Energy storage could be considered the “great hope” for the renewable energy industry in Britain, according to the head of policy at the Renewable Energy Association (REA).

Senator Martin Heinrich has proposed granting tax relief for purchasers of energy storage systems, in a similar way to how the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is applied to residential solar PV purchases.

While headlines about energy storage in Australia have been dominated by news of batteries in large-scale utility projects and the residential sector, the country’s government and renewable energy agency have identified numerous possibilities for developing pumped hydro storage assets.

Following an announcement earlier this month that Alfen will build the Czech Republic’s first large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS), the Dutch grid-scale system integrator has just completed a megawatt-scale project in Belgium.

Two US Senators introduced a bill in Congress at the beginning of this week that would require the national Secretary of Energy to establish research and demonstration programmes and deployment strategies for energy storage, if passed.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has launched a new programme to electrify every willing household in the country by 31 December 2018, using solar, energy storage batteries and LED lighting.

India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) is debating how and whether to introduce a mandate for solar and wind projects above a certain size to be coupled with energy storage.

UK-based renewables developer Anesco says the inclusion of battery storage has been central to the economic viability of the country’s first subsidy-free solar farm, a 10MW site the company has just unveiled in the east of England.

The secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Anand Kumar has stressed the importance of energy storage to the overall renewables sector and invited industry to come and set up battery manufacturing in India.

Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.