The colossal solar boom Italy wants to drive in a decade could lie beyond reach if developers do not act to embrace energy storage more decisively, industry players have argued at a recent event.

US-based energy storage technology provider Powin Energy has claimed it has a pipeline close to 500MWh of projects under contract, including recent awards totalling 70MWh for customers in North and Central America and in Italy.

After reporting last week on the findings from EMMES, the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage from Delta-ee and trade association EASE, which demonstrated a big rise in installations by MWh in 2017 across the continent, we delved further behind another record-breaking year with the report’s lead author, Valts Grintals of Delta-ee.

Tesla is negotiating with the government of Armenia over supplying a grid-scale storage system, while Italy’s grid operator revealed it is collaborating with the EV and smart energy tech maker to “study new techniques of energy storage”.

A subsidiary of Enel is jointly developing a large-scale lithium-ion battery system project with wind power developer ENERTRAG, in what will be the multinational utility’s first energy storage project in Germany.

The European electricity storage market has seen an impressive growth over the past two years. Whereas in 2015 some 300MWh of battery storage capacity was newly installed, just two years later in 2017, more than 700MWh was added. Delta-ee’s Valts Grintals gives you some highlights and pinpoints some recent trends across the continent.

While the global energy storage industry has continued its pace of rapid growth during the past year, well-established markets remain highly concentrated in specific regions of the world. Alex Eller of Navigant Research discusses many of the factors influencing growth trends for energy storage at both utility-scale and distributed levels.

French hybrid energy storage solutions provider Electro Power Systems has secured an equity-linked financing deal to the sum of €30 million (US$31.88 million) with the European Investment Bank (EIB).

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.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has done the rest of the storage industry a big favour by putting a price point on lithium-ion batteries, according to the CEO of Sonnenbatterie’s North American operations.