The vice-president for marketing and product strategy at one of only two inverter suppliers to Tesla says it has promised customers that it can “get the battery within six months”.

There is a greatly expanded amount of energy storage on offer at the European edition of the Intersolar trade exhibition and conferences this year, including the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) Europe show hosting its own conference for the first time. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to canvas opinions on the big trends and topics from a number of industry figures.

Aggregating connected energy storage systems to create ‘virtual power plants’ is likely to become a big part of the next phase of storage, according to the executive director of the US-based Energy Storage Association.

A small number of regional markets are leading the way for energy storage deployment in the US, but this is likely to change in the near future, an analyst from GTM Research has said.

SunEdison co-founder Jigar Shah will deliver a keynote address at next week’s Energy Storage Association annual conference and exhibition in Texas. Other organisations and companies speaking at the event represent a bona fide “who’s who” of the US energy storage market landscape.

SolarEdge, one of only two companies at present to produce Tesla Powerwall-compatible inverters, will launch its expanded range of residential and commercial solutions at Intersolar Europe next month.

A renewable energy and energy efficiency consultancy, IT Power (ITP), will use funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to trial the effectiveness of six brands of lithium-ion batteries for enhancing grids and increasing the deployment of renewable energies.

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.

Ecotricity, a UK-based supplier of renewable and clean energy, will trial a home energy storage box later this year.

Tesla’s Powerwall home energy storage system will join the US market at a “remarkably low price”, according to one analyst PV Tech has spoken to following the announcement from Silicon Valley last night.