One of New Zealand’s main gas and electric distribution companies has turned to distributed energy storage systems as a cost-effective alternative to long-distance wires and related infrastructure.

The growing commercial viability of energy storage has led regulators in the US state of New Mexico to add the technology to the suite of resources available to utilities in their forward-planning.

Utility and network needs are rapidly changing and some are adopting both batteries and ultracapacitors to meet these needs. David Lentsch of Maxwell Technologies looks at some of the various approaches.

A US regional electricity transmission and distribution operator’s plan to install energy storage batteries could enable ‘benefit stacking’ as a way of overcoming “crippling challenges” faced by energy storage, according to one energy expert.

The US market for solar-plus-storage is predicted to grow more than twentyfold in the next three years, rapidly expanding from US$42 million in value this year to US$1 billion by 2018, according to GTM Research.