Senator Martin Heinrich has proposed granting tax relief for purchasers of energy storage systems, in a similar way to how the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) is applied to residential solar PV purchases.

Two US Senators introduced a bill in Congress at the beginning of this week that would require the national Secretary of Energy to establish research and demonstration programmes and deployment strategies for energy storage, if passed.

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

Duke Energy announced plans to install North Carolina’s two largest battery storage systems — which stands as a US$30 million investment as part of Duke Energy’s Western Carolinas Modernisation Plan.

China-based technology giant BYD has installed the first of its residential high-voltage B-Box energy storage systems in Germany and is aiming to launch the system into the US later this year.

California-based energy storage technology developer Gridtential announced that it has closed US$11 million in financing led by 1955 Capital, with assistance from East Penn Manufacturing, Crown Battery Manufacturing, Leoch International and Power-Sonic Inc., as well as an existing investor in The Roda Group.

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.

The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) assessment of reliability and security of the country’s electrical grid network is “encouraging”, the Energy Storage Association’s head has said in her initial reaction to the report’s publication.

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.

Utility company Ameren and smart grid company S&C Electric Company announced that they have conducted a successful 24-hour islanding test in August at the recently deployed Ameren microgrid in Champaign, Illinois.