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UTILITY WEEK | 10TH - 16TH JULY 2015 | 25 Customers Absolute is a renewable energy company which says its lithium solar energy storage battery has been developed to "withstand the particularly rigorous regime of discharging and recharging over a prolonged period of time". The two-battery pack offers storage up to 5kWh (4kWh usable), which is "enough for a typical household's low to medium wattage appliances throughout an evening". The system is also expandable, with a further four batteries able to be installed into the cabinet, giving an extra 9.6kWh. The REDT energy storage solution is based on vanadium redox flow battery technology, which REDT has been working to improve over the past ten years. The batteries, designed for industrial and utility-scale use, offer storage of 40kWh, 80kWh and 240kWh, and can be grouped together to form a 1MW-scale energy storage array. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has given the company £3.6 million to develop a demonstration and pre-commerciali- sation utility-scale unit of its grid-scale battery. Victron Energy is a Dutch power solutions company that has produced a home energy stor- age battery called Ecomulti. The battery can be wall-mounted, and has 2.3kWh storage capacity and a 3kVA bidirectional inverter, to reduce dependence on power from the grid. The battery can be connected to a photovol- taic array. When the array produces sufficient power to supply the loads and to start charging the battery, the Ecomulti regulates charge cur- rent to absorb nearly 100 per cent of the surplus power. The battery will automatically reconnect itself to the grid supply when the battery is discharged. The Save Energy Group The Save Energy Group makes solar storage batteries in a range of sizes from 5kWh. The group said: "Our solar storage battery systems are the biggest breakthrough in the UK solar energy market for 20 years, allowing you to efficiently collect and store the solar energy you have generated and use it during the hours of darkness." Tech start-up Powervault recently announced it had raised £700,000 through crowdfunding to install 50,000 home energy storage systems in the UK by 2020. The firm is partnering with pho- tovoltaic companies to sell the systems, which are between 2kWh and 4kWh with an installed price of £2,000 to £2,800. It expects to have sold 10,000 home energy storage systems in three years and 50,000 within five years, by which time it predicts that the units will retail for less than £1,000, under- cutting Tesla, whose units will cost $4,000 (£2,500). Powervault claims its system can "lower energy bills by up to 15 per cent and save 0.3 tonnes of carbon a year from conventional generation". Research and development firm Moixa has designed a smart energy storage system called Maslow, which can be used for both residential and commercial applications. It is designed for compact, wall-mounted installation behind the meter and is available as a 2-3kWh base unit (50cm by 30cm), with the option of expanding to 4-6 kWh cabinet. The units retail at £2,000, but the company aims to halve that price from income streams to the grid and claims the units could be "nearly free" when the grid income streams are "prop- erly organised". The company is nearing the completion of a government-funded project to pilot energy storage systems in 250 UK homes in the UK. Victron Energy REDT (Renewable Energy Dynamics Technology) Absolute Renewable Energy Powervault Moixa Technology