Shell has continued to scale-up its interest in distributed energy by participating in a €60 million (US$70.23 million) investment round by German battery storage firm sonnen.

Automotive giant Nissan has confirmed the UK launch of its home solar-plus-storage product, first revealed in February this year.

A new consortium, V2GB (Vehicle to Grid Britain), will develop driver-centred business models to support the rapid roll out of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies, enabling millions of electric car batteries to become a vital part of the UK energy system. National Grid, carmaker Nissan’s European Technical Centre, Moixa and energy consultancy Element Energy have come together to help work out how to reward drivers who use electric vehicle (EV) batteries to support the power network. Chris Wright, the Chief Technology Officer of UK home battery company Moixa, talks us through the mission behind V2GB and the potential impact of the study.

There are now just three weeks left to nominate your projects for the Solar Power Portal and Energy-Storage.News Awards 2018.

JLM Energy, a US maker of residential ’microstorage’ systems that pair with individual solar panels, is leaning on its US$25 million project finance fund to develop larger storage projects for commercial businesses.

Axiom Exergy, a US manufacturer of energy storage units that use stored energy for cooling buildings and produce, has netted close to US$8 million from investors including Shell’s venture capital unit and Tesla battery guru JB Straubel.

Solar Media, the publisher of sites including Energy-Storage.News and PV Tech, has just launched the latest edition of the annual Global Energy Storage Opportunity report for this year – available now as a free download.

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units – and other distributed energy equipment – into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) can greatly increase the value of home energy storage systems for a range of stakeholders including grid operators, utilities and their customers, according to SolarEdge, which has just launched a VPP software platform.

The Thailand subsidiary of Delta Electronics, which makes equipment including solar inverters, has confirmed that it is investigating energy storage systems as part of a clean energy drive, following reports in local press.