More than a quarter of US commercial and industrial (C&I) electricity users could potentially use energy storage to lower premium rates they are charged during periods of high demand, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has found.

BYD has announced a tie-up with the inverter manufacturing division of Kostal, where the former’s latest high voltage energy storage systems will be paired with the latter’s PIKO brand inverters.

Commercial and industrial (C&I) businesses in the UK are to be offered free energy storage services from Omnio, a new firm set up to address the ‘overlooked’ market of small, distributed energy users.

Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) will deliver commercial energy storage projects based around its ‘Hybrid Electric Buildings’ concept to one of North America’s biggest retailers, Walmart.

To date, Primary Control Reserve (PCR) has dominated the energy storage debate in Germany with more than 100MW of battery storage installed in 2016 alone specifically for participating in the PCR market. At the same time, with close to 25,000 systems sold in 2016, residential storage has been stealing the limelight in the behind-the-meter segment. Julian Jansen of Delta-ee looks at how his team expects the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment to start catching up.

A liberal arts college in California will get a 1MW/2MWh energy storage system from Green Charge that could save the facility US$800,000 over its lifetime.

SolarCity and Green Charge have announced two commercial scale energy storage systems in California, one completed and the other yet to be built, which will each save the host over US$100,000 a year in energy costs.

Seeking to delve beyond headlines, hype and overarching market forecasts, renewable energy veteran and executive recruitment specialist David Hunt spoke with some of the energy storage industry’s leading figures to understand how the various market segments are growing and how things could develop from here.

Behind-the-meter storage is forecast to become a larger segment than grid-scale storage by 2021, and could pose a potential threat to utilities, according to Bloomberg Energy Finance (BNEF) senior analyst Logan Goldie-Scot.

Battery manufacturer SimpliPhi will sell a high-voltage battery for the C&I market.