In its home territory of Germany, energy storage provider Sonnen is making a play to replace utilities, but its business models in the US will instead emphasise cooperation with existing energy suppliers.

China-based EV and storage specialist BYD is to supply batteries to projects built by Silicon Valley commercial energy storage provider Green Charge, which is a subsidiary Engie North America.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) have both financed the Kennedy hybrid solar, wind and storage project in north Queensland, which is being developed Windlab and Eurus Energy.

Australia’s government has dropped plans for introducing a Clean Energy Target (CET) post-2020, opting instead for a technology-neutral plan that it claimed would prioritise reliability and bringing prices down.

Electricity and heat generator and retailer Vattenfall is developing a third party model for energy storage deployment, which will see the Swedish firm deploy batteries alongside UK solar farms.

US trade association groups, the Energy Storage Association and Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), have called on their respective industries to assist hurricane relief efforts in the US and its territories.

Submissions for Thailand’s first 300MW hybrid PPA scheme, which encourages use of energy storage to supplement renewable energy generation, are due by 20 October.

State-run coal mining and power firm NLC India has auctioned a 20MW solar PV project to be combined with 28MWh of energy storage capacity in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

A distributed smart grid that can “heal” itself in the event of system components failing has energy storage and energy management software at its core, grid-scale system integrator Alfen has said.

One of the ‘value of energy storage’ questions that was being asked a lot two or three years ago was around the use of batteries and decentralised system architecture instead of traditional “poles and wires” grid networks. However, advancements in this area have been slow to materialise and Navigant Research’s recent ‘Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Deferral’ report sought to fill the knowledge gap. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to ask lead author Alex Eller three quick questions around the topic.