In a world where energy storage will play an increasingly important role – in balancing renewables, reinforcing the network, and reducing energy costs – how important will ‘brand’ be?

Britain could be the best “scale-up” market in the world when it comes to deploying energy storage batteries, leaning on years of experience in solar PV, the chief of one manufacturer has said.

While lithium-ion is rapidly racing ahead to become the “de facto grid storage solution” and is the most popular technology choice by far, vendors of other types of batteries are also targeting the market, with varying degrees of success.

In the past month we have heard a lot about the future of storage in the UK. From plans by the government and regulator to enable greater flexibility across electricity networks to changes to technical rules governing the market, there’s been a sense that a great deal is changing. Analyst Lauren Cook of Solar Media’s in-house market research team takes a look at the utility-scale pipeline figures behind the headlines.

Florian Mayr, partner at Apricum – The Cleantech Advisory, reflects on knowledge gained in energy storage’s rapidly growing markets and offers his five key ingredients for success.

The world pipeline for energy storage on the utility side of the meter has doubled in the past year, reaching 3.4GW, according to new research by I.H.S.

According to the latest GTM Research figures, energy storage is coming into its own and is no longer confined to a handful of US states. 21 states now have 20MW of storage projects proposed, in construction or deployed. Further, 10 states have pipelines of more than 100MW.

Financial services giant Morgan Stanley has anticipated that the US energy storage market will grow faster than current consensus expectations, while Deloitte has earmarked the technology for exponential growth – although not perhaps this year.

Software for energy storage systems will be a mixture of in-house solutions by integrator/ developers and third-party providers, in an industry segment set for a steep rise in value, according to one expert.

New value propositions which will radically change the way energy is generated and used by end-customers are already accelerating energy storage market growth. Julian Jansen of Delta-ee takes a look at three distinctive types of business model which are taking shape.