India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST), a single tax applicable across the whole of the country, will be lowered for lithium-ion batteries by 10%, in a move which has been welcomed by the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA).

UK transmission network operator (TNO) National Grid has used a new web-based platform to dispatch ancillary services using battery storage in the first example of the new system being implemented across its reserve products.

Investment into the Ontario market for commercial energy storage has received another big boost, with US energy storage provider Stem Inc announcing today a significant cash injection from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan group.

Battery installations are underway at a European Regional Development Fund-backed project deploying low carbon infrastructure on the Isles of Scilly, in a model that it is hoped could be widely replicated elsewhere.

Hyderabad-headquartered firm Greenko Energies has received state government approval for a huge renewable energy project involving 1GW of solar, 550MW of wind and 1.2GW of pumped energy storage in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

Tom Kenning of PV Tech/Energy-Storage.news visited a village in the heart of the North Indian plains where Uttar Pradesh borders Bihar, to see how a bold mix of biomass, solar and energy storage technologies is transforming local businesses by providing round-the-clock clean energy at prices cheaper than those of the main grid – all the while helping to solve India’s long struggle with power theft.

In the second part of our interview with Valts Grintals, analyst at Delta-ee we discuss why behind-the-meter energy storage, including commercial and industrial (C&I) and residential installations, contributed so much to the market’s recent success.

The UK’s transmission system operator National Grid’s redesigned Capacity Market targets around 50GW of reserves up to 2023 and could be an early step towards longer duration energy storage batteries.

Halfway through 2018 and large-scale battery storage in the UK has reached over 450MW installed capacity, with around 250MW being completed this year alone. This is made up of projects bigger than 1MW, including larger behind the meter projects that have begun to emerge.

Commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage in Europe, described by one analyst as “beginning to take off”, is the “most exciting” segment of the market at the moment, according to BYD’s global service partner.