Plans by Italy’s grid operator to allow for the interconnection of energy storage to the network have resulted in the country’s first grid-connected solar-smoothing storage facility being inaugurated.

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.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a non-profit organisation funded by electric utilities to conduct research on issues related to the electric power industry in USA, is leading a project that will see renewable energy development company SunEdison supply battery systems for nine net-zero energy homes in California.

A small municipal utility will be the recipient of what is thought to be one of the first US projects to try out a combination of revenue streams from a storage battery linked to a solar farm.

After dropping a series of strong hints – including those given in interviews with PV Tech Storage – Enphase has confirmed that its AC battery will be launched in Australia first.

Swiss-headquartered power and automation specialist ABB is to use its PowerStore technology, involving flywheels with wind and batteries plus solar, to integrate renewable energy and reduce reliance on diesel fuel in two separate micro-grid projects in Africa.

Tom Tipple, regional VP for Imergy Power Systems, a flow battery maker headquartered in Fremont, California, recently visited the PV Tech Storage offices to share his thoughts on the global market for energy storage.

Germany’s market leader for intelligent lithium ion energy storage systems has signed up as the first Technology Partner for the new Energy Storage division of PV Tech Storage’s publisher, Solar Media.

On a visit to heat battery maker Sunamp’s office, Scotland’s energy minister Fergus Ewing outlined aims to collaborate with his counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on nationwide storage strategy, while Sunamp CEO Andrew Bissel says greater understanding of heat source batteries is needed for the technology to be included.

News in brief: Australia gets its largest battery storage system to date, Tesla man persuaded to go back to Sonnenbatterie and Gildemeister installs PV-linked flow battery systems in Czech Republic.