Google’s choice of thermal storage for cooling its data center signals interest from Internet giants in using stored energy to cool data centers rather than just drawing power direct from the grid when needed. Is this the future of on demand power for data centers? Read More »
If land-based wind turbines are a bird’s worst nightmare, it will be interesting to see how the fish in Lake Ontario react to giant underwater “accumulators” that will store compressed air to feed back into the electric grid. Read More »
After an extensive interview with the founder and President of Energy Cache, Aaron Fyke, we bring you the details of how the gravel and ski lift technology works, how the company came into being, where it’s headed and how Bill Gates and Bill Gross became involved. Read More »
Grid battery startup Aquion Energy announced on Tuesday that it plans to build a factory in Pennsylvania and begin production of its sodium batteries starting in 2013. Read More »
Electric car company Coda Automotive is raising more funds as it moves closer to shipping its first electric sedans. According to a filing, the company is looking to raise another $150 million, and has closed $21.5 million of that round. Read More »
A quiet startup called Greensmith has been building a business out of connecting, controlling and monitoring large batteries installed on the power grid and used for energy storage. Read More »
One of the year’s largest smart grid conferences — DistribuTECH — closes today in San Antonio, Texas. It’s like the CES for utilities, power companies and the vendors that are trying to sell them stuff. Here are the top 10 trends I took away. Read More »
One day it could be common to have a home battery to store energy from a solar panel, and some battery makers and startups showed off their home batteries at DistribuTECH this week. Read More »
Despite Coda just going into production of its inaugural electric sedan, the startup will announce on Friday it’s launching a division that plans to sell its batteries and battery management system to act as energy storage for the power grid. Read More »
California regulators have made significant changes to a state incentive program that will impact electric customers who use technology such as fuel cells. The changes could have a big impact on Bloom Energy, which has been a major beneficiary of the SGIP. Read More »
China is poised to become a giant solar and wind energy producer, and that will open opportunities for energy storage technology developers. ZBB announced its foray into China on Tuesday and more American companies are sure to follow. Read More »
The network of the smart grid is taking its sweet time to get deployed, but we still need smart applications to run over these networks once they are fully installed. Here are five smart-grid startups to watch via the Cleantech Open. Read More »
More Must Reads
Hang around the energy storage crowd long enough, and you’ll hear chatter about ultracapacitors. Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has said he believes capacitors will even “supercede” batteries. What is it that makes ultracapacitors such a promising technology? And where do they fall short? Read More »
Here are our five topics to watch for at one of the largest U.S. solar conferences, Intersolar, in San Francisco this week. Policy — how to survive with more mandates and less money — along with new technology and markets will dominate the discussions. Read More »
One of the reasons energy storage for the grid isn’t widely used is that many of the technologies, like batteries, are still too expensive. But what if you could use something that costs a fraction of a battery to deploy for grid storage, like Software-as-a-Service? Read More »
Startup EnerVault is getting closer to commercializing its flow battery, which uses large liquid tanks of chemicals to store energy. The Silicon Valley company will be building a demonstration project next year to help launch the technology into the market in 2013. Read More »
Turns out cell phones and electric cars have more in common than you might think and technology developed for phones could help pave the way for more powerful electric cars. Read More »
Cleantech investing may not have produced many big exits and returns so far, yet it keeps attracting investors who believe they can do better. Here comes the Cleantech Syndicate, a group of 11 families that plan to invest $1.4 billion over the next five years. Read More »
When electric vehicles merely trickle into the market and utilities move at a snail’s pace when it comes to buying grid-tied batteries, where can an energy storage developer turn? To the somewhat generic, but decidely non-power-grid-connected “off grid market,” according to a new report. Read More »
Selling energy storage technology to utilities can be a risky business, according to a group of venture capitalists at an energy storage conference in Silicon Valley Wednesday. Read More »
The next-generation of technology to use compressed air for energy storage is on its way. One of the companies leading the way — General Compression — has raised another $20.39 million Series B round, according to a filing. Read More »
A buzzy startup working on a battery that sandwiches molten salt between two layers of liquid metal, has gotten seed funding from Bill Gates. The company is called Liquid Metal Battery, and it’s the brainchild of MIT Professor Donald Sadoway. Read More »
Power company AES is in the process of scaling up its lithium-ion grid battery projects to a commercial size, and by the third quarter of this year, plans to start operating a 32-MW project in conjunction with grid operator PJM in West Virginia. Read More »
Aquion Energy has one overriding goal: to change the way the world uses energy. The idea is to build modular, sodium- and water-based energy storage devices that can provide a slew of services for a cleaner power grid at relatively low cost. Read More »
The Electric Power Research Institute has released a report that lays out energy storage technology options, benefits, performance and costs and how the different technologies play a role in everything from managing the electric grid to managing home energy use. Read More »
Listen to Fenix International founder and CEO Mike Lin talk about Fenix International’s ReadySet energy storage device that is delivering power to the off-grid world. Read More »
Battery-powered energy storage provides an on-demand, predictable source of energy to power systems to keep them running optimally, and even to enable new projects, but the cost seems to be scaring some people away despite the high value the technology brings beyond mere stored energy. Read More »
By Colleen Taylor and Cortney Fielding
Apr. 21, 2011, 12:00pm PT
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For this year’s Green:Net, a team of GigaOM editors and industry insiders chose 10 innovators in the digital energy space to present their “big ideas” for using information technology to fight climate change. Here are some of the insights they shared. Read More »
Battery startup Xtreme Power just landed its biggest grid energy storage deal yet, a 36-megawatt battery for Duke Energy. Could its secretive, solid-state energy storage technology challenge sodium sulfur and lithium ion for reigning grid champion? Read More »
A new report on the crash of a UPS jet carrying rechargeable lithium batteries outlines the hazards of transporting these devices. It’s the latest fuel for concern about the safety of lithium ion batteries, which store energy not only for gadgets but also plug-in vehicles. Read More »
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab Staff Scientist Venkat Srinivasan delves into what he thinks are the three laws of batteries that govern how batteries operate, plus he throws in a bonus one at the end. Read More »
Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at MIT, aims to deliver a “lifesaver” for renewable energy in the form of a stable, low-cost, large-scale battery. Here are 15 questions with Sadoway on the future of liquid metal batteries. Read More »
A startup building the next-generation of compressed air energy storage, SustainX, has raised a new round of funding from investors including GE. The funds will help the company start construction on a 1 MW compressed air energy storage project with its first customer AES. Read More »
Utility scale energy storage doesn’t get the type of attention as, solar or electric cars — particularly a tech as dry as compressed air energy storage. But startups are innovating in this area, and two in particular are moving ever closer to commercialization: SustainX and General … Read More »
Gravity Power is developing a new way to store massive amounts of energy for the power grid: gravity and a new invention using pistons, water-filled shafts in the ground and a motor. Read More »
The key to getting utilities to embrace renewable energy is investment in inexpensive, convenient, and highly efficient utility-scale storage for solar and wind power. The issue remains one of supply and demand: Supply the energy storage solutions without demanding too much of anyone. Read More »
LG Chem has won its first deal in the utility market — it will supply lithium-ion battery packs for a Southern California Edison energy storage project. Read More »
There’s been a lot of high-fiving among energy storage technology developers about a bill signed into law by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week. However, the bill doesn’t mandate energy storage, which means it’s far from determined which technologies and players will be the big winners. Read More »
Can the grid handle the growing flow of wind and solar that will come online in the next few years? According to California’s grid operator the answer is yes, but with a particular attention to energy storage policy. Read More »
Lithium ion battery Amprius tells us that it has demonstrated in the lab the basic recipe for a much higher energy density battery that can tolerate the hundreds of charge cycles needed for long-lasting electronic devices. Up next, batteries for electric vehicles. Read More »
Today the DOE has awarded $92 million for 43 new projects under the highly competitive ARPA-E program for high risk greentech research, marking the last of the ARPA-E grants to be funded under the Recovery Act. Read More »
If utilities are looking for a magic bullet for energy storage, which can help add clean power to the grid, prevent outages and manage peak load, they’re not going to find it. At least not among the current storage options, according to a report from Lux … Read More »
Electrovaya, the Canadian battery maker supplying lithium-ion batteries for Chrysler’s plug-in hybrid truck demo, brought in nearly $1.1 million in revenue during the first three months of this year, compared to just $675,000 in the same period a year earlier. Read More »
It’s not just technology advancements that could pave the way to smaller, lighter battery packs in electric vehicles — but also the collection of data as automakers learn more about how these cars perform on the road. Read More »
International Battery, a startup that just raised $35 million in third-round financing, is taking the Field of Dreams approach that so many energy storage startups are eying these days: If you raise funds and build a factory, the customers will come. Read More »
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