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.

While research published this week demonstrates that the US as a whole is embracing energy storage technology, with regulator FERC’s recent wholesale market ruling likely to have a “significant impact”, the picture varies greatly when looking from state-to-state, an analyst has said.

The UK’s Valuation Office Agency (VOA) is calling on the sector to engage with the development of business rates that will be applied to energy storage projects in 2022, including those attached to subsidy-free solar farms.

A project in Jamaica, pairing utility-scale solar with battery energy storage at a microgrid could become “a model for other countries in the Caribbean and beyond”, the head of the country’s main utility has said.

Mis-selling, insurance risk and the failure of associated costs to fall alongside sell prices could hold back greater battery storage deployment in Britain, a panel discussion has revealed.

The “devil is in the detail” when it comes to making regulatory changes in the US to open up wholesale markets for energy storage to participate in, a regional chief of regulator FERC has said.

The capacity market is rapidly becoming “outdated” after the latest auction failed to secure capacity and value for new technologies like energy storage, which is now in “a state of flux” following changes to de-rating factors.

Two of the country’s Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) have said they are tackling the issue of so-called ‘grid grabbers’ through greater interventions in the country’s grid connection queues.