A product recall has been announced for around 10,000 units of residential battery energy storage systems (BESS) by manufacturer LG Energy Solution Michigan in the US, due to potential fire risks.

Tesla Energy has begun an initiative to install its V3 solar roof tiles and Powerwall 2 residential battery storage systems for what has been dubbed a “solar neighbourhood” at homes in a new development in Austin, Texas.

Domestic vehicle-to-grid (V2G) can deliver ancillary services to the UK’s electricity network and earn revenues, but what is thought to be the world’s biggest trial of the technology has found that the costs of associated hardware are still too high for many consumers.

Leading US residential solar and storage provider Sunrun has partnered with automaker Ford as the installer of home charging systems for its F-150 Lightning truck.

As society moves away from centralised fossil fuel generators to increasing shares of distributed renewable energy resources, the idea that customers’ homes could become host to virtual power plants (VPPs), joining the dots between electricity supply and demand across the grid, has gradually gathered traction. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Suleman Khan CEO of Swell Energy, which has raised nearly half a billion dollars in financing for solar-plus-storage VPPs in 14,000 homes across California, New York and Hawaii.

The residents of Parlier, a small city in Fresno County, California, are being offered a 20% reduction on their energy bills and reduce the amount of power they buy from utility Pacific Gas & Electric by 90%, by getting solar-plus-storage and energy efficiency equipment installed.

This edition of the round-up is an eclectic mix of stories from the US and Europe.

The CEO of US virtual power plant provider Swell Energy has said that New York utility company Con Edison has been “very progressive” in recognising the value that aggregated home battery systems paired with solar can offer.

Solar-plus-storage systems at customers’ homes in Hawaii will create a “comprehensive” virtual power plant (VPP) network on three Hawaiian islands of up to 6,000 individual systems.

A round-up of energy storage news in brief; this edition has a distributed, behind-the-meter flavour.