Questions around who should own, operate and ultimately benefit from the deployment of energy storage systems could soon be resolved in the Philippines after the government Department of Energy issued a set of draft guidelines.

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.

24M, spun out of an MIT laboratory, claims its latest semi-solid battery ‘breakthrough’, Dual Electrolyte technology, heralds a new era to come for advanced lithium batteries. Andy Colthorpe spoke to some of the company’s leadership team to find out more.

Walking around Energy Storage Europe this year it was obvious that the show, like the market, has grown from a small handful of “strong believers” as one source put it, to a forward-looking show focused on a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario.

Sales of battery storage units to residential households in Germany are booming, but it’s the value of services the batteries can provide, rather than the hardware itself that offers a long-term economic opportunity, a Siemens representative has said.

Saba Electric Company, sole supplier of electricity to the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba, celebrated as the island ran on 100% solar for the first time ever this month, with the switch-on of a solar-plus-storage microgrid.

In the hierarchy of grid needs, peaking power is often a priority in terms of providing resiliency and balance to the network. This is usually provided by natural gas turbines, which come at a high environmental and economic cost. Andy Colthorpe charts the rise of the solar-plus-storage peaker plant.

Perhaps the biggest indicator of the recognition of behind-the-meter storage so far this year has been the acquisition of Sonnen by oil major Shell. CEO Christoph Ostermann spoke to Andy Colthorpe about why home storage uptake could be on a worldwide series of inflection points.

Statkraft has partnered with energy & meteo systems to launch a 1GW wind, solar and battery storage virtual power plant in the UK, which it says will further renewables’ penetration into the country’s energy market.

Engineering company Siemens has launched the device – configurable in 3.3kWh ‘blocks’ up to 19.8kWh – in Germany, with an Austria launch to follow in April.