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”.

Making safe lithium-ion based home energy storage systems is not really a challenging prospect, but standards need to be adopted across the whole industry, German research and education institution Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has said.

A proposed “sun tax” on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain could increase payback time from around 16 years to 31 years under a new draft Law put forward by the Spanish Government. Hefty fines for infringement, capped at €60 million (US$67.7 million), have also been proposed.

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.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has done the rest of the storage industry a big favour by putting a price point on lithium-ion batteries, according to the CEO of Sonnenbatterie’s North American operations.

A new solar-plus-storage division is to be launched by DNV GL, the expert advisory group and certification body announced at Intersolar Europe on Wednesday.

Renewables-powered energy systems that work independently of the grid at warehouse locations in India will be provided with flow battery-based energy storage solutions by US company Imergy.

British energy storage company OXIS has claimed that the advent of economically viable solar PV and energy storage technology represents a paradigm shift in developing countries.

While debates over renewable energy targets continue to rage at the political level in Australia, Panasonic has signed a deal with three utility companies to pair its energy storage systems with rooftop solar.

Clean energy entrepreneur and activist Jeremy Leggett has said “out of date thinking” is behind a push to make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels within 10 years that was launched today by prominent UK academics.