Distributed Storage

A report by BloombergNEF and Schneider Electric has pressed the case for governments to unlock the world’s potentially huge rooftop solar potential, and cited California’s solar mandate as a shining example.

The electric vehicle conversation is dominated by all-electric options, and sales figures back up the shift from the age of the Prius to the age of Tesla. However, the timeline for the Global South is very different and hybrid EVs are better than ever. Hybrid EVs shouldn’t be considered a legacy technology, and may be greatly significant for their role in the path to decarbonization, explains Gautham Ram, assistant professor at TU Delft.

Under the partnership, Tata Power will provide end-to-end electric vehicle (EV) charging solutions across Lodha Group’s residential and commercial projects in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune.

Scientists in Germany developed a new process for manufacturing battery electrodes, that they say could be both more cost effective and environmentally friendly compared to current technologies. The technique could be applied to a range of different battery materials/chemistries and its creators say they are in discussion with a number of battery cell manufacturers regarding pilot production.

Shouldn’t we all be driving in affordable electric cars with 800-plus kilometers of driving range by now? Surely yes, according to many of the announcements coming from battery scientists over the past decade. Yet for all the scientific breakthroughs, few in fact “break through” into commercial applications. Christian Kuss of the University of Manitoba makes the case for a holistic approach to battery materials development, and reminds us to look beyond the stars of the show and consider their interactions with the auxiliary materials that hold the whole thing together.

The Indian auto-components manufacturer will set up a semisolid lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility in Chennai under a technology licensing agreement with American startup 24M. The first phase of the planned 10 GWh fab would start production in the second half of 2023.

An international research team has conducted a techno-economical comparison between lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries for stationary energy storage and has found the former has a lower LCOE and net present cost. Through their analysis, which was performed assuming the use of the batteries in connection with a 10 kW, grid-tied PV system, the scientists concluded that lithium-ion batteries are the most viable solution.

The mobile electric vehicle chargers will be deployed in cities and highways across India, mitigating the range anxiety among electric vehicle (EV) owners. These are equipped with a range of slow and fast chargers to support two-wheelers to commercial vehicles to premium EVs.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory researchers have studied which tech offers the lowest levelized cost of energy to provide the US Western Interconnection grid with electricity when wind and solar are not available. They assumed 85% renewables penetration and determined that geologic hydrogen storage and natural gas combined-cycle plants with carbon capture storage are the cheapest options for 120-hour discharge applications. 


Scientists have demonstrated a zinc-ion battery that overcomes many of the challenges for this technology. By working with a highly-concentrated salt solution as the electrolyte, the group was able to achieve stability over more than 2,000 cycles combined with a strong electric performance. The group says that its work opens up “a viable route to developing aqueous batteries for emerging electrochemical energy storage applications.”