The cost of energy storage technologies is set to reduce significantly over the next five years driven by economies of scale and improvements in both technology and standardisation, according to a new report from financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard.

A US state-backed organisation is partnering with the government of Singapore to build and test up to three energy storage systems using a variety of technologies on the island state.

Unsubsidised, commercial solar-plus-storage projects of the type being executed in Puerto Rico could demonstrate how to overcome many of the challenges imminent for the world’s PV markets, according to one company with experience in the field.

A hydro power plant in Germany has installed a 3MW lithium-ion battery made by manufacturer ads-tec to perform frequency regulation.

The €32 million (US$36 million) Hydrogen Mobility Europe programme was launched today, with Germany, the UK, the Scandinavian countries and France signing up with the aim of expanding hydrogen refuelling station coverage across the continent. Andy Colthorpe speaks to one of the companies behind the project and power-to-gas energy expert Christopher Hebling of Fraunhofer ISE about this “modern fairytale” technology.

Europe’s largest energy storage battery project could conceivably also be its best looking, as these pictures show. The two companies behind the project, which saw a large-scale energy storage system deployed in the small German village of Feldheim, also decided to call on professional street artists and invited schoolchildren to get involved with designing the outside of the system’s enclosure.

News in brief: Germany’s tiny renewable energy village gets biggest battery; Tesla-backers invest in Kazakh-bound Primus Power and industry partners match US$2 million grant for California distributed resources trial.

A large-scale storage system co-located at a German solar farm by the PV plant’s developer Belectric, has been given the green light to operate in the grid-balancing frequency response market.

One firm exploring the possibilities of contributing to grid stability by installing energy storage at solar farms is German PV plant technology provider Belectric. The company will install two large-scale energy storage projects in the UK and connected an energy storage system at a large-scale solar power plant in Germany late last year. The system at Alt Daber is the first such installation in Europe to operate on the primary operating reserve market. Andy Colthorpe interviewed Belectric’s UK managing director Duncan Bott and Tim Mueller, chief executive of Belectric’s solar research and innovation subsidiary, Adensis, about the Alt Daber project earlier this year.

The remote Faroe Islands in northern Europe are to benefit from a major energy storage system, which as well as helping integrate renewable energy sources, will also operate on a commercial basis providing grid balancing and other ancillary services.