The European electricity storage market has seen an impressive growth over the past two years. Whereas in 2015 some 300MWh of battery storage capacity was newly installed, just two years later in 2017, more than 700MWh was added. Delta-ee’s Valts Grintals gives you some highlights and pinpoints some recent trends across the continent.

Northern Ireland’s Queens University Belfast (QUB) has found that battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than thermal generation. Dr Marek Kubic at Fluence, which is working with QUB, explains.

With the release of the most recent Capacity Market pre-qualification register, the UK’s utility-scale battery storage pipeline has now reached nearly 8GW. Solar Media market research analyst Lauren Cook takes a deep dive into the projects that made it through pre-qualification, and what these results mean for the projects likely to get built in 2018.

Since the launch of the site almost four years ago, Energy-Storage.News (and PV Tech Storage as it was previously known), has consistently brought you high-quality blogs from both guest contributors and our team of journalists and experts here at Solar Media. Here’s just a selection of some of the best guest blogs we ran from January to June, 2017:

We often hear about California’s leading position in solar and latterly in energy storage. Perhaps lesser known than direct policy support for energy storage and renewable technologies is the way California’s network operator (CAISO) is starting to reconfigure how it procures demand response, with a positive impact for energy storage – and particularly behind-the-meter assets, as Ted Ko, policy director of Stem, explains.

The UK’s large-scale battery storage installations have reached 100MW of capacity, made up of around 50 individual sites larger than 250kW. Lauren Cook of Solar Media’s Market Research team discusses how this point has been arrived at and what we might expect to see coming next.

Having been subject to discussion for years within the academic sphere, energy storage projects have become a topic of high interest to energy sector focused investors in recent years. Philipp Lobnig of E-nable+, an online platform connecting energy projects with investors, offers his views on the key questions these investors should be asking.

In a world where energy storage will play an increasingly important role – in balancing renewables, reinforcing the network, and reducing energy costs – how important will ‘brand’ be?

Managing director of UK energy storage manufacturer Powerflow, Ian Murray, addresses some FAQs on what consumers should be asking about batteries before buying them for their houses.

In the past month we have heard a lot about the future of storage in the UK. From plans by the government and regulator to enable greater flexibility across electricity networks to changes to technical rules governing the market, there’s been a sense that a great deal is changing. Analyst Lauren Cook of Solar Media’s in-house market research team takes a look at the utility-scale pipeline figures behind the headlines.