While Germany is one of the world’s leaders in solar PV and now an early leader in residential energy storage, utility-scale energy storage is still “under discussion” and not yet a mature proposition, industry figures have said.

In a major energy strategy upheaval, the South Australian government is providing significant funding to support energy storage projects, starting with a 100MW grid-connected battery that will be the largest in the country.

Led by a record-breaking final quarter, energy storage reached 336MWh in 2016, growing 100% in megawatt-hours from 2015’s installed capacity, despite staying roughly flat in megawatts with 221MW deployed last year.

The Australian body in charge of promoting investment in renewables has criticised “heavy-handed” regulation of home energy storage systems in certain states.

UK regulator Ofgem and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) are planning to publish their response to the smart power call for evidence (CFE) in late May or early June.

From Energy-Storage.News’ publisher comes The Global Energy Storage Opportunity, a special online-only supplement magazine that looks at some of the exciting recent developments in all segments from microgrids and residential to grid-scale and commercial.

The potential for storage to help stabilise the grid has finally been recognised in the UK, where battery projects took all of the 200MW on offer in a recent frequency response tender. David Pickup looks at the evolving role of storage in the future grid and how further policy support can help it flourish.

A ‘multi-stakeholder’ approach, where different parties benefit from batteries at different times, could be the key to enabling communities to deploy grid-connected energy storage systems, DNV GL has said.

Solar storage batteries for households in Australia enjoyed a more than 1000% percent rise in the number of annual installations from 2015 to 2016, according to a new industry report.

An energy trade association which includes Apple, energy storage maker AES and solar giants SunPower and First Solar in its leadership has welcomed the proposal by US energy regulator, FERC, to remove barriers to participation in wholesale markets for energy storage and distributed energy resources (DERs).