A planned energy storage system backed with a diesel generator could remove the need to build an expensive undersea cable to serve the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts in the US.

China-based EV and storage specialist BYD is to supply batteries to projects built by Silicon Valley commercial energy storage provider Green Charge, which is a subsidiary Engie North America.

The largest grid-connected energy storage system in Massachusetts will be used to determine the value of the technology throughout the US Commonwealth territory, supported by a Department of Energy Resources (DOER) grant.

Using just 351.9kW of PV and 1MWh of energy storage in a microgrid, a tiny island off the Massachusetts coast successfully met more than 50% of its electricity demand over summer.

Developer Deepwater Wind has applied to build a 144MW offshore wind farm, coupled with 40MWh of battery-based energy storage from Tesla, off the coast of Massachusetts.

Expected since the beginning of this year, Massachusetts has confirmed that it will implement an “aspirational” 200MWh energy storage procurement target for electric distribution companies.

A distributed infrastructure subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the US’ biggest utilities, has formed a partnership with Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) to execute behind-the-meter distributed energy projects.

According to the latest GTM Research figures, energy storage is coming into its own and is no longer confined to a handful of US states. 21 states now have 20MW of storage projects proposed, in construction or deployed. Further, 10 states have pipelines of more than 100MW.

The north-eastern US state of Massachusetts will introduce a procurement target for energy storage resources, with the state’s department of energy resources (DOER) collecting views from stakeholders.