Aggregating connected energy storage systems to create ‘virtual power plants’ is likely to become a big part of the next phase of storage, according to the executive director of the US-based Energy Storage Association.

While debates over renewable energy targets continue to rage at the political level in Australia, Panasonic has signed a deal with three utility companies to pair its energy storage systems with rooftop solar.

A small number of regional markets are leading the way for energy storage deployment in the US, but this is likely to change in the near future, an analyst from GTM Research has said.

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.

Lessons learned from solar could help develop financing solutions for energy storage that could be “key” to unlocking the potential of the technology, strongly benefiting PV in the process, Jigar Shah has said.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is set to launch a technology roadmap for electricity storage at the solar industry conference and exhibition Intersolar Europe next month. IRENA technology roadmap analyst Ruud Kempener spoke to Andy Colthorpe about the project.

SunEdison co-founder Jigar Shah will deliver a keynote address at next week’s Energy Storage Association annual conference and exhibition in Texas. Other organisations and companies speaking at the event represent a bona fide “who’s who” of the US energy storage market landscape.

The UK is lagging behind many other countries in both private and public investment into the deployment of modern electricity storage. Despite some measures which represent a good start, the new British government needs to act to remove the “roadblock” to this activity, blogs Anthony Price.

One analyst has predicted that 12,500 residential PV storage systems could be installed in Germany in 2015, more than the total number of systems installed with support from a government scheme in its first two years.

France’s government has launched a tender for 50MW of projects combining solar power with energy storage systems on Corsica and its overseas islands territories.