It has been the US’ busiest quarter to date for behind-the-meter energy storage installations, driven in part by residential adoption in the advanced markets of California and Hawaii, GTM Research has found.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) announced Wednesday that it has selected Doosan GridTech and its partner, KTY Engineering, to provide LADWP’s first battery energy storage system (BESS) with a capacity of 20MW at its Beacon Solar Plant in Kern County, California.

As might be expected, California’s main utilities led the way in 2016 for US state-by-state deployment of energy storage, with Southern California Edison installing as much as 40% of the national total, according to a new survey.

News in brief from this week in energy storage around the world.

Kodak, the tech company best known for producing photographic film and imaging equipment, has inaugurated the Kodak Cell Assembly Center, a new facility aimed at accelerating development and scale-up of advanced batteries for energy storage.

US energy storage designer and manufacturer SimpliPhi Energy has installed a combination of solar PV and batteries to power air-conditioning units at a school in Hawaii, with a further 1.4MWh of such projects in the pipeline.

Using just 351.9kW of PV and 1MWh of energy storage in a microgrid, a tiny island off the Massachusetts coast successfully met more than 50% of its electricity demand over summer.

News in brief from this week in energy storage around the world.

More than a quarter of US commercial and industrial (C&I) electricity users could potentially use energy storage to lower premium rates they are charged during periods of high demand, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has found.

An EV and stationary energy storage battery start-up headed by former SpaceX, Tesla, Apple, Amazon and Samsung designers and engineers has mobilised almost US$100 million of financing and contracts to kickstart manufacturing operations.