Following another year at Intersolar Europe where energy storage has carved out an even bigger place for itself than before, SMA’s Dr. Alexsandra Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer and Volker Wachenfeld give their take on one of the big talking points in residential system design.

The average global cost of installing residential energy storage systems will fall from US$1,600 per kWh in 2015, to US$250 per kWh by 2040, according to the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report.

A New York-based project proving the ability of solar paired with storage to provide power in the event of natural disasters and other causes of grid outages is now underway at City University of New York (CUNY).

Energy storage developer Imergy Power Systems has announced the installation of a 30kW, 120kWh ESP30 vanadium flow battery to be tested with PV systems at the SunEdison and Global Academy of Technology (GAT) solar research and testing centre in Bangalore, India.

The vice-president for marketing and product strategy at one of only two inverter suppliers to Tesla says it has promised customers that it can “get the battery within six months”.

There is a greatly expanded amount of energy storage on offer at the European edition of the Intersolar trade exhibition and conferences this year, including the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) Europe show hosting its own conference for the first time. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to canvas opinions on the big trends and topics from a number of industry figures.

SolarEdge, one of only two companies at present to produce Tesla Powerwall-compatible inverters, will launch its expanded range of residential and commercial solutions at Intersolar Europe next month.

Invenergy has brought a 31.5MW energy storage facility online to provide frequency regulation for the grid, near to 230MW of renewable energy generation assets.

One analyst has predicted that 12,500 residential PV storage systems could be installed in Germany in 2015, more than the total number of systems installed with support from a government scheme in its first two years.

France’s government has launched a tender for 50MW of projects combining solar power with energy storage systems on Corsica and its overseas islands territories.