In the previous instalment of this blog, we looked at how our respondents from across the energy storage industry had viewed 2018’s biggest challenges. This time out we look at what some of 2018’s biggest successes were.

Andy Colthorpe spoke with Janice Lin of the California Energy Storage Alliance on what sort of role energy storage will play in reaching the ‘100% carbon-free retail electricity’ goal of the state’s SB100 legislation. This is Part 2 of a feature interview originally included in Solar Media’s quarterly journal PV Tech Power.

Andy Colthorpe spoke with Janice Lin of the California Energy Storage Alliance on what sort of role energy storage will play in reaching the ‘100% carbon-free retail electricity’ goal of the state’s SB100 legislation. Part 1, with the second half to follow later this week on Energy-Storage.news.

A proposal by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to deploy large-scale energy storage to replace peaking natural gas plants has been approved by the state’s regulator.

Two community energy suppliers in California followed up an agreement to buy power from a large-scale solar-plus-storage farm with another, project developer EDF Renewables has announced.

NantEnergy has acquired Sharp Electronics Corporation’s US-based energy systems and services business, which develops and delivers energy management systems across the country.

Two community energy groups in California have partnered to buy the energy output of a 150MW solar farm with 180MWh of battery energy storage from Recurrent Energy, the US-based utility-scale solar project developer subsidiary of Canadian Solar.

Four energy storage projects that have been proposed as an alternative to expensive transmission and distribution (T&D) network upgrades, totalling 38.5MWh of capacity, have been awarded to developer EsVolta by California utility Southern California Edison (SCE).

It’s likely a strong indication of the way the world is adopting renewable energy rapidly that just under a month ago, one of the best-established trade shows for solar in the US featured what seemed like almost as much space dedicated to national and international energy storage companies and technologies, as it did for solar.

While the relationship between renewable energy and energy storage is a close one, combining storage with natural gas is also an important stepping stone measure in the transition to 100% renewables, Energy-Storage.news has heard.