British vertically-integrated utility Scottish Power has come under scrutiny from the demand side response (DSR) sector after proposing to national regulator Ofgem that de-rating factors applied to large scale battery storage should be extended to those used to provide DSR in the Capacity Market.

The “devil is in the detail” when it comes to making regulatory changes in the US to open up wholesale markets for energy storage to participate in, a regional chief of regulator FERC has said.

The capacity market is rapidly becoming “outdated” after the latest auction failed to secure capacity and value for new technologies like energy storage, which is now in “a state of flux” following changes to de-rating factors.

Over 9,000MWh of battery energy storage could be deployed in Britain over the next five years as the sector enjoys a trend towards “explosive growth”, a market analyst has said.

The latest auction for the UK’s Capacity Market cleared at a record low price at the end of last week as battery storage projects seemingly struggled to compete.

GE has formed a strategic alliance with UK energy infrastructure company Arenko to develop grid scale batteries in the UK, starting with a 41MW system in the Midlands.

Battery storage and demand-side response have continued to play a crucial role in the UK’s power mix, together landing more than 500MW of contracts in the most recent T-1 Capacity Market auction.

The vast majority of battery projects set to compete in Britain’s upcoming Capacity Market (CM) auctions will face significantly decreased de-rating factors after it emerged that most projects are still set to use either 30 minute or one hour duration batteries.

With the release of the most recent Capacity Market pre-qualification register, the UK’s utility-scale battery storage pipeline has now reached nearly 8GW. Solar Media market research analyst Lauren Cook takes a deep dive into the projects that made it through pre-qualification, and what these results mean for the projects likely to get built in 2018.

Changes to the de-rating factors for battery storage projects competing in the UK’s Capacity Market (CM) will push the sector towards longer-duration batteries, while potentially sparking a shift towards energy arbitrage as a source of revenue for shorter duration applications. David Pratt heard from several industry sources following last week’s announcement.