Google’s smart home division has joined a group of companies including Ford, Sunpower and Sunrun in founding a new partnership centred around scaling the market for virtual power plants (VPP).

Swell Energy has raised US$120 million funding towards its 600MWh virtual power plant programme across the US.

Virtual power plant in Western Australia will demonstrate how distributed energy resources can help stabilise the electricity grid.

Smart charging and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) specialist The Mobility House has raised a US$50 million internal Series C.

Another edition of our news in brief from around the world in energy storage.

Energy stored in EV batteries will be traded on European power markets by The Mobility House, a specialist in vehicle-to-grid technologies.

Electric vehicles have been used to help balance the grid in what has been dubbed a first for vehicle-to-grid tech in the UK.

This edition of news in brief focuses on recent developments in the US distributed energy resources (DER) market.

Technologies from US V2G solutions company Nuvve and NGK’s sodium sulfur batteries will provide ancillary services and other grid stability applications in Japan.