Today’s electric vehicles are essentially big batteries on wheels, with a significant capacity to store and discharge energy. The average utilization of privately owned vehicles is 5%, meaning that the average battery on wheels is underutilized for the vast majority of its useful life.
If Jochen believes it’s the right thing, he likes to convince others of the same. First it was co-founder Hendrik Sämisch to realise their vision of a Virtual Power Plant, then investors helped move the vision along. Today, Next Kraftwerke aggregates and sells electricity from almost 5,000 independent renewable energy generators all over Europe.
Israeli-based solar PV inverter manufacturer SolarEdge has this week reported yet another blockbuster quarter with increased revenue, gross margin, and record shipments, at the same time as the company begins to expand beyond the solar market with moves into the energy storage and grid services & virtual power plant sectors.
Sonnen is one of our favorite cleantech leaders. It is great at innovation, leadership, and vision. Last month, I published a January interview with sonnen CEO and co-founder Christoph Ostermann. The good folks at The Beam went and created a transcript of it. If you can’t be bothered to watch a video but would like to read it, here you go!
Next Kraftwerke has announced that its Polish subsidiary Elektrownie Next will begin trading electricity produced by the 35 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic portfolio owned by ReneSola. Next Kraftwerke has connected more than 5,000 energy-producing and energy-consuming units in its virtual power plant “Next Pool,” with a total capacity of over 4,100 MW.
Tesla will partner with the government of South Australia to create the world’s largest virtual solar power plant involving rooftop solar installations on 50,000 homes within 4 years. The plan is expected to slash utility bills for residents by 30%.
The design for a community microgrid project that is forming in Warner, New Hampshire, seems rather prosaic at first glance. It is simple, with a few buildings, some solar panels, batteries, inverters, and all the regular gear. It seems an appropriately small start for a town with only 444 people in its center and a total population well below 3,000.
Originally published on sister site SolarLove. In Western Australia, an 8-week experiment is underway in the National Lifestyle Villages in Busselton, near Perth. Using the virtual monetary technology behind “bitcoin,” 10 households will be able to track their energy usage and the amount of excess electricity generated by their rooftop solar … [continued]
By Ken Munson A recent story in The Wall Street Journal highlighted the conundrum facing many electricity generating companies and PUCs today: How to pay for aging, mostly coal-fired power plants whose only function is as backup power for peak demand? In Ohio, two owners of seven such plants have … [continued]
This little startup has just pulled off a big deal to use Tesla batteries in a cutting edge virtual power plant project called Hybrid-Electric Buildings.
