As we move into a new decade, the question is whether the burgeoning US energy storage industry will be able to maintain its current path of rapid growth. All signs suggest that it will, argues Ricardo F. Rodriguez of Navigant Research.

Sungrow has supplied a 1500Vdc, DC-coupled PV-plus-storage system to support SolarSmart, a programme run for customers unable to put solar on their own homes by Florida municipal utility Jacksonville Electric Authority (JEA).

New technologies and designs aimed at driving down the cost of energy storage facilities are currently the focus of intense industry R&D. Sara Verbruggen reports on DC coupling, an emerging system architecture that many believe will soon become the industry standard.

Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe shares his top takeaways from last week’s Solar Power International convention, incorporating Energy Storage International and hosted this year at the North American Smart Energy Week in Utah.

DC-coupling of combined solar and energy storage plants could be a more effective way to save energy that would otherwise be clipped and ‘lost’, benefitting the grid and helping efforts to reduce the amount of carbon pumped into the air, the COO of Fluence has said.

Despite the huge strides energy storage has made, significant hurdles remain before the technology in its many guises can be claimed to have fulfilled its massive potential. E-S.n editor Andy Colthorpe assesses the key successes and ongoing challenges for this indispensable part of the future power system.

Energy storage inverter and power conversion company DynaPower has delivered its first ever DC-to-DC converters to large-scale solar-plus-storage projects in the US, while Ideal Power has attained UL certification for two of its products.

There is no shortage of vendors looking to offer batteries and energy storage for the residential market. Greg Wolfson of Enphase discusses AC- and DC- coupling of batteries and why his company felt AC is the way to go.

By combining PV with a storage solution, homeowners gain from a variety of possibilities to increase self-consumption, improve system profitability, and get backup power. However, it is important to know how to select the right kind of storage solution. Lior Handelsman of SolarEdge discusses some of the main factors involved.