Aimed at ensuring reliability of electricity supply in the era of renewable energy, India’s Central Electricity Regulatory Commission has drafted ancillary services market regulations allowing for energy storage and demand response resources to participate.

Launches of a new “allstar” commercial energy storage system and a large-scale storage solution designed to be moved from one site to another with ease demonstrate the changing needs of customers for versatile and flexible energy storage options.

A grid-forming project in South Australia combining power electronics and battery storage to integrate wind and solar at a site near the end of a 120km 33kV transmission line is being replicated worldwide, the Head of Grid Edge Solutions at Hitachi ABB Power Grids has said.

A new project in the Netherlands will see a number of mobile battery storage units used to power construction sites and outdoor events provide up to 3MW of frequency control ancillary services for grid operator TeneT.

The locations for three ‘community battery’ projects have been announced by Australian electricity distribution company Ausgrid, set to be deployed next year.

Dr Kai-Philipp Kairies, a battery scientist and CEO of battery software start-up ACCURE, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about how his company aims to be a ‘software-as-a-service’ provider in negotiating the complexity of managing batteries.

Bringing a proven, flexible, virtual power plant (VPP) platform into North America is a step towards “unleashing the potential” of distributed energy, the chief commercial officer of UK-headquartered solutions provider Kiwi Power says.

In the past few months Spain has announced a 2.5GW energy storage target by 2030 and Portugal is hosting a solar tender with a significant add-on option for storage. Clean Horizon’s experts Corentin Baschet and Tanguy Poirot spoke with Andy Colthorpe on the role batteries and other storage can play in the Iberian Peninsula’s energy transition in the present and future.

The business case for behind-the-meter (BTM) battery storage in Australia appears to be positive, according to a University of Queensland report on the performance of a 1.1MW / 2.15MWh Tesla battery energy storage system (BESS).

AES claims that 20MW of energy storage it deployed in the Dominican Republic just a few weeks before Hurricane Irma, assisted the island nation in keeping power supplies running even as devastation struck.