The growth potential of energy storage has drawn interest from some of the biggest names in the power business and beyond. With the trend set to continue, Andy Colthorpe explores how three recent acquisition targets are faring under new ownership. Taken from the pages of PV Tech Power Vol.19, Part 1 of this article was published on the site last week.

While Extinction Rebellion may have helped draw attention to the scale of the problem, it’s now up to us all – especially those of us with a head-start in the industry – to bring the solutions to life.

Walking around Energy Storage Europe this year it was obvious that the show, like the market, has grown from a small handful of “strong believers” as one source put it, to a forward-looking show focused on a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.

Topics previously off-limits due to commercial sensitivity or just a lack of experience from the field, were explored in depth at this year’s Energy Storage Summit in London.

Perhaps the biggest indicator of the recognition of behind-the-meter storage so far this year has been the acquisition of Sonnen by oil major Shell. CEO Christoph Ostermann spoke to Andy Colthorpe about why home storage uptake could be on a worldwide series of inflection points.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our series looking back on last year’s challenges, milestone and successes and looking ahead to a busy 2019. After featuring a range of views from industry participants and experts, now it’s my turn to throw out some predictions for the year ahead…

Acquisition feeds into the inverter and smart energy company’s overall ‘masterplan’ to involve itself in the full gamut of distributed and clean energy market segments.

In today’s third and final instalment of our series to welcome in 2019, we look at what our respondents are expecting to see this year, what they would like to see happen and some of the ways they will be trying to fulfil those expectations.

In the previous instalment of this blog, we looked at how our respondents from across the energy storage industry had viewed 2018’s biggest challenges. This time out we look at what some of 2018’s biggest successes were.

After another record-breaking year, in which the US surpassed 1GWh of deployed energy storage and China began its programme of building flow batteries several hundred megawatts in size each, we canvassed opinion on what 2018’s biggest challenges and successes were. In this first part, we look at the challenges faced by the industry in 2018.