Calgary-headquartered Eguana Tech has joined high-profile rivals like Tesla and Sonnen in targeting South Australia’s residential energy storage market, announcing it has become eligible for the state’s incentive programme.

The US government has been urged to recognise the “critical role” energy storage can play in making the grid cleaner and able to accept more renewable energy, by increasing the eligibility of batteries and other technologies to receive the Investment Tax Credit (ITC).

An extra AU$100 million (US$70.76 million) of funding could be put into a rebate scheme for households buying energy storage systems in South Australia, after a peer-to-peer lending group stepped in.

Subsidies will be available to residents of South Australia who want to purchase home battery systems from next month, while Sonnen looks set to open up a manufacturing and shipping centre in the state.

Homeowners in Ireland can now access grants worth hundreds of euros to fund the installation of solar and energy storage systems as the government launches its first micro-generation scheme for the technology.

Only large scale and intelligent energy storage can realistically solve the issue of variable renewable electricity generation. Patrick Clerens, Secretary General at the European Association for Storage of Energy and a member of the advisory board for Electrify Europe, argues that we can make it happen – but only if we get the incentives right.

TEPCO, one of Japan’s national utilities and grid operators, will roll out home solar-plus-storage systems for its customers as part of a drive to create a renewable energy retail business.

Various companies in the Hyundai engineering and industrial construction group will work together on a 65MW solar PV plant with 130MWh of co-located battery energy storage in Seosan, South Korea.

The first solar-plus-storage microgrid in Asia to use Tesla’s Powerpack energy storage system is designed to end power reliability issues for a Philippines community, long used to losing light and productivity to brownouts.

The Australian Capital Territory, the country’s federal district and home of national capital Canberra, is supporting the planned roll-out of 36MW of customer-sited batteries by funding a further AU$3 million (US$2.39 million) in rebates.