ENERGY giant AGL will install solar batteries on 1000 homes across Adelaide, building a ‘virtual power plant’ to provide back-up electricity to householders and the state’s energy grid during times of high energy demand. In what is expected to be the largest project of its kind in the world, the batteries will store excess solar power that wo

Harvard University researchers reckon they can make flow batteries cheaper using an electrolyte based on vitamin B2. Flow batteries function much like lead-acid batteries, with a fluid that reacts with electrodes to store charge. However, the liquid is cycled through an external tank in the charge/discharge cycle. The external “refresh” of a fl

LG Chem, the South Korean company with the biggest share of the grid-connected battery storage market in Australia, has released its new generation systems, promising they will offer more choice, and be cheaper, smaller, lighter, and with improved aesthetics. LG Chem, which claims nearly half of the nascent but rapidly growing Australian grid-conne

Tesla officially opened its Gigafactory on July 26, a little more than two years after construction began. The factory is about 14 per cent complete but when it's finished, it will be about 10 million square feet, or about the size of 262 NFL football fields. That will make it one of the largest buildings in the world. The factory is key to the fut

Los Angeles billionaire Elon Musk is driving development of more than just electric cars: The head of Tesla Motors Inc. often grabs headlines with his company’s Powerwall battery, designed to let homeowners stash electricity from their solar panels for later use. But a North Hollywood operation has been quietly beating Musk and Tesla when it come

Panasonic Energy Corporation of America today announced the introduction of its latest AA and AAA Platinum Power alkaline batteries which last 33% longer than Panasonic's regular alkaline cells¹. The new Platinum Power AA and AAA batteries are now powered by Evolta technology, and are the most powerful Panasonic alkaline cells offered in North Ame

Does lithium storage energy cost $50 MWh, $100MWh, or $400MWh? Today you get one answer, but always there is someone saying that at the “end of the rainbow” there will be another answer. In our minds we don’t really know because as yet the volumes in the market are just not high enough to give a clear road map on costs. We estimate less than

Toshiba began field tests of its new wireless charging system, designed in collaboration with Professor Yushi Kamiya of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, in a prototype electric bus (video on bus below), that is also equipped with Toshiba’s SCiB lithium-ion batteries. The Japanese company is using the bus for high-speed

Looking for a new handset, and hoping to base your purchasing decision on the back of a phone’s battery life credentials? This might help. Samsung’s German division has posted a new video on YouTube that compares the battery life of seven of the latest flagship smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Also competing are

Australian homeowners may be flocking to energy storage in droves. But one of the country’s biggest engineering consultancies doesn’t see the financial sense in it. Victoria-based Aurecon, which has operations across Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Middle East, and which has been associated with major renewable energy projects such as the Kog