The “devil is in the detail” when it comes to making regulatory changes in the US to open up wholesale markets for energy storage to participate in, a regional chief of regulator FERC has said.

Regulators, policymakers, experts, developers, utilities, aggregators and of course, energy storage industry participants will fill out the Victoria Park Plaza in London next week to discuss everything impacting the deployment of energy storage.

A unanimous vote taken by the US regulator FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) which would allow energy storage and other distributed energy resources to play into wholesale markets has been hailed as a “significant step” forward.

We often hear about California’s leading position in solar and latterly in energy storage. Perhaps lesser known than direct policy support for energy storage and renewable technologies is the way California’s network operator (CAISO) is starting to reconfigure how it procures demand response, with a positive impact for energy storage – and particularly behind-the-meter assets, as Ted Ko, policy director of Stem, explains.

Energy storage companies “have suffered significant and detrimental harm” from changes to rules governing the frequency regulation market in US regional transmission organisation (RTO) PJM Interconnection’s service area, the Energy Storage Association has said.

According to the latest GTM Research figures, energy storage is coming into its own and is no longer confined to a handful of US states. 21 states now have 20MW of storage projects proposed, in construction or deployed. Further, 10 states have pipelines of more than 100MW.

An energy trade association which includes Apple, energy storage maker AES and solar giants SunPower and First Solar in its leadership has welcomed the proposal by US energy regulator, FERC, to remove barriers to participation in wholesale markets for energy storage and distributed energy resources (DERs).

There is a significant opportunity for energy storage under the Trump administration, the US Energy Storage Association has said.

Energy storage should be properly valued and supported at federal level in the United States, according to a government document analysing and evaluating energy policy released by officials of the outgoing Obama administration.

US energy storage had a fairly quiet period in the third quarter of this year deploying just 16.4MW/31.4MWh but enjoyed a record quarterly sum of US$660 million of corporate investment.