Hawaii has been namechecked as a ‘test bed’ for how grids can migrate to higher levels of PV penetration so often it has become something of a cliché. Stem’s VP for Hawaii operations, Tad Glauthier tells ESN about the projects that are going on, which lessons might be transferable to other regions – and which might not.

The organisation responsible for overseeing California’s bulk electric power system has approved proposals to accommodate more distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, energy storage, advanced inverters and demand response, onto the state’s grid.

Adobe is among the participants earning revenues from what is claimed to be an energy storage industry first – a trial rewarding California storage system users for conferring benefits to the grid.

At a recent London event hosted by UK storage manufacturer Moixa Technology, academic Jonathan Radcliffe of the University of Birmingham talks through some of the benefits – and barriers – to storage in the UK, as well as the wider implications for adding flexibility to electricity networks with batteries and related technologies.

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.

A new scheme to provide grid-balancing services directly from the batteries of electric vehicles (EVs) will be trialled by car maker BMW, in partnership with California utility company Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

The US-based solar division of Japan’s Kyocera and energy service start-up STEM have become the latest partnership to offer integrated solar-plus-storage to commercial customers in the US, beginning with sales in three states including California.

PV Tech Storage interviews Paul Bundschuh of Ideal Power, whose company will supply Sharp’s new Smartstorage system with power converters and has also developed a three-port hybrid battery converter to better enable grid-resilience and micro grids.

One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the USA is looking to use a series of measures that are likely to include customer-side energy storage in order to stave off the need for US$1 billion worth of infrastructure investment.