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Zero Emission Bay Area (ZEBA) — a group of regional transit agencies in Northern California — operates twelve, zero-emission, fuel cell buses in real-world service throughout the Bay Area’s diverse communities and landscapes. 11. Similar to a battery, a fuel cell is a device that produces electricity through an electrochemical reaction — a chemical reaction [...]

Ancillary services are the auxiliary services required to balance the grid in order to reliably maintain the electricity grid. Such applications include frequency regulation, voltage support, spinning reserve, electric supply reserve capacity, and load following.  Over the next 10 years the market for ancillary services, and the energy storage systems that enable them, will be driven [...]

Solar energy will not become an integral part of the energy supply system in Europe until suppliers, including private residences, have unlimited access to the energy grid. In practice, this would mean that they could supply their self-produced solar energy to the grid at a profitable rate 24/7. This is not yet the case today, [...]

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL, Golden, Colorado, US) has released a new report which quantifies the value that concentrating solar power (CSP) with thermal energy storage can add to California’s grid. “Analysis of Concentrating Solar Power with Thermal Energy Storage in a California 33% Renewable Scenario” puts the value of [...]

The Notrees Wind Storage Demonstration Project is a 36-megawatt energy storage and power management system, which completed testing and became fully operational in December. It shows how energy storage can moderate the intermittent nature of wind by storing excess energy when the wind is blowing and making it available later to the electric grid to [...]

Canadian researchers have developed a ground-breaking method which may ultimately enable excess energy created by wind turbines and solar panels to be stored for later use. Two researchers at the University of Calgary report in the journal Science that they have invented a relatively inexpensive way of using rust to act as a catalyst for [...]

Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (Altairnano) (NASDAQ: ALTI) has commissioned a 1.2 megawatt (MW) ALTI-ESS lithium-titanate battery system at a Danish wind farm supplied by Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Vestas), a global leader in wind power. The demonstration project is one of several initiatives currently using Altairnano’s energy storage technology to advance renewable power integration. Headquartered in [...]

The European Parliament yesterday gave its green light to the guidelines for the EU energy infrastructure package, which sets out corridors for Europe-wide energy infrastructure, seeks to speed-up permits and identifies priority projects, including an offshore electricity grid in the North Sea. “This is really a breakthrough and will give a big push to much [...]

Galaxy Resources (ASX: GXY) is now producing a lithium carbonate of minimum 99.9% purity, registered by Galaxy as EV Grade, which is used specifically in the manufacture of electrolyte solution for lithium-ion batteries. Commercial production has now been achieved from the company’s wholly-owned Jiangsu Lithium Carbonate Plant in China. What is so important though for [...]

Construction of Cowessess First Nation´s wind farm, includes erection of an 800 kW Enercon E53 wind turbines connected to a lithium ion battery with 740 kWh of electrical storage. Construction of a wind power project – the first of its kind in North America – is underway on Cowessess First Nation land four-kilometres east of [...]

As the earth warms, glaciers and ice sheets are melting and seas are rising. Over the last century, the global average sea level rose by 17 centimeters (7 inches). This century, as waters warm and ice continues to melt, seas are projected to rise nearly 2 meters (6 feet), inundating coastal cities worldwide, such as [...]

Ancillary services are the services required to maintain safe, reliable, and secure transmission of energy on the grid. Designed to respond to the technical challenges of generating, transmitting and distributing electricity, these services are required to balance the grid regardless of the structure of the electricity market. It can be challenging for a new technology [...]

The transition to a low-carbon and renewable energy future could take decades, and require changes in the electricity industry, a new study says. The report, presented at IHS CERAWEEK 2013, an international conference on energy issues, examined major energy transitions over the past 250 years. It also analyzed the factors that may drive changes in [...]

Pike Research defines a virtual power plant (VPP) as a system that relies upon software systems to remotely and automatically dispatch and optimize generation, demand-side, or storage resources (including plug-in electric vehicles and bi-directional inverters) in a single, secure web-connected system. VPPs can provide extraordinary value and services to transmission and distribution (T&D) grid infrastructure, [...]

The energy game is rigged in favor of fossil fuels because we omit the environmental and health costs of burning coal, oil, and natural gas from their prices. Subsidies manipulate the game even further. According to conservative estimates from the Global Subsidies Initiative and the International Energy Agency (IEA), governments around the world spent more [...]