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).

Pope Francis has called for the worldwide development of renewable energy sources and adequate energy storage technologies in order to drastically reduce fossil fuel consumption and the related emissions from carbon dioxide and other polluting gases.

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.

John Grimes of Australia’s Energy Storage Council reports back from a recent visit to China, where he took a look at the processes and state of play of some of the country’s battery manufacturers.

UK energy efficiency solutions provider Anesco has bolstered its portfolio of operational storage solutions, installing its second commercial battery at a solar farm.

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.