Leaders in the fledgling commercial and industrial (C&I) sector in the US have made energy storage ‘as-a-service’ the core of their proposition, a market analyst has said.

Legislation recently introduced in California to cut red tape and reduce permitting times for energy storage systems and currently awaiting the state Governor’s rubber stamp could also halve the costs associated with paperwork, commercial system provider Stem has said.

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

California’s grid operations will be supported by the ramping of an estimated 3,000MW of energy storage, when a solar eclipse expected across the Pacific North-West of the US will cause PV generation to dip.

Stem Inc. will build a 4.2MWh energy storage project on the California State University (CSU) Dominguez Hills campus to help the institution save on energy costs.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has reformed the Self-Generation Incentive Programme (SGIP) that finances the installation of distributed generation technologies, to now benefit long-duration technologies that previously missed out on the incentive, through the extended US$83 million a year for behind-the-meter storage.

Energy storage developers have an opportunity to prove the benefits of storage systems compared to fossil fuel technologies in what will be one of the fastest energy storage procurements in history pending in California, according to industry commentators and analysts.

Adobe is among the participants earning revenues from what is claimed to be an energy storage industry first – a trial rewarding California storage system users for conferring benefits to the grid.