Battery assets have been used in the UK’s Balancing Mechanism for the first time via a virtual power plant, marking the start of what could be a new era for energy storage business models in Britain.

Energy storage and other flexibility providers with units as small as 1MW will soon be able to access ‘Great Britain’s core flexibility market’ under reforms being proposed by transmission system operator, National Grid.

Recent moves in California to develop large-scale energy storage with four hours’ storage duration are just the beginning of a move towards using batteries as a capacity resource, the president of flow battery company CellCube has said.

“There are already many Gigawatt-hours of batteries on wheels”, which could be used to provide balance and flexibility to electrical grids, if the “ultimate potential” of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology could be harnessed.

Britain’s transmission system operator National Grid has confirmed it will roll out the use of its Ancillary Services Dispatch Platform (ASDP) to a number of services over the next year following the successful dispatch of fast reserve using battery storage last month.

Tim Humpage, head of EPC at British Solar Renewables, discusses some of the key ‘ingredients’ to his company’s work on the 49.9MW Pelham battery, completed on behalf of Statera Energy late last year.

Islands around the world provide ideal conditions for trialling new approaches to energy provision. David Pratt reports on how cutting-edge renewable energy, storage and smart grid technologies are being rolled out to geographically isolated communities. Part 2 of this feature article continues with a look at how some of these projects could provide real-time lessons for the global clean energy transition.

Homeowners in Ireland can now access grants worth hundreds of euros to fund the installation of solar and energy storage systems as the government launches its first micro-generation scheme for the technology.

A planned commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage project in England could increase onsite solar consumption to the point that no power will be drawn from the grid on some days of the year.

Islands around the world provide ideal conditions for trialling new approaches to energy provision. David Pratt reports on some of the work going on globally to bring the benefits of cutting-edge renewable energy, storage and smart grid technologies to the world’s geographically isolated communities. To be continued later this week on Energy-Storage.news.