Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.

Jigar Shah has said that the addition of backup power helped persuade a California school district to add energy storage as well as going solar and that adding batteries can help “decision makers” see the true value of PV.

The financial services arm of engineering giant Siemens will be offering no-money-down options for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in the UK to purchase energy storage systems.

A Swiss fund aimed at encouraging institutional investors to get on board with energy storage has reached its first closing at €66 million (US$70.4 million).

A “first-of-its-kind” project financing deal will bring 50MW of Tesla Powerpacks online in California, Macquarie Capital, the investing and advisory arm of global finance corporation Macquarie Group has said.

US solar installer Sunworks has selected Sharp’s SmartStorage system as it expands its offering.

Deploying battery storage at grid level is relatively uncharted territory, but a number of pioneers’ projects are now in the ground. Patrick Leslie and colleagues at RES, which built some of the first wave of storage projects, teases out the key technology, finance and regulatory lessons the industry can learn from these early experiences.

Secure financing for energy storage is likely to be the main driver for its deployment, the chief of the UK’s biggest solar developer has said, echoing views given to Energy Storage News by analysis firm Lux Research.

Workable alternatives to utility power involving energy storage are beginning to emerge with new and innovative business models, according to an investment advisor who worked on Younicos’ recent US$50 million “land grab”.