California’s success in embracing renewable energy technologies, particularly solar, has brought with it challenges around reliability of supply to consumers. Janice Lin and Jack Chang of Strategen explore how the Golden State is pioneering the deployment of energy storage as it pursues its goal of complete energy decarbonisation by 2045.

The dramatic fall in cost, occuring alongside the mass roll-out of home storage systems in Germany since 2013, has highlighted the potential of decentralised batteries in virtual power plants to utility companies and grid operators.

Idaho-headquartered KORE Power claims it will have 6GWh annual production capacity for its lithium battery energy storage solutions, based on high-power nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells, up and running during the first quarter of next year.

Democratic presidential hopefuls discussed their environment and energy priorities during a televised town hall meeting in New York City earlier this week.

A £55 million (US$67.8 million) fund has been earmarked for five projects in the UK looking at developing the next generation of battery storage technology.

The EU’s latest Clean Energy Package (CEP) is “undoubtedly positive” for energy storage, with the technology expected to play a key role in meeting the legislation’s ambitious “32% by 2030” renewables target, Brittney Elzarei, senior policy officer at trade organisation EASE has said.

Eguana Technologies has signed a deal with contract manufacturer Jabil for the production of residential and commercial energy storage systems.

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is set to launch a demonstration of how solar panels, energy storage and customer-sited demand side response (DSR) can be used to drive down costs of the IESO’s network.

Energy use by air conditioning can be both expensive and taxing for the environment, with the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, set to trial a three-storey ‘water battery’ to reduce both energy demand and cost.

PV Tech Power, the downstream solar industry journal from our publisher Solar Media, has reached its fifth ‘birthday’ and Volume 20 of the quarterly magazine, out now, includes a special report on energy storage.