The UK’s government has shied away from supporting large volumes of solar and other distributed energy technologies through subsidies, but commercial and industrial energy storage and solar-plus-storage could be a huge market opportunity in Britain and abroad.

Panellists at the opening day of Solar and Off-Grid Renewables Southeast Asia event in Bangkok warned that investors who come on board quickest are going to gain a huge advantage as solar-plus-storage starts to become viable at scale.

Energy storage has reached a point of commercial viability in the UK according to the chief executive of redT energy, who said the company had now reached “the right price” for an economic proposition.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a US non-profit organisation which is funded by electric utilities, will test and evaluate a battery storage system paired with a 1MW solar array in Cedartown, Georgia.