While some observers have breathlessly called 2015 the “Year of the Battery,” a more accurate description might be that we are seeing the dawn of the “Age of Energy Storage,” especially the winning combination of storage integrated with solar and emerging smart grid technologies, writes Panasonic’s Daniel Roca.

Sunamp, a Scottish manufacturer of heat batteries for domestic energy storage, including models designed to link with PV systems, has started serial production of its units from a base in the UK.

One UK energy storage company has compared its latest venture to the energy trading markets of California ISO, as it prepares to pay its customers for providing vital grid services through their residential systems.

24M Technologies, a battery company spun out of A123 Systems in 2010, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to supply its semisolid lithium-ion cells to NEC Energy Solutions for use in NEC ES’s integrated energy storage systems.

European inverter manufacturer SMA Solar Technology will supply equipment to a 200MW large-scale energy storage project in Korea, including 1,000 battery inverters.

Battery-based energy storage could provide up to 13 different services to the US electricity grid, while the usefulness of the technology increases the more ‘distributed’ it is along the system, according to a new report.

News in brief: Automotive battery maker Johnson Controls eyes Enersys, SolarCity announces 6MW solar-plus-storage for schools, executive of state-owned Swedish power company Vattenfall joins Younicos.

We’ve been talking over the past few months with a large number of key and emerging players in the UK’s energy storage industry. With our show Solar Energy UK coming up next week, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you the thoughts of two of those players on the relationship between renewables and energy storage.

Microinverter specialist Enphase has revealed details of plans for two residential solar-plus-storage trials in Australia and New Zealand and publicly put a figure on prices for its AC battery product.

The UK, catapulted into being one of the world’s leading regions for solar PV deployment unexpectedly over the past couple of years, is now facing just as unexpected challenges in the form of drastic FiT cuts of as much as 87%. While this is undoubtedly bad for the industry, there are some possible avenues for policy adjustments that won’t require subsidising as well as strategies the industry could adopt to make self-consuming solar with storage a more viable option, writes Simon Daniel of Moixa Technology.