Austin Energy, a publicly-owned electric utility in Texas, is delivering megawatt-scale storage systems as part of the US Department of Energy’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) project.

Whilst most of the federal incentive buzz for energy storage surrounds California’s Self-Generation Incentive Programme (SGIP), new bills from Hawaii and Maryland provide insights on how state storage incentives are moving beyond the Golden State.

Led by a record-breaking final quarter, energy storage reached 336MWh in 2016, growing 100% in megawatt-hours from 2015’s installed capacity, despite staying roughly flat in megawatts with 221MW deployed last year.

Power conversion specialist Ideal Power has received an order for 0.5MW of its 30kW power conversion systems (PCS) for commercial energy storage projects in Germany, from an unnamed customer or customers.

A local authority in London has procured a solar-plus-storage installation which the supplier claims will demonstrate that the technology can work at commercial scale in the UK.

German lithium-ion based energy storage system maker Sonnen says it achieved an undisclosed “seven-figure sales number” in the US in the first quarter of this year.

A push by US leasing giant SolarCity to serve small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with its commercial solar offering will be bolstered by a tie-in with the company’s energy storage solutions, a spokesman has confirmed.

Oil major Shell is to purchase 20MW of energy storage from Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS).

More details have emerged on inverters for Tesla’s new home battery system, to be made by Fronius and SolarEdge, while the EV-maker’s energy storage will be installed at demonstration and commercial projects for US utility Edison International.

Along with cost reductions in balance of systems (BoS) components and US$1 billion of investment, energy storage technologies can reduce the cost of commercial solar and drive the market segment forward in the US, a SolarCity spokesman has said.