SunPower has launched its ConnectedSolutions virtual power plant (VPP), enabling customers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut to earn “hundreds of dollars a year” for allowing utility access to their stored energy during peak demand.

Janet Mills, Governor of Maine, has signed legislation that makes hers the ninth US state to have adopted a deployment target for energy storage.

Agilitas, a developer of distributed solar PV projects in the northeast US, has acquired an energy storage company in New England and its three operational projects.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hosted a technical conference on hybrid resources – pairing storage with generation – examining in order to overcome barriers that exist to the otherwise fastest-growing phenomenon of the grid.

NEC and developer Kearsage Energy have completed work on a 4.5MW solar PV array, combined with a 1.6MW / 2.8MWh AC-coupled battery energy storage system in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

A 6MW / 48MWh battery energy storage system paired to a 15MW diesel generator has gone online on Nantucket, in what has been described by project owner National Grid as the biggest system in New England to date.

The recent flurry of energy storage project announcements from Massachusetts have been driven in part by a “common sense” approach to tackling the dirtiest impacts of fossil fuel generation, Energy-Storage.news has heard from industry figures.

New four-project portfolio heralds the emergence of New England’s solar-plus-storage industry after years of “behind-the-scenes” activity, firm says.

Revisions aimed at enabling energy storage’s participation in wholesale markets, proposed by New England’s Independent System Operator (ISO) have been accepted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), effective 1 April this year.

Solar-plus-storage systems in ordinary households will provide 20MW of energy capacity in New England, with Sunrun announcing the award of a contract from the state’s ISO (independent system operator).