US electricity provider Direct Energy Business will be using some of the world’s largest battery energy storage systems to help cover its customers’ peak demand for power, signing contracts with project developer and investor LS Power.

While planning a better future for California’s energy system will take time and lies in the hands of many, many stakeholders from regulators to government to citizens and corporations, here are a few more of the recent moves forwards in clean energy in the state.

While redesigning California’s energy system will take some time, in the past couple of weeks alone, Energy-Storage.news has become aware of numerous initiatives and projects, both publicly and privately-driven, that are seeking to modernise, add resilience to and lower the emissions of the California grid.

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 20MW / 80MWh Pomona battery energy storage facility, in operation in California since a fast-track process brought it online in partial response to the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak, has been bought by Ormat Technologies.

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.