Germany’s sonnen introduced a scheme a while back in which customers pay a flat, reduced rate for their electricity each month while the company aggregate their batteries together to benefit the grid – and now the offer has been extended to electric vehicle owners.

Dr. Rahul Walawalkar of the Indian Energy Storage Alliance also predicts at least two lithium-ion cell manufacturing plants of 500MWh+ capacity to start construction in India this year.

At least two global technology leaders could set up Gigafactories to manufacture lithium-ion cells in India in the next couple of years, and most major Indian firms are setting up energy storage divisions, according to the head of the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA).

Orders for distributed energy storage and the rise of an electric mobility market have kick-started a battery assembly push in India.

French car maker Renault has brokered a partnership to provide second-life battery units to UK home storage supplier Powervault.

Leaning on an existing track-record and manufacturing scale of electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries remains an essential component to delivering cost-effective energy storage, BYD global sales director Julia Chen has said.

Swedish start-up Northvolt, which is run by two former Tesla Motors executives, plans to build a huge lithium-ion battery factory in the Nordic region, giving Tesla and Panasonic’s Nevada Gigafactory a close rival within Europe in terms of size.

A new project is set to test the feasibility of turning a UK car park into a MW-scale battery to provide power on demand to the electricity grid from electric vehicles.

India’s first grid-scale solar-plus-storage tender from Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has received very strong interest with a total of 13 developers submitting bids.

The Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) has set out a three-year research programme to improve the performance of lead batteries in energy storage and electric vehicles. It has called for investment of up to US$2 million per year from governments and research agencies to fund its studies, which will run through 2018.