Canadian Solar has signed a new partnership with UK-headquartered energy storage optimisation specialist Habitat Energy.

Dr Kai-Philipp Kairies, a battery scientist and CEO of battery software start-up ACCURE, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about how his company aims to be a ‘software-as-a-service’ provider in negotiating the complexity of managing batteries.

Tokyo’s main power company is using blockchain distributed ledger technology to assess how customers on its new renewable energy tariffs could use solar, batteries and electric vehicles to trade energy via the grid.

Lichtblick, a retailer of ‘green electricity and green gas’ headquartered in Germany, is looking to take its concept for integrating multiple distributed generation sources into a single network into international markets.

The unsung hero in the grid revolution is the data that enables new technology and provide more control of an increasingly complex system. Andy Colthorpe explored the growing role of Big Data in energy networks in a feature article for the downstream solar technology journal PV Tech Power.

Aggregating connected energy storage systems to create ‘virtual power plants’ is likely to become a big part of the next phase of storage, according to the executive director of the US-based Energy Storage Association.