A programme to re-configure New York’s energy networks, including a comprehensive evaluation of energy storage, could provide “valuable lessons” for other parts of the world, according to the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology consortium (NY BEST).

Demand Energy, an energy storage company, and EnerSys, an industrial battery solutions company, have partnered with a luxury New York property developer to install 1MW of aggregated renewable energy across properties.

The New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY BEST), like much of the storage industry worldwide, appears primarily concerned with two things – technological development and looking at how policy, regulatory bodies and other factors can help shape viable markets. Andy Colthorpe spoke to John Cerveny, director of resource management of the association about what makes New York’s storage market tick.

The US-based solar division of Japan’s Kyocera and energy service start-up STEM have become the latest partnership to offer integrated solar-plus-storage to commercial customers in the US, beginning with sales in three states including California.

One of the largest investor-owned utilities in the USA is looking to use a series of measures that are likely to include customer-side energy storage in order to stave off the need for US$1 billion worth of infrastructure investment.

Earlier this year New York governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled plans for an “energy modernisation initiative that will fundamentally transform the way electricity is distributed and used in New York State”. This will include the creation of a leading energy storage marketplace, argues Bill Radvak, chief executive officer of American Vanadium, whose company recently installed a vanadium flow battery storage system for New York’s Metropolitan Transport Authority in Manhattan.