In response to Massachusetts Legislature passing a bill raising the state’s renewable energy standard and another encouraging clean energy and energy storage use during peak hours, solar and energy storage trade groups SEIA and ESA offered contrasting views.

Solar industry veteran and PV Tech blogger Edgar A. Gunther was told by the New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s office that clean energy legislation proposed for the state is “on his desk” but appear to be no closer to receiving his approval.

A unanimous vote taken by the US regulator FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) which would allow energy storage and other distributed energy resources to play into wholesale markets has been hailed as a “significant step” forward.

Legislation proposed in Florida could see solar and energy storage become part of the go-to solution for providing energy resiliency against natural disasters and helping restore power in their aftermath.

UK energy regulator Ofgem has published guidance outlining how developers and asset owners can add storage to their subsidised solar installations without losing accreditation to the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Feed-in Tariff (FiT).

New York has become the latest US state to decide to support energy storage through its legislature and will be setting targets for deployment of the technologies in the coming weeks.

The US national Energy Storage Association (ESA) has advocated that the nation should aim to deploy 35GW of energy storage by 2025, claiming it could result in US$4bn of network cost savings and generate 167,000 jobs.

Nevadan legislators have passed a number of bills to incentivise energy storage in the state for approval from governor Brian Sandoval.

Whilst most of the federal incentive buzz for energy storage surrounds California’s Self-Generation Incentive Programme (SGIP), new bills from Hawaii and Maryland provide insights on how state storage incentives are moving beyond the Golden State.

Two Congressional representatives in the US have united across party political lines to form the Advanced Energy Storage Caucus, a group dedicated to educating Members of Congress on the benefits of the nascent technology.