Prices for Tesla’s stationary storage systems for homes, businesses and off-grid communities, to be packaged and sold in partnership with SolarCity, will begin at US$3,000, thought to be as little as a third of the price of comparable products previously available on the market.

The US Department of Energy’s Sunshot initiative has announced US$15 million in funding to aid the integration of solar into the electrical grid infrastructure using energy storage systems.

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

Barclays has voiced the opinion that solar PV-generated energy coupled with storage presents a long term disruptive risk to electric utilities in the US, as it was reported the bank’s investment arm had downgraded the entire electric sector of the US high grade corporate bond market.

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).