With Intersolar Europe and the accompaying ees Europe events taking place this week for PV systems and energy storage respectively in Munich, we thought it timely to speak with Philipp Schröder, managing director for sales and marketing at Germany’s leading storage provider, Sonnen.

Siemens has been contracted by German public utility Stadtwerke Schwäbisch Hall to deliver and install a 1.4MWh battery storage system to be used to market primary control reserves.

The latest project to be dubbed “Europe’s largest battery” will be a 50MWh project from Dutch energy supplier Eneco and Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi Corporation in Jardelund, Germany.

Belectric has developed PV plants on every continent of the globe except Antarctica and also delivers energy storage system projects and offers a wide range of energy storage solutions including in-house battery systems, turn-key large-scale battery storage as well as scalable container solutions. Managing director of Belectric Solar and Battery, Frank Amend, spoke to Energy-Storage.News about the company’s recent acquisition by RWE subsidiary innogy and where the company sees energy storage (and solar) going.

To date, Primary Control Reserve (PCR) has dominated the energy storage debate in Germany with more than 100MW of battery storage installed in 2016 alone specifically for participating in the PCR market. At the same time, with close to 25,000 systems sold in 2016, residential storage has been stealing the limelight in the behind-the-meter segment. Julian Jansen of Delta-ee looks at how his team expects the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment to start catching up.

Solarwatt has unveiled the latest evolution of its MyReseve system, a fully modular storage system that can be customised to suit the demands of any application.

The German state of North-Rhine Westphalia looks set to go ahead with a 200MW pumped hydro energy storage project in a coal mine, as well as a smaller energy storage demonstration project which includes a flywheel from Stornetic.

While Germany is one of the world’s leaders in solar PV and now an early leader in residential energy storage, utility-scale energy storage is still “under discussion” and not yet a mature proposition, industry figures have said.

There have been modest year-on-year increases in the number of PV installers in Germany and the UK offering energy storage to their customers, according to a survey by EUPD Research.

News in brief: Sunverge launches AC-coupled systems, whether South Australia’s blackouts could have been a different story with batteries, German government approves model region project for renewables, storage and grids.