Co-location of large-scale energy storage systems with solar and wind generation is not an immediate prospect for the UK’s clean energy markets, although interest is there, an expert panel said today at the Energy Storage Summit.

Transmission system operators in the US have begun making their moves to accommodate energy storage into their wholesale markets, with New England ISO and Southwest Power Pool both making filings in the past month.

Arizona utility Salt River Project (SRP) has followed up the recent completion of a 10MW battery storage system at a solar farm by beginning work on its first standalone grid-scale battery energy storage project.

Battery storage is of growing interest to commercial and industrial (C&I) entities in the UK, but the wider energy efficiency sector has seen Brexit and other policy woes send confidence to new lows.

There is a perception that “batteries cannot be long life assets”, but it depends very much on how they are designed and used, Dr Marek Kubik of Fluence has said, in a video interview with Energy-Storage.News.

Energy storage can be an extensive value enabler for existing customers of UPS systems, while attracting new commercial and industrial (C&I) users into the space, a spokesman for Vertiv has said.

Northern Powergrid (NPg) has called on the energy sector to collaborate to decide the future of network-scale energy storage after differences in the role of network owned and operated batteries emerged between differing distribution network operators (DNOs).

The energy industry is evolving towards more ‘enterprise platform’-based business models, enabling energy storage to play a vital role for businesses and the grid, NEC Energy Solutions (NEC ES) CEO Steve Fludder has said.

Already this year we’ve been able to learn directly about the energy storage market in Europe from the Energy Storage Summit in London at the end of February and Energy Storage Europe in Dusseldorf, which just took place last week. Andy Colthorpe summarises what he’s seen and heard.