Industry news

BYD Co. (1211), the Chinese electric-vehicle and battery maker partially owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is supplying an 8.6-megawatt solar farm in Rwanda. Scatec Solar SA, a closely held Norwegian developer, is expected to finish building the project midyear, Shenzhen-based BYD said today in a statement. Terms weren’t disclosed. The Rwanda Energy, Water & Sanitation Authority has agreed

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The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s final version of a draft energy report reinforces atomic power’s role in the country’s future and falls short of advocating specific goals for renewable energy use. The policy describes nuclear as “an important base-load energy source,” according to a 78-page draft obtained by Bloomberg News. The plan, the first update to the nation’s

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Investigators reduced the search area in the Indian Ocean for a missing Malaysian Air jet by almost two-thirds, a day after announcing ships detected pings similar to those from a plane’s black boxes. The Ocean Shield, which detected a pair of signals this weekend as it pulled a U.S. Navy towed pinger locator through water, heard no further pings, said

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Good Energy Group Plc (GOOD) is studying whether it can use battery technology to smooth the volatile generation from sources like wind and solar it uses to supply U.K. customers, according to Chief Executive Officer Juliet Davenport. “We buy power from four different sources of power, wind power, solar power, biomass and small hydro power, and we balance that currently

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Toshiba Corp. (6502) supplied batteries to a Kyushu Electric Power Co. (9508) project on two remote islands south of the Japanese mainland that seeks to demonstrate technology to store energy generated from wind and solar power plants. Two- and three-megawatt systems using lithium-ion batteries were delivered to Tanegashima and Amami Oshima, the Tokyo-based electronics maker said today in a statement.

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Boeing Co. (BA) and U.S. regulators exercised too little quality control over subcontractors during development of the 787 Dreamliner, according to a federal report that made seven recommendations to bolster such oversight. The 787 is safe, meets design standards and is about as reliable as other Boeing jetliners were after being introduced, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a review

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Panasonic Corp. (6752) plans to boost sales by about 34 percent during the next five years as it seeks to expand in areas targeted for growth, including its lithium-ion battery business. The consumer electronics company targets 10 trillion yen ($98 billion) in revenue in the 2018 fiscal year, President Kazuhiro Tsuga told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. That compares with the

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Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), the electric vehicle maker co-founded by Elon Musk, plans to use only raw materials sourced in North America for its proposed $5 billion U.S. battery factory. The Silicon Valley company won’t look overseas for the graphite, cobalt and other materials needed for its so-called Gigafactory, said Liz Jarvis-Shean, a spokeswoman. “It will enable us to establish

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AES Corp. (AES), the biggest operator of electricity-storage systems, is now seeking to sell batteries big enough to substitute for power plants. The Advancion systems will cost from $10 million to $500 million, depending on size, and will be offered to utilities and renewable-energy developers in arrays as large as 500 megawatts, said Chris Shelton, president of Arlington, Virginia-based AES’s

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A 40-foot trailer loaded with 25 tons of liquid metals may be the solution to the renewable-energy industry’s biggest challenge: making sure electricity is available whenever it’s needed. A Boston-area startup founded by MIT researchers is working to turn this new concept into a commercially viable product, liquid-metal batteries that will store power for less than $500 a kilowatt-hour. That’s

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