SPONSORED: EDF are one of the largest aggregators of distributed flexible assets in Europe with significant presence in the UK, France, Germany and Belgium. Chris Regan, Head of Energy Trading Services, speaks to Energy-Storage.news editor Andy Colthorpe about EDF’s view on battery storage and optimisation, the impacts of the pandemic on this market and what the future could look like.

Industry voices in the UK have said that electricity market activity during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the network will become prohibitively expensive and possibly unmanageable without the further rapid deployment of energy storage.

Merchant energy storage has become an investable asset class in the UK, a provider of battery optimisation services has said, with the market moving away from an emphasis on contracted revenue streams for supplying grid services.

Why the real competition is fossil fuels, which battery optimisation strategies yield the best returns and bringing safety rules and guidelines to the attention of first-responders are among the topics discussed on the latest special episode of the Solar Media podcast.

Enabling longer duration storage and non lithium-ion technology, what to do with the storage capabilities of electric vehicles and how the industry is overcoming regulatory hurdles were all key topics discussed at this year’s Energy Storage Summit in London.

UK battery storage investor Gresham House has turned to EDF Energy and energy tech firm Upside Energy to optimise revenues from a 20MW storage project in the UK.

Renewable energy and energy storage project developer Anesco has handed aggregator Flexitricity the keys to 19.5MW of battery assets, with the latter set to earn revenues from four different ‘streams’.

The UK’s second subsidy-free solar farm, and the first by a local authority using battery storage, has been completed by West Sussex County Council in a project that ticked “every box” and will generate significant income over the next 25 years.

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) provider Vertiv is to use energy flexibility specialist Upside Energy’s cloud-based platform to enable its customers to provide unutilised energy to the UK electricity grid.

Battery assets have been used in the UK’s Balancing Mechanism for the first time via a virtual power plant, marking the start of what could be a new era for energy storage business models in Britain.