US renewable energy developer SunEdison is planning to power rural electrification and micro-grid projects in India with vanadium flow batteries, announcing that it plans to purchase 100 megawatt hours-plus from Imergy Power Systems.

Demand Energy, an energy storage company, and EnerSys, an industrial battery solutions company, have partnered with a luxury New York property developer to install 1MW of aggregated renewable energy across properties.

While solar and energy storage are not inextricably linked, at least not yet, storage helps households make the most of their solar power and one day could help grid networks make their final leap of faith. In the first of two blogs from the Energy Storage Europe conference and exhibition in Düsseldorf this week, PV Tech Storage talks to experts and industry figures as they tackled some of the biggest issues facing storage and renewable energy.

The increasing amount of PV installed in combination with electrical storage options is bucking the trend in the opposite direction for overall residential solar installations in Germany.

EV maker Tesla is looking to populate its stationary storage business, posting advertisements for more than 70 job openings on the company website.

SunEdison has made a significant first step into the grid-scale energy storage market, with the acquisition of US startup Solar Grid Storage.

US battery manufacturer, ViZn Energy, has teamed with financial services company, LFC Capital, on a programme to lease integrated solar and storage systems to property owners.

UK PV installer Martin Cotterell argues that the renewables industry needs something in place to make sure that battery systems are sold appropriately; for instance, there is the potential for customers to get charged extra for a battery ‘add-on’ that doesn’t really give them a whole lot of benefit.

Energy storage is likely to be worth “tens of billion dollars in the next five to 10 years” across a number of global regions, according to executives at solar microinverter firm Enphase.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has revealed that its home battery storage products will be available “fairly soon”.