While parallels are often drawn between the solar and storage industries, financing energy storage projects is a lot more complex than simply “transposing” learnings from solar to batteries.

Anthony Price of consultancy Swanbarton previews the International Flow Battery Forum in Germany with a quick primer on the technology, its uses and some of the players attending the event.

As Britain ponders its future in the European Union, Dr Jill Cainey of UK trade group the Electricity Storage Network discusses how grid codes will remain a binding factor in the continent’s electricity markets, regardless of the outcome of the referendum.

Germany, until recently the leading European nation for installed PV capacity, extended a scheme to support purchases of lithium-ion energy storage systems for solar at the beginning of this year.

Operators of transmission infrastructure and wholesale markets in the US have supplied their views on energy storage to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), with industry and other stakeholders expected to follow. Energy-Storage.News’ Andy Colthorpe spoke with Energy Storage Association policy expert Jason Burwen on what he describes as a “systematic review” that could have a transformative effect on the market and drivers for storage.

Texas-headquarted Mercom Capital Group recently released its Q1 2016 funding and M&A report for energy storage, smart grid and energy efficiency sectors. Mercom’s CEO and co-founder Raj Prabhu discusses the energy storage trends tracked in this quarter with Energy-Storage.News, especially in light of the drop in venture capital funding this quarter.

This week, at the Energy Storage Summit in London on Thursday, Solar Media brings together a broad range of stakeholders as the country goes through some defining moments in infrastructure and energy policy. Here are some interesting recent developments in the space – and who you might expect to meet if you make it to Twickenham Stadium.

While the effectiveness of flow batteries in islanded situations is quickly being recognised, on the grid, the cost of providing that storage is still seen as something of an inhibitor to uptake. Andy Colthorpe spoke with the RedT CEO, Scott McGregor, to get his views on how flow batteries can thrive – and why lithium-ion is not the enemy.

Deploying battery storage at grid level is relatively uncharted territory, but a number of pioneers’ projects are now in the ground. Patrick Leslie and colleagues at RES, which built some of the first wave of storage projects, teases out the key technology, finance and regulatory lessons the industry can learn from these early experiences.