Pope Francis has called for the worldwide development of renewable energy sources and adequate energy storage technologies in order to drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption and the related emissions from carbon dioxide and other polluting gases.

John Grimes of Australia’s Energy Storage Council reports back from a recent visit to China, where he took a look at the processes and state of play of some of the country’s battery manufacturers.

UK energy efficiency solutions provider Anesco has bolstered its portfolio of operational storage solutions, installing its second commercial battery at a solar farm.

A proposed “sun tax” on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain could increase payback time from around 16 years to 31 years under a new draft Law put forward by the Spanish Government. Hefty fines for infringement, capped at €60 million (US$67.7 million), have also been proposed.

Renewables-powered energy systems that work independently of the grid at warehouse locations in India will be provided with flow battery-based energy storage solutions by US company Imergy.

Last week the US Energy Storage Association (ESA) hosted its annual conference and exhibition in Dallas, Texas. Andy Colthorpe spoke to Jim McDowall of battery and energy storage system provider Saft, which won the show’s Outstanding Acheivement Award.

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.