While the global energy storage industry has continued its pace of rapid growth during the past year, well-established markets remain highly concentrated in specific regions of the world. Alex Eller of Navigant Research discusses many of the factors influencing growth trends for energy storage at both utility-scale and distributed levels.

AES Corporation has closed US$2 billion in finance for the 1.4GW Southland Repowering Project.

Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU), arms of US firm PPL Corporation, have developed a research centre for energy storage at a power plant in Kentucky.

Energy storage provider and system integrator Younicos has been bought out by Aggreko, a power generation equipment and energy controls supplier.

Stem’s virtual power plants (VPPs) have been utilised to provide emergency demand response services in California during a major heatwave.

A distributed infrastructure subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the US’ biggest utilities, has formed a partnership with Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) to execute behind-the-meter distributed energy projects.

Austin Energy, a publicly-owned electric utility in Texas, is delivering megawatt-scale storage systems as part of the US Department of Energy’s Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) project.

Nevadan legislators have passed a number of bills to incentivise energy storage in the state for approval from governor Brian Sandoval.

Arizona utility Tucson Electric Power (TEP) claims that the cost-effectiveness of a new large-scale solar-plus-storage facility under construction will allow it to provide “more solar energy to more customers for less money”.

Whilst most of the federal incentive buzz for energy storage surrounds California’s Self-Generation Incentive Programme (SGIP), new bills from Hawaii and Maryland provide insights on how state storage incentives are moving beyond the Golden State.