Hickory Park Solar project, a 200MW PV power plant in the US state of Georgia, will be equipped with a battery energy storage system that allows the local utility company to maximise the benefit of the renewable resource.

At the Energy Storage Summit US, a panel of experts discussed the impact of the ITC on the uptake of co-located assets, but also the challenges of operating within its framework.

The US could see new mines and raw material production “scale up” as demand for battery energy storage systems and grid resilience increases over the next decade, according to Margaret O’Riley, battery, automotive and electrification business recruitment lead for Duke Energy Corporation.

Battery storage systems have been proven to be “extremely lucrative” for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in the US, but a lack of customer knowledge of regulations and supply shortages of battery cells could yet stymie the market’s growth.

While interconnection queues for America’s electric transmission and distribution operators are “swelling up” with growing numbers of energy storage projects, some of the big challenges ahead include enabling fair market participation for both standalone storage and storage paired with generation.

The opening up of independent system operator (ISO) services as a result of FERC 841 has led to a “huge difference” in storage dispatch strategy for merchant markets with concurrent bidding now the typical strategy.

An energy storage project pipeline of 500MW in Texas’s ERCOT market is being developed by Dallas-headquartered distributed energy resources developer and operator Hunt Energy Network.

The drive towards longer duration energy storage will likely be multifaceted, with different technologies finding their place both in front of and behind the meter.

The challenges of explosion prevention – with flammable gases needing to be vented “very rapidly” – in the event of a battery fire have been highlighted at this week’s Energy Storage Summit USA.