Zinc redox flow batteries could be a “viable substitute” for simple cycle peaking power plants in the US, especially as the increase of solar penetration adds concerns over grid stability, according to a new whitepaper.

Nine companies conducting research and development projects in energy storage have partnered with, and are set to receive financial support from, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Sharp, ABB, SMA and Bosch are among the big names readying new energy storage products for the UK PV market. Andy Colthorpe caught up with them at the Solar Energy UK show to find out what tech fits best for the UK’s nascent storage sector.

Solar microinverter specialist Enphase has announced its first move into energy storage, launching an energy management system which includes an AC battery, at the Solar Power International show in Las Vegas this week.

Ideal Power, which supplies its battery converters to Sharp’s Smartstorage product in the US, has launched a range of power converters that the company claims are capable of adding grid-tied storage to megawatt-scale solar power projects.

Many in solar and other renewable energy industries are looking ahead to a future defined by self-consumption of on-site generated power and energy storage. As a key part of that, the role of the inverter is changing.

Tesla’s much talked about Gigafactory should be up and running in 2017. PV Tech Storage spoke to analyst Dean Frankel of Lux Research about some of the details and talking points of the EV maker’s ambitious plan to hit ‘500,000 battery packs by 2020’.

Lithium iron phosphate battery-based energy storage systems from German manufacturer Automatic Storage Device Sonnenspeicher (ASD) will be installed in new houses from WeberHaus, which makes prefabricated homes for the German market.

A ‘double zero energy’ home with energy storage and solar PV systems has been launched in the US, as a result of the partnership between solar manufacturer and developer SunPower and homebuilder KB Home.

German mechanical engineering company Manz has supplied a lithium-ion battery production line to a research centre for the commercial production of the batteries, initially for the e-mobility sector, at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW) in Ulm.