Scotland’s first utility-scale battery storage facility has been officially opened today, having begun delivering sub-second balancing services to National Grid at the end of June under a bespoke agreement secured before the hotly contested Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) auction of 2016.

UK renewable electricity supplier Solo Energy is set to launch a ‘free battery’ business model to UK homeowners after a successful pilot on the remote Scottish islands of Orkney.

Axiom Exergy, a US manufacturer of energy storage units that use stored energy for cooling buildings and produce, has netted close to US$8 million from investors including Shell’s venture capital unit and Tesla battery guru JB Straubel.

A glass packaging facility in Scotland is getting a 2MW Tesla battery on a ‘no-money-down’ deal after Irish state-owned utility ESB agreed to take on the risk for raising commercial revenues from the asset.

British vertically-integrated utility Scottish Power has come under scrutiny from the demand side response (DSR) sector after proposing to national regulator Ofgem that de-rating factors applied to large scale battery storage should be extended to those used to provide DSR in the Capacity Market.

UK-based power, heating and cooling equipment manufacturer Aggreko is investing £33 million in research and development.

The real-world performance of batteries paired with “Hywind” – the world’s first floating wind farm – will be analysed by the wind project’s owners, Masdar and Statoil.

Energy storage provider and system integrator Younicos has been bought out by Aggreko, a power generation equipment and energy controls supplier.

A number of demonstrator projects for smart grid and storage technologies have been awarded funding under Scotland’s Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP).

Australian power firm Genex has completed a study showing it is technically feasible to connect a pumped hydro storage facility with its 50MW(ac) Kidston Solar Project in North Queensland, Australia.