Despite the fundamental drivers remaining unchanged, Covid-19 will certainly leave its mark on the post-pandemic energy storage world. Florian Mayr at cleantech advisory and consultancy group Apricum examines how the energy storage industry can best adapt to the “next normal”.

UPDATED 14 July 2020: The European Union has agreed that energy storage will be vital in its clean energy economy of the future as Members of European Parliament (MEPs) voted overwhelmingly to adopt a strategy report putting energy storage and hydrogen at the heart of its agenda.

What has been described by the head of its federal regulator as the “single most important act” the US could take in smoothly transitioning to a “clean energy future” will become reality, with distributed energy storage set to join wholesale markets and compete to provide services on a “level playing field” with fossil fuel resources.

The European Union (EU) has just published its Strategy for Energy System Integration, including pledges to support renewables and energy storage as the continent targets carbon neutrality by 2050.

The company behind what looks set to be Norway’s first gigawatt-scale manufacturing facility for lithium-ion battery cells has secured pre-construction financing of NOK130 million (US$13.85 million) which it said will “enable rapid development” of the plant.

The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) announced today that five minute settlement windows for spot prices in the National Electricity Market (NEM) will be implemented from 21 October 2021.

A subcommittee of the US House Committee on Appropriations has approved more than a billion dollars in support for developing energy storage deployment, research and manufacturing in a funding bill for the 2021 Fiscal Year.

What will the impact of COVID-19 be on the energy storage market? And how best to learn to adapt to whatever the ‘next normal’ will be? Florian Mayr at cleantech advisory and consultancy group Apricum examines the bigger picture of “energy storage vs the virus”.

Solar Media’s Liam Stoker and Andy Colthorpe return for the July 2020 episode of the Solar Media Podcast.

One of the first large-scale solar farms in Japan so far to be equipped with battery storage in order to meet the requirements of a local grid operator and utility, has been completed on the island of Hokkaido.