Prices for Tesla’s stationary storage systems for homes, businesses and off-grid communities, to be packaged and sold in partnership with SolarCity, will begin at US$3,000, thought to be as little as a third of the price of comparable products previously available on the market.

Tesla is set to make an announcement on stationary storage battery systems that has kept the tech world watching with bated breath. The event takes place tonight at 8pm Pacific Time / 4am Greenwich Mean Time / 5am Central European Time.

Raj Prabhu of cleantech research and communications firm Mercom Capital talks through some of the interesting findings and trends highlighted by his company’s recent “Smart Grid, Battery/Storage, Efficiency Funding and M&A” report for Q1 2015.

The hotly anticipated announcement tomorrow of two products in the Tesla’s stationary storage range, teased and trailed by a series of cryptic and not-so-cryptic tweets and interview snippets, has led to mainstream media taking an interest in the stationary storage sector and what it could offer like no other news we’ve heard to date. And there hasn’t even been any actual news yet. Andy Colthorpe spoke to energy storage expert Cosmin Laslau at Lux Research, about what to expect.

AES Energy Storage has revealed details of its current project pipeline including its first deployments in Europe and expansions in Chile and California.

A Japanese utility which last year temporarily suspended new grid applications for large-scale solar, sparking a wave of similar suspensions by other utilities, will install a huge battery project aimed at integrating a higher capacity of renewable energy generation.

Investment by UK tech entrepreneur and inventor James Dyson into battery company Sakti3 was among the biggest deals in the sector in the first quarter of this year, a new report has found.

One firm exploring the possibilities of contributing to grid stability by installing energy storage at solar farms is German PV plant technology provider Belectric. The company will install two large-scale energy storage projects in the UK and connected an energy storage system at a large-scale solar power plant in Germany late last year. The system at Alt Daber is the first such installation in Europe to operate on the primary operating reserve market. Andy Colthorpe interviewed Belectric’s UK managing director Duncan Bott and Tim Mueller, chief executive of Belectric’s solar research and innovation subsidiary, Adensis, about the Alt Daber project earlier this year.

An academic based in north east England has called on the UK government to give energy storage “its own asset class with accompanying rules for appropriate regulatory treatment” as well as investing in the technology in order to enable future energy bill savings.

Con Edison Development has purchased an 8MWh battery system from GE for installation in Central Valley, California.