PV manufacturers Hanwha Q Cells and Sunpower have both signed deals to bring home energy storage to residential solar customers in Europe and in the US respectively.

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), part of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has offered to transfer its lithium-ion cell technology to Indian companies to support them in establishing lithium-ion cell production facilities in India.

An Indian clean energy firm hopes to bring down the cost of lithium-ion cell manufacturing below INR15,000/kWh (US$222) by setting up a facility in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Only large scale and intelligent energy storage can realistically solve the issue of variable renewable electricity generation. Patrick Clerens, Secretary General at the European Association for Storage of Energy and a member of the advisory board for Electrify Europe, argues that we can make it happen – but only if we get the incentives right.

Xcel Energy has filed a plan which would retire two coal plants, add significant capacities of renewables and gas – and deploy 275MW specifically in combination with PV.

Advisory and certification house DNV GL is supporting Turkish plans to source 30% of total electricity generated in the country from renewable sources, carrying out a feasibility study for combinations of solar PV and energy storage.

The residential energy storage market in the US has just enjoyed one of its biggest growth spurts so far, although action is mostly centred in specific states with supportive policies and conditions.

Australia could be getting its first lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’, with some progress made in the past few days for a facility proposed to be built in Queensland.

Swiss vertically-integrated battery and energy storage system and equipment maker Leclanché has followed sonnen in netting a significant amount of investment to go into the second half of 2018, securing CHF75 million (US$76 million) from its main existing investor.

Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.