Singapore is set to create a US$25 million fund for energy storage, as part of a raft of strategic measures aimed at meeting “significant shifts” in the energy sector, which will also include investment in research for integration of solar and cutting times for grid connection.

Sharp, ABB, SMA and Bosch are among the big names readying new energy storage products for the UK PV market. Andy Colthorpe caught up with them at the Solar Energy UK show to find out what tech fits best for the UK’s nascent storage sector.

Solar microinverter specialist Enphase has announced its first move into energy storage, launching an energy management system which includes an AC battery, at the Solar Power International show in Las Vegas this week.

The US-based solar division of Japan’s Kyocera and energy service start-up STEM have become the latest partnership to offer integrated solar-plus-storage to commercial customers in the US, beginning with sales in three states including California.

Ideal Power, which supplies its battery converters to Sharp’s Smartstorage product in the US, has launched a range of power converters that the company claims are capable of adding grid-tied storage to megawatt-scale solar power projects.

Many in solar and other renewable energy industries are looking ahead to a future defined by self-consumption of on-site generated power and energy storage. As a key part of that, the role of the inverter is changing.

Tesla’s much talked about Gigafactory should be up and running in 2017. PV Tech Storage spoke to analyst Dean Frankel of Lux Research about some of the details and talking points of the EV maker’s ambitious plan to hit ‘500,000 battery packs by 2020’.

Lithium iron phosphate battery-based energy storage systems from German manufacturer Automatic Storage Device Sonnenspeicher (ASD) will be installed in new houses from WeberHaus, which makes prefabricated homes for the German market.

India’s growing energy storage industry shares the enthusiasm of its solar counterpart in welcoming the Modi government’s aims and ambitions, according to one industry veteran.

Scientists at Ohio State University claim to have developed a hybrid device which combines a solar cell with a rechargeable battery, as part of a US Department of Energy funded research programme.