A large-scale storage system co-located at a German solar farm by the PV plant’s developer Belectric, has been given the green light to operate in the grid-balancing frequency response market.

Tesla’s grand entrance to the stationary storage market has been (largely) welcomed but question marks remain over the company’s business model. Andy Colthorpe gauges the latest reaction and explores the options facing Elon Musk.

Tesla reported losses of around US$0.36 per share in its quarterly earnings announcement yesterday, despite a flurry of activity around its stationary storage launch last week – yet the company still outperformed the expectations of the investment community.

Battery manufacturer Leclanché and a maker of ceramic separators and electrodes owned by Electrovaya have signed a deal to scale up their respective efforts in the lithium-ion battery space.

More details have emerged on inverters for Tesla’s new home battery system, to be made by Fronius and SolarEdge, while the EV-maker’s energy storage will be installed at demonstration and commercial projects for US utility Edison International.

Tesla’s Powerwall home energy storage system will join the US market at a “remarkably low price”, according to one analyst PV Tech has spoken to following the announcement from Silicon Valley last night.

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.