Enabling longer duration storage and non lithium-ion technology, what to do with the storage capabilities of electric vehicles and how the industry is overcoming regulatory hurdles were all key topics discussed at this year’s Energy Storage Summit in London.

Following February’s excellent Energy Storage Summit at London’s Victoria Park Plaza hotel and hosted by our publisher Solar Media, here’s a short series of videos posing some of the big questions around energy storage, renewables, climate change, business and the industry, and more.

“There are already many Gigawatt-hours of batteries on wheels”, which could be used to provide balance and flexibility to electrical grids, if the “ultimate potential” of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology could be harnessed.

Northern Powergrid (NPg) has called on the energy sector to collaborate to decide the future of network-scale energy storage after differences in the role of network owned and operated batteries emerged between differing distribution network operators (DNOs).

Distribution network operators (DNOs) in Britain should be able to own and operate a minimal amount of battery storage capacity in certain cases, and be able to compete in the ancillary services market to fund the projects, according to the head of regulation and strategy at Northern Powergrid (NPg), one of the country’s seven DNOs.

Northern Powergrid, one of the six distribution network operators (DNOs) responsible for delivering power across regions of the UK, is to plough £1.9 million (US$2.53 million) into the creation of a smart energy grid across its network, allowing its eight million customers to trade power and services using their home solar, battery systems and electric vehicles (EVs).

UK electrical distribution system operator Northern Powergrid has begun using a £4 million (US$5.27 million) battery paid for by consumers to sell services to National Grid, despite plans from the national regulator Ofgem to prevent distribution network operators (DNOs) from doing so in future.

NEC Energy Solutions has completed six new grid-tied energy storage systems for UK distributed network operator (DNO), Northern Powergrid.