Home batteries in a South Australia delivered significant revenues from their first six months of participation in a virtual power plant to help balance the grid, even with only an initial 1MW – 2MW of aggregated customer systems participating.

Realising the theoretical promise of solar-wind-storage hybrids is far from straightforward, with individual projects likely to vary considerably. Ben Willis examines some of the technical complexities of combining different technologies into a single, profitable entity.

California, the world’s fifth largest economy and a global innovation engine, is confronting ambitious clean energy and GHG reduction goals. California must achieve 60% renewable energy and 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, and a fully decarbonised power sector by 2045.

Jan Andersson, market development manager at Wärtsilä, explores the need for large-scale energy storage solutions to aid the proliferation of electric vehicles and their necessary charging infrastructure.

Last year saw large-scale storage come of age in the USA and Canada, with some heavyweight storage portfolios starting to take shape. Speaking to four leading North American developers, Andy Colthorpe takes the pulse of a market poised for growth.

With industry heavyweights eyeing up developments of solar-wind-storage projects, Liam Stoker uncovers what’s really driving hybrid power plants, and the regulatory and financing hurdles that must be surpassed to deliver them.

In this article, experts at consultancy Apricum examine with some simple “reverse engineering” how recent low solar-plus-storage PPAs in the USA were achieved, yet another example of the competitiveness of energy storage and new market opportunities emerging via storage-plus-renewables projects.

While most conversation around energy storage focuses on batteries, a recent Solar Energy Corporation of India tender achieved the lowest tariffs for renewables with storage using a much more ‘old-fashioned’ technology, writes Kowtham raj VS of NITI Aayog.

We sat down with Vincent de Rul, Director of Energy Solutions at EDF, based in the UK, to discuss the long term opportunities that battery storage and related technologies represent for energy flexibility and the future of renewable energy.

While we have avoided risking the spreading of false information or reacting too hastily to an ever-changing situation, here are some of the latest developments. This blog will be updated as and when new information or views arrive.