US President Barack Obama has visited battery manufacturer Saft America’s automated lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Jacksonville, Florida, claiming that government policy on clean energy helped support employment at the facility.

Energy storage provider AES Energy Storage has signed a multi-year agreement for Korean battery supplier LG Chem to provide 1GWh of lithium-ion battery capacity for AES’s energy storage systems, which a US analyst has said could take around seven to eight years to install and be worth an estimated US$300 million.

While lithium-ion is expected to hold its leading position as the battery chemistry of choice for at least the next decade, it would be wise to consider investing in its possible successors, according to Lux Research.

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has selected five companies to deliver nine energy storage projects with a total capacity of 16.75MW.

Energy storage manufacturing is the fastest growing business unit for tool maker Manz, the company has told PV Tech Storage.

We’ve been talking over the past few months with a large number of key and emerging players in the UK’s energy storage industry. With our show Solar Energy UK coming up next week, we thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you the thoughts of two of those players on the relationship between renewables and energy storage.

Multinational conglomerate corporation GE has announced Current, a new energy company that combines GE’s LED, solar, energy storage and electric vehicle businesses with its Predix platform to single out and provide cost-effective and efficient energy solutions to customers.

Microinverter specialist Enphase has revealed details of plans for two residential solar-plus-storage trials in Australia and New Zealand and publicly put a figure on prices for its AC battery product.

The UK, catapulted into being one of the world’s leading regions for solar PV deployment unexpectedly over the past couple of years, is now facing just as unexpected challenges in the form of drastic FiT cuts of as much as 87%. While this is undoubtedly bad for the industry, there are some possible avenues for policy adjustments that won’t require subsidising as well as strategies the industry could adopt to make self-consuming solar with storage a more viable option, writes Simon Daniel of Moixa Technology.

SimpliPhi Power will enter the residential and light-commercial storage market with its non-toxic lithium ferrous phosphate battery.