[amor de cosmos]

Storage Is the New Solar: Will Batteries and PV Create an Unstoppable Hybrid Force?
Once a dominant force in solar, batteries were pushed aside in favor of grid-tied systems. But that dynamic may be changing.
by Stephen Lacey

When Wes Kennedy started engineering solar systems in the mid-1990s, he pretty much had one integration option: batteries.

At that time, Kennedy designed and installed systems for Jade Mountain, a Colorado-based distributed energy retailer that eventually merged with Real Goods Solar. With very little policy support from utilities, the off-grid market was the dominant driver of business in the U.S. and globally. The vast majority of PV was paired with lead-acid batteries and sold to people who wanted to disconnect from the grid, or who had no other choice for electricity.

That’s the way it was from the 1970s onward for a couple of decades, until a steady march of state-level policies and interconnection laws made tying solar into the grid more attractive. In typical first-mover fashion, California offered some of the first U.S. incentives for solar systems connected to utility wires in 1996. A handful of other states followed, extending net metering to solar and creating state rebate programs.

At that time, Germany and Japan also beefed up promotion laws, creating a strong burst of activity for the grid-tied market globally. In 1997, nearly two-thirds of worldwide solar deployment was off-grid. Three years later, grid-tied installations outpaced off-grid installations globally for the first time. In 2005, the market finally flipped for the U.S. as state promotion policies blossomed.

Over the last decade and a half, battery storage went from being the core enabler of solar PV to a marginal technology. Battery-based systems now only represent around 1 percent of yearly solar installations in America and throughout the world.

“Sometimes people forget that storage was the roots of the solar industry,” said Kennedy.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...toppable-Hybri

Russia steps up solar expansion in the south
16. June 2014 | Global PV markets, Industry & Suppliers, Markets & Trends, Panorama | By: Linas Jegelevicius

The sunlit southern regions of Bashkiria and Krasnodar are seeking to boost solar power output with a number of projects in development. Krasnodar is investing $870 million in green energy through 2020.

The regions of Bashkiria and Krasnodar in southern Russia are set to ramp up their solar capacities this year, fulfilling some foreign sustainable energy experts' forecasts on "unprecedented PV capacity growth" in Russia this year.

The Republic of Bashkiria (also known as Bashkortostan) has set its sights on launching two solar plants with a combined capacity of 15 MW by the end of the year and expects to add another 24 MW from three new PV facilities in 2016, reaching a total of 39 MW of PV expansion by the end of 2016.

In its pursuit, the Bashkiria government has signed an agreement with Avelar Solar Technology, a spinoff of state energy company Renova, and Xevel, a company founded in 2009 to develop solar energy in Russia. If all goes well, the first two plants should pop up in the republic’s Xaibulinsk and Kujurgazinsk districts this year while the three solar units slated for 2016 are to be built in the Isiangulovsk, Bugulcansk and Buribaevsk districts.

An additional 50 to 90 MW could come from a further five PV installations during 2015-2020, thereby reaching a total capacity of more than 100 MW.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...uth_100015420/