Residential energy storage system provider Eguana will begin deploying devices to operate as a connected virtual power plant on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

Energy storage can make a “positive contribution everywhere” in Southeast Asia, but the industry needs to be proactive in helping market regulators to understand the best ways to facilitate its role in their energy systems.

This edition of news in brief focuses on recent acquisitions of three US developers of solar and storage projects, taken from the pages of our sister site PV Tech.

Texas’ ERCOT market has been one of the US’ fastest-growing regions for renewable energy, but recent weather-driven events have made it clear that more needs to be done to ensure electricity system reliability. The answers are already here, affordable and practical, argues Wayne Muncaster, vice-president at commercial demand response platform technology group GridBeyond.

SK Innovation has established a partnership with US energy storage system integration solutions and services company IHI Terrasun Solutions that could see the South Korean manufacturer’s lithium-ion batteries used in Terrasun projects from 2022.

Stem Inc said that its portfolio of aggregated battery energy storage systems was called into action to help balance electricity networks across four different states and provinces in the US and Canada during heat waves in June.

US Congress has been urged to unlock US$50 billion of federal spending power to implement upgrades to the country’s electricity sector, including measures to support energy storage.

California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has approved a 11.5GW procurement of electricity capacity from greenhouse gas-free sources, while also approving a resolution that campaigners said will have severe negative impacts on the state’s residential solar and solar-plus-storage growth.

Growth in renewables and corresponding market pricing is the key driver for the commercialisation and global adoption for vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) and an important reason why we will see further growth for this technology over the years to come, says Ed Porter of Invinity Energy Systems.

Verdant Microgrid, a developer of distributed generation projects ranging from 1MW to 20MW largely for commercial and industrial (C&I) sector customers, has secured a US$150 million financing agreement to further its activities.