Assets are up for sale following the bankruptcy of EnSync, a networked smart home solutions provider from the US which has been using battery energy storage to aggregate connected systems for energy trading and other services.

This year has already seen “significant acceleration” of activity in the global grid-connected energy storage market, with 4.3GW expected to be deployed this year, analysis firm IHS Markit has said.

The capabilities of virtual power plants (VPPs) to provide capacity as well as frequency regulation services to the grid in Australia will be demonstrated through a new integration trial.

A contract with utility Southern California Edison (SCE) has led to Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) supplying 2GWh of grid services from just 60MWh of energy storage during 2018, with one analyst dubbing the feat an “impressive milestone”.

Walking around Energy Storage Europe this year it was obvious that the show, like the market, has grown from a small handful of “strong believers” as one source put it, to a forward-looking show focused on a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.

Solar-plus-storage systems in ordinary households will provide 20MW of energy capacity in New England, with Sunrun announcing the award of a contract from the state’s ISO (independent system operator).

National Grid, in its capacity as the UK’s Electricity System Operator (ESO), last week launched a new ‘Distributed Resource Desk’ in its control room in a move hailed as a “huge step forward” for electricity flexibility markets.

EDF Energy, one of the UK’s ‘Big Six’ major energy suppliers, is seeking to build a portfolio of domestic batteries to take into energy services markets by offering discounted energy storage units to consumers via a new partnership with manufacturer Powervault.

Cloud-aggregated virtual power plants using residential or C&I battery storage as part of a smart energy management system can benefit the grid, integrate renewables and EVs and hopefully add a powerful long-term value proposition for home storage. Andy Colthorpe and David Pratt report on how some of the UK’s first VPP projects are proving the concept.

Energy storage and other flexibility providers with units as small as 1MW will soon be able to access ‘Great Britain’s core flexibility market’ under reforms being proposed by transmission system operator, National Grid.