Solar storage batteries for households in Australia enjoyed a more than 1000% percent rise in the number of annual installations from 2015 to 2016, according to a new industry report.

Energy technology company JLM Energy announced Thursday that it has signed off on an agreement with Soligent Distribution — the largest pure-play solar distributor in the Americas.

An energy trade association which includes Apple, energy storage maker AES and solar giants SunPower and First Solar in its leadership has welcomed the proposal by US energy regulator, FERC, to remove barriers to participation in wholesale markets for energy storage and distributed energy resources (DERs).

Residential energy storage company sonnen announced Wednesday that is close to completing a new North American Innovation Center which will merge the company’s US manufacturing operations with product research and development.

A liberal arts college in California will get a 1MW/2MWh energy storage system from Green Charge that could save the facility US$800,000 over its lifetime.

There have been modest year-on-year increases in the number of PV installers in Germany and the UK offering energy storage to their customers, according to a survey by EUPD Research.

Last year was a “seminal year” for energy storage, where the technology moved from “dream to reality”, according to impact investor Nancy Pfund, one of the earliest backers to Tesla and SolarCity.

The complexities of combining batteries and solar microgrids are explained by Sam Duby, who is co-founder and director of research and development at mini-grid technologies company SteamaCo Ltd and consults for TFE Consulting. TFE Consulting is a strategy consulting firm focusing on accelerating the energy transition in emerging markets and is active in Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

The Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), an organisation comprising the municipal utilities of 10 cities and one irrigation district, has ordered a potential 1MW of ice battery storage systems from Ice Energy.

Financial services giant Morgan Stanley has anticipated that the US energy storage market will grow faster than current consensus expectations, while Deloitte has earmarked the technology for exponential growth – although not perhaps this year.