An academic based in north east England has called on the UK government to give energy storage “its own asset class with accompanying rules for appropriate regulatory treatment” as well as investing in the technology in order to enable future energy bill savings.

Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is like King Canute, standing on the shore commanding the tide of renewable energy and energy storage not to come in. But no matter how much he rails against the future, this prime minister is way too late to stop the tide of progress. A range of factors are coming together at the same time that will see distributed solar PV combined with energy storage move into the early mainstream in the coming years – and sooner than later, says John Grimes of the Australian Storage Council and Australian Solar Council.

While solar and energy storage are not inextricably linked, at least not yet, storage helps households make the most of their solar power and one day could help grid networks make their final leap of faith. In the second of two blogs from the Energy Storage Europe conference and exhibition in Düsseldorf last week, PV Tech Storage talks to experts and industry figures as they tackled some of the biggest issues facing storage and renewable energy.

The use of energy storage to increase renewables integration and provide stability to the grid requires the removal of regulatory barriers, rather than increased direct funding, according to one expert on the German market.

The deployment of energy storage in the US is set to triple in 2015 compared to 2014, according to a new report by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association (ESA).

In the second part of his exploration of the areas of the world taking a lead in supporting the deployment of storage, Andy Colthorpe looks at Germany, Japan and Puerto Rico.

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.

Energy storage-themed sessions at Solar Energy UK were extremely well attended and discussions were by all accounts lively and fascinating. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to go into some of the topics in more depth with some of the speakers.

Hawaii is inviting proposals for up to 200MW of storage in the face of regulatory demands and unprecedented distributed generation challenges. As Dean Frankel writes, the process could offer some answers to the conundrum of integrating higher volumes of renewable energy generation.

SolarCity looks likely to resume its programme of deploying residential energy storage systems in California, following a preliminary ruling by the state’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) appeared to rule in the company’s favour.