A new project is set to test the feasibility of turning a UK car park into a MW-scale battery to provide power on demand to the electricity grid from electric vehicles.

This special supplement on energy storage looks at a global market which has already come a long way and shows no sign of looking back. From residential to grid-scale, to microgrids and vehicle-to-grid, from safety to finance, we’ve condensed some of the biggest topics and themes into a handy collection which we hope will help illuminate and inform you all. Energy storage is growing into a cornerstone of the grid (and is arguably even more important off-grid); a vital component of decentralised, decarbonised and even digitalised future energy systems. Yet so many misconceptions and concerns remain and there is still so much work to be done in helping stakeholders gain a better understanding of what batteries – and other forms of energy storage – can do.

German automobile giant BMW is to launch a new ‘Digital Charging Service’ (DCS) for its portfolio of electric vehicles early next year, promising to integrate EVs with national grids and on-site renewable generators.

The merging of Tesla and SolarCity into a single entity creates a new company well-placed to deliver a full range of energy-related products and services to consumers, analysts have said.

Low carbon transport body Cenex has launched a technology demonstration trial of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems in three major European cities.

Andy Colthorpe and Ben Willis profile some of the companies and technologies making waves in the fast-changing world of stationary energy storage, in a feature article which originally appeared in the seventh issue of PV Tech Power.

Utility E.ON and battery storage engineers redT have partnered to install a demonstration solar-plus-storage system at the HQ of warehousing and logistics firm JB Wheaton in Somerset, England.

Silicon Valley’s Green Charge Networks, which mainly delivers energy storage systems for commercial customers and is involved in a deal to re-purpose ‘second life’ EV batteries, has been acquired by Engie.

We often hear about the so-called ‘synergy’ between EVs and energy storage in the home. Not merely the fact that the majority of both applications for storage tend to have a lithium-ion battery-driven heartbeat at their core, but a lot has been made of the fact that the two industries could spur each other on to both lower costs and increased adoption. One company in the UK has taken on some of the challenges involved in integrating these and other related technologies.