The Solar Media Podcast returns for a new season to mark the new year. In this first episode of 2021, sponsored by SKE Engineering, Andy Colthorpe and Liam Stoker cast their gazes at the horizon and profile what the immediate future holds for the solar and storage industries.

Tom Bensen, Nick Warner, Ryan Franks and Michael Bowes from energy storage and fire safety expert group Energy Safety Response Group (formerly Energy Storage Response Group) discuss some of the most important aspects of creating a safe battery storage industry.

A large-scale solar PV system paired with pumped hydro energy storage could cover as much as 25% of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i’s energy demand, pushing the island’s total share of renewables in its energy mix past 80%.

A round-up of energy storage news in brief; this edition has a distributed, behind-the-meter flavour.

The world’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) so far has gone into operation in Monterey County, California, US retail electricity and power generation company Vistra said yesterday.

Updated 7 January 2020: Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) will supply lithium-ion batteries to energy storage system integrator FlexGen for two large-scale energy storage projects totalling 220MWh in Texas.

System integrators – companies that create large-scale and commercial and industrial battery energy storage system (BESS) solutions to order – have driven the market’s rapid growth so far but face a diversifying landscape marked by competition and consolidation in the years ahead.

NextEra Energy Resources said in December that wind turbines had been successfully installed and became operational at Skeleton Creek, a hybrid renewable energy project the company is building in Oklahoma, US.

The sovereign wealth fund of Qatar has agreed to invest in energy storage solutions provider Fluence in a transaction that values the technology company at more than a billion dollars.

Let’s take a look at the news stories that had the most page views on the site since the beginning of 2020. The list covers everything from always-in-focus topics of cost reduction and competitiveness, to fire safety, innovation and commercialisation of new technologies and, of course in this year, COVID-19.