EDF is set to optimise 49.9MW of battery storage owned by UK developer Pivot Power in a bid to enable “greater flexible electricity capacity for the grid”.

SPONSORED: EDF are one of the largest aggregators of distributed flexible assets in Europe with significant presence in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium. Chris Regan, Head of Energy Trading Services, speaks to Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe about EDF’s view on battery storage and optimisation, the impacts of the pandemic on this market and what the future could look like.

Industry voices in the UK have said that electricity market activity during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the network will become prohibitively expensive and possibly unmanageable without the further rapid deployment of energy storage.

A roundup of news in brief from the energy storage industry, this time with a special focus on the UK market.

Utility company RWE has begun marketing a tech solution through which data centres, which already integrate batteries for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, can use their UPS to “help stabilise the grid”.

Blockchain technology and a digital trading platform enables sonnen’s latest virtual power plant (VPP) project in northeast Germany to store wind energy that would otherwise be curtailed and ‘lost’.

Ireland’s DS3 is a “really interesting market” but there is a lack of clarity of what the enduring arrangements for procuring DS3 look like, says Statkraft Market’s head of UK energy storage, Nick Heyward.

It has always been anticipated that by the early 2020s, the feed-in tariff would have tapered away in Japan’s booming solar market. Andy Colthorpe speaks with analyst Izumi Kaizuka at RTS Corporation to learn more about what the future holds for post-subsidy solar in Japan.

For Japan, the famous 4Ds of the energy transition – creating a distributed, decarbonised, decentralised and digitised grid – will involve a huge scaling up of smart solutions on a market basis, various sources have told Energy-Storage.news.

EU decision-makers have recognised the key role energy storage can play, integrating it into the EU’s Clean Energy Package (CEP) in some critically important ways. Valeska Gottke at BVES looks at how Germany’s industry is working towards these same goals.