There exist opportunities for flow batteries to target areas of the market lithium-ion “can’t provide in an economically justifiable way,” the chief commercial officer of Invinity Energy Systems has said.

Why have battery energy storage and solar-plus-storage become such a key part of the US energy industry in a way that they have not in Europe, as yet? Corentin Baschet at technical consultancy and market analysis firm Clean Horizon took some of our questions.

While the renewable energy industry has suffered significant blows such as loss of employment during the COVID-19 crisis, venture capital (VC) funding into the battery energy storage sector in the first quarter of this year nonetheless saw a significant increase over the previous year’s equivalent period.

With a quarter of all solar project proposals in the US including batteries, transmission grid operators across the country are taking a variety of steps to evaluate the role that can be played in wholesale electricity markets by hybrid power plants – defined as generation coupled with energy storage.

Massachusetts has issued an emergency regulation to its Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) programme, that includes mandating the addition of energy storage on projects over 500kW.

Despite a subdued year in 2019 and a challenging start to 2020 caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the outlook for energy storage remains strong, says Julian Jansen of market research group IHS Markit, taking a deep dive across segments and geographies.

AutoGrid has struck a deal to supply its distributed energy resources management system (DERMS) platform to NRTC, a cooperative association serving more around 20 million homes in rural America.

Powin Energy has launched a set of three battery storage system products using CATL’s large form factor lithium-ion cells, including a system solution capable of 4+ hour duration and backed by a 20-year warranty.

The upstream segment of the US energy storage industry is expecting “more widespread and greater revenue declines” and bigger reductions in employment in the first quarter of 2020 than the downstream, a survey by the national Energy Storage Association (ESA) has found.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam two days ago signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), finally putting into law a 3.1GW energy storage target and a goal to achieve 100% renewable and clean energy by 2050 for the US Commonwealth State.