Kokam has been awarded contracts to deliver 40MWh of battery energy storage at solar power plants in South Korea, including its newest High Energy Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (HE NMC) batteries.

SolarEdge is targeting a world where the “majority of solar systems will include storage”, according to CEO Guy Sella, as the company announced record revenues and shipments in the third quarter of 2018.

An agreement to buy 75% of Korean battery manufacturer Kokam gives SolarEdge a level of vertical integration that could make the PV company a ‘one-stop-shop’ for customers, while SolarEdge could diversify into areas outside solar energy.

Smart energy and inverter company SolarEdge will acquire the South Korean battery manufacturer Kokam.

Home storage systems have been considered an ‘early adopter’ market in many parts of the world, perhaps more important as a way that individuals can control their own green energy use and save energy than as a means of generating big money returns.

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units – and other distributed energy equipment – into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) can greatly increase the value of home energy storage systems for a range of stakeholders including grid operators, utilities and their customers, according to SolarEdge, which has just launched a VPP software platform.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

Residential energy storage in Germany for PV self-consumption could be handed a boost in 2020, as some of the earliest premium feed-in tariffs (FiTs) begin to expire.

Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit took place at the end of February and was attended by around 350 delegates and stakeholders, looking at energy storage markets in the UK and beyond. Collected here are seven interviews with leading figures at the event spanning utility-scale, commercial and residential energy storage.