Google’s smart home division has joined a group of companies including Ford, Sunpower and Sunrun in founding a new partnership centred around scaling the market for virtual power plants (VPP).

SunPower has launched its ConnectedSolutions virtual power plant (VPP), enabling customers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut to earn “hundreds of dollars a year” for allowing utility access to their stored energy during peak demand.

PV manufacturers Hanwha Q Cells and Sunpower have both signed deals to bring home energy storage to residential solar customers in Europe and in the US respectively.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

AES Distributed Energy (AES DE), a subsidiary of AES Corporation, and nonprofit transmission firm Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) have broken ground on a 28MW solar and 100MWh five-hour duration battery energy storage system in Kauai, Hawaii.

Gavilan College has selected SunPower to deploy a fully integrated solar and storage project on its campus in Gilroy, California.

A large-scale solar-plus-storage project on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i will be built using SunPower’s scalable Oasis Power Plant platform after the PV technology provider was chosen by AES Distributed Energy.

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

PV energy provider SunPower announced Wednesday that it has broken ground on a 10MW PV project at the Redstone Arsenal US Army post in Alabama that will also feature a 1MW energy storage system.

Total Energy Ventures to support AutoGrid’s flexibility management applications for residential, commercial and industrial customers, joining quartet of venture capital firms that committed US$20 million in May.