It is likely Spain will introduce “important regulatory changes in the coming years” to enable the European country to meet a national target of deploying 2.5GW of energy storage by 2030, analysts at consultancy firm Clean Horizon have said.

A “first-in-the-nation” policy called the Clean Peak Standard has been launched in Massachusetts, US, whereby a proportion of electricity used on the grid at times of highest demand must be considered ‘clean’.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hosted a technical conference on hybrid resources – pairing storage with generation – examining in order to overcome barriers that exist to the otherwise fastest-growing phenomenon of the grid.

There’s a race to develop new technologies – and adapt existing ones – that can either be complementary to lithium batteries, or even compete with them. Representatives from three technology providers offer up some case studies, data, insights and opinions on where they think the market could go.

Independent power producer EDF Renewables North America has signed a 22-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy for a 200MWac solar project coupled with a 180MW, four-hour battery storage system.

US developer and utility NextEra Energy has said there is currently a “terrific opportunity” for wind, solar and battery storage while Texas-based CPS Energy plans to add up to 900MW of solar, 50MW of battery storage and 500MW of new technology solutions to its portfolio.

Long duration energy storage is “essential” to help accelerate renewable deployment, according to the US Department of Energy’s Dr Imre Gyuk, who moderates this panel discussion with Matt Harper from flow battery provider Invinity Energy Systems and Russ Weed from gravity energy storage company ARES.

Iberdrola is to develop a landmark solar-storage-hydrogen facility in central Spain, professing it to be the largest industrial green hydrogen facility in Europe once complete.

Based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Dr Imran Syed is head of industrial power for Enerwhere, designing and implementing hybrid systems that use energy storage. Dr Syed spoke to Andy Colthorpe about some recent project case studies.

Australian startup Vast Solar said it has picked a site in Queensland where it could develop a AU$600 million (US$427 million) power plant combining different low emissions technologies to provide baseload power cost-effectively over a 30-year lifetime.