Heating and cooling uses more than half of Europe’s energy, but the potential “immense value” of thermal energy storage has barely been explored, the head of an energy storage trade group has said.

More schools in North America will be able to ‘green’ their energy supply and hedge against future rises in the price of electricity, with Jigar Shah’s Generate Capital taking on six solar-plus-storage projects in California.

India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued a new order seeking to improve the quality of components in the solar sector, including batteries to be used for stationary energy storage.

South Korean industrial group Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction has self-executed a solar-plus-storage project at its head offices in Changwon, using this and other projects on its own premises as a learning curve for external projects.

Our publisher Solar Media produces the quarterly technical journal PV Tech Power, aimed at the downstream end of the solar PV industry, and the September 2017 edition, Volume 12 in the series, is available now.

Kodak, the tech company best known for producing photographic film and imaging equipment, has inaugurated the Kodak Cell Assembly Center, a new facility aimed at accelerating development and scale-up of advanced batteries for energy storage.

US energy storage designer and manufacturer SimpliPhi Energy has installed a combination of solar PV and batteries to power air-conditioning units at a school in Hawaii, with a further 1.4MWh of such projects in the pipeline.

Swiss engineering and automation company ABB will be supplying Dong Energy’s 90MW Burbo Bank wind farm in the UK with battery energy storage.

The government of Jay Weatherill, premier of South Australia, has just formally launched three Calls for Proposals under the Renewable Technology Fund, a programme to foster private investment and accelerate project development in clean energy technologies.

Distribution network operators in parts of Australia could be restricted from owning or operating energy storage assets, in a measure proposed by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) to stimulate the market for behind-the-meter batteries.