With carbon reduction goals a long way off from being met in Europe’s transport sector, energy storage can play a key role in coupling transportation and energy technologies, the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) has said.

While the likes of California, Massachusetts and New York make headlines as the leading US states for energy storage policy, initiatives from the ground up in New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan have been announced already this year.

While a tranche of seven solar-plus-storage projects under proposal in Hawaii would see renewable energy make its biggest competitive play against fossil fuels in the US island state so far, a project just completed will deliver energy well into the evening at just US$0.11 per kWh.

UK energy market regulator Ofgem has set out a plan which would see fixed charges applied to all final demand network users irrespective of their ability to reduce their impact on the grid through generation or flexibility.

South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom has unveiled its Distributed Battery Storage Programme at an event this week, committing to solar-plus-storage and energy storage projects totalling 1400MWh.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

Subsidies will be available to residents of South Australia who want to purchase home battery systems from next month, while Sonnen looks set to open up a manufacturing and shipping centre in the state.

Hawaii has been a prolific installer of both rooftop solar and latterly batteries for energy storage and one of the US state’s smaller islands looks set to get its first ever grid-scale solar-plus-storage system.

Commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage in Europe, described by one analyst as “beginning to take off”, is the “most exciting” segment of the market at the moment, according to BYD’s global service partner.

In short, energy storage technology is set to revolutionise our society, EVs and beyond, with power companies among the most affected – whether they like it or not. The sector needs to wake up to this and decide what it is going to do about it. Education could provide the wake-up call that power professionals need, says Bo Normark of InnoEnergy.