Andy Colthorpe spoke with Janice Lin of the California Energy Storage Alliance on what sort of role energy storage will play in reaching the ‘100% carbon-free retail electricity’ goal of the state’s SB100 legislation. Part 1, with the second half to follow later this week on Energy-Storage.news.

Ben Hill is widely known in the solar and energy storage industries as the former Trina Solar executive who drove the Chinese company towards a leading position in the European market in the days of the large-scale boom before leaving to become Tesla’s VP for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. UK start-up Solo Energy is among a number of companies he is now working with closely as an advisor.

The fortunes of Gildemeister’s redox flow battery energy storage have been an interesting mirror to those of the technology class overall in some ways. Energy-Storage.news spoke to a leading representative of those assets’ new owner, CellCube Energy Storage company president, Stefan Schauss.

As an interactive way to introduce its third generation of stacks, vanadium redox flow storage maker RedT debuted its augmented reality app at Intersolar Europe/ees Europe this year.

In the second part of our interview with Valts Grintals, analyst at Delta-ee we discuss why behind-the-meter energy storage, including commercial and industrial (C&I) and residential installations, contributed so much to the market’s recent success.

After reporting last week on the findings from EMMES, the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage from Delta-ee and trade association EASE, which demonstrated a big rise in installations by MWh in 2017 across the continent, we delved further behind another record-breaking year with the report’s lead author, Valts Grintals of Delta-ee.

At this year’s Intersolar Europe/ees Europe event, Ron Shen of GoodWe spoke on camera with our sister site PV Tech. The China headquartered inverter manufacturer, which has recently diversified into adding capabilities such as module-level monitoring and optimisation to its range and launched products specifically aimed at the growing market for bi-facial (two-sided) solar panels, sees energy storage as a critical component of a successful future PV business.

Despite the growing interest and deployment figures for lithium-ion batteries for stationary energy storage, its ‘predecessor’ lead acid still has a strong role to play in enabling more and more people to go solar, a representative of Trojan Battery has argued.

Home storage systems have been considered an ‘early adopter’ market in many parts of the world, perhaps more important as a way that individuals can control their own green energy use and save energy than as a means of generating big money returns.

While at Intersolar Europe/ees Europe this week, we caught up with Detlef Neuhaus, CEO of the Dresden-headquartered Solarwatt who told us more about his company’s strategy, as well as offering up some candid views on the industry.