Saft accoutrements California array accord to accommodate renewables

French array architect and artist Saft has been apprenticed to accumulation a 1MW/3MWh lithium-ion accumulator arrangement at an educational ability in California, aimed at mitigating the appulse of capricious solar generation.

Installed at the bearding educational ability in four containers, the action accumulator arrangement will “moderate the furnishings of shade” on the rooftop PV arrangement by “shifting action and buffering during alternate sunlight”, according to Saft. The aggregation has aswell afresh installed agnate projects aimed at amalgam renewables for island territories of Hawaii and La Reunion, as able-bodied as ascent up its lithium-ion array assembly in Germany for the country's calm action accumulator market.

The arrangement was awarded to Saft by a California account company, which has not yet been named. Along with two previous, agnate accumulator affairs that Saft has been awarded, the action will accomplish a baby addition to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorization AB2514, which calls for investor-owned utilities to install 1.3GW of accumulator by 2020. In total, Saft has supplied 7.5MWh of array adequacy to the account back its aboriginal 1,500kWh action went in online in 2012.

Chris Edgette, chief administrator of the California Action Accumulator Alliance (CESA) and a adviser on strategy, afresh told PV Tech that forward-thinking assembly and industry action in the accompaniment could crop acquaint that could be abstruse by added regions, in a agnate way to how California led abundant of the US in solar development in the past.

“If we can get these issues through in California it makes it abundant easier in added markets,” Edgette said.

“…In California [for example], we saw that the California Action Commission put out, with the California Solar Initiative, a account of accustomed panels and inverters and they spent a lot of time adage ‘this inverter is rated in this way’ and so on. And we [then] saw added states application that aforementioned arrangement because it was simple and somebody had already done the academician damage! We apprehend to see the aforementioned affair on accumulator that added utilities will say ‘oh ok, this is now how it’s acclimatized out, here’s the archetypal that makes faculty to us and it’s sorted’ and that’s absolutely what we achievement will happen.”

The abounding adaptation of this adventure can be apprehend on the PV Tech Accumulator site.