A preliminary report has been issued by California energy authorities into power outages which occurred in August and among the key recommendations it makes is that generation and energy storage projects proceed without delay.

While energy storage is still a small part of their respective businesses overall, recent quarterly financial reports from US-based geothermal company Ormat and standby generator maker Generac emphasised expectations of market growth going forwards.

The US national Energy Storage Association’s policy director, Jason Burwen, spoke with Andy Colthorpe about the seven early adopter states of energy storage targets and whether this is likely to be a spreading pattern across the country.

A group of 11 community-focused energy utility groups in California have issued a Request for Information on long duration energy storage technologies that could be connected to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) grid.

Utility PG&E has asked the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for approval of five large-scale battery projects, each with four-hours duration, that will take the investor-owned utility (IOU) past 1,000MW of battery energy storage in its service area.

Utility-scale energy storage project developer / owner esVolta will execute a 15MW / 60MWh battery project to serve California cities that have formed their own ‘community choice’ energy supplier.

Approval has been given to the compliance plans of two more US RTOs and ISOs to be filed under FERC Order 841, the ruling set by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) designed to open up regional grid operators’ wholesale markets to electricity storage.

Battery storage and demand-side response have continued to play a crucial role in the UK’s power mix, together landing more than 500MW of contracts in the most recent T-1 Capacity Market auction.