Energy storage-themed sessions at Solar Energy UK were extremely well attended and discussions were by all accounts lively and fascinating. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to go into some of the topics in more depth with some of the speakers.

The Swiss and Chinese power engineering firms ABB and BYD have revealed a collaboration to develop new storage technologies.

The Canadian province of Ontario is preparing to install a variety of new energy storage technologies after finalising details of a 34MW commercial-scale storage trial.

French battery manufacturer, Saft, has been awarded a contract to supply a lithium-ion battery system for use in a 12MW solar plant being built in Hawaii.

The first grid-connected energy storage facility in Canada, in the country’s leading solar province, Ontario, is now operational.

The US department of Energy has included energy storage projects in a US$4 billion loan guarantee programme announced yesterday.

Hawaii is inviting proposals for up to 200MW of storage in the face of regulatory demands and unprecedented distributed generation challenges. As Dean Frankel writes, the process could offer some answers to the conundrum of integrating higher volumes of renewable energy generation.

Energy storage technologies are not the “silver bullet” they have sometimes been hyped as, but nonetheless have a crucial role to play in a decarbonised electricity system, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

NEC Corporation has commissioned a 2MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system designed to ease the integration of renewable energy into the grid for Italian distribution system operator (DSO) Enel Distribuzione.

Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE institute is leading a research project into the development of solutions for a ‘super grid’ that would allow intercontinental transmission of power from renewable energy plants in Africa to Europe.