In June, Japanese renewable energy developer Pacifico Energy made the first trades from BESS assets in the country’s power markets.

The success in a recent capacity market auction of large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Belgium is a sign of the European country’s energy storage market maturing, Energy-Storage.news has heard. 

With many climate protection advocates as well as the industry itself calling on Europe’s lawmakers to recognise the importance of energy storage, a “significant slowdown” in 2019 is expected to be countered with a more positive outlook going forwards.

The software platform now incorporates data from a SolarEdge inverter, meaning clients can run residential storage dispatch simulations and work out the optimum schedule for operations.

A salmon farm in Norway will become more environmentally friendly with the addition of a Tesvolt-supplied battery energy storage system, reducing the run time of diesel generators onsite by up to 18 hours a day, saving on costs and working time spent on maintenance.

The business models and technologies underpinning the development of stationary energy storage markets are evolving rapidly. Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Jan Figgener and David Haberschusz of RWTH Aachen University look at some of the key trends driving the sector forwards, in a paper which first appeared in PV Tech Power’s Energy Storage Special Report 2019.

While lithium-ion enjoys the most media and customer interest at the moment, alternative technologies for storing energy could become competitive – if investors are willing to take them on to the extent that manufacturing efforts can be greatly scaled up.

The UK’s second subsidy-free solar farm, and the first by a local authority using battery storage, has been completed by West Sussex County Council in a project that ticked “every box” and will generate significant income over the next 25 years.

Battery storage technology costs will have to fall by a further 30% before projects in the UK are feasible without lucrative frequency response revenues, a leading investor has said.