be easily lifted off from its substrate, allowing for rapid roll-to-roll manufacturing. read the full article on phys.org
Batteries will beat natural gas peakers on cost across Europe by the end of the decade, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie. Europe's power system will look very different in 2030, with energy storage supporting the “dominance” of wind and solar generation, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie. The big five European markets — Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and Spain — will get the majority of their power from wind, solar and other variable renewable energy sources as early as 2023, WoodMac says. By 2040, Europe is expected to add another 169 gigawatts of wind and 172 gigawatts of solar. As that variable output surges, Europe has four options for balancing out its grid: p
Amara Raja Batteries Limited and Gridtential Energy have recently collaborated for Silicon Joule bipolar technology that revolves around advanced lead batteries with silicon at core. The statement says that the said tech is design-driven, low-cost, high-performance, patented energy storage solution that offers improved power density along with better cycle life, dynamic charge acceptance and a wider temperature range. Moreover, the batteries will have up to 40% lower weight while retaining full lead-battery recyclability. read the full article on financialexpress.com
