The US national Energy Storage Association’s policy director, Jason Burwen, spoke with Andy Colthorpe about the seven early adopter states of energy storage targets and whether this is likely to be a spreading pattern across the country.

Vectren, owner of utility firms in the US states of Indiana and Ohio, has unveiled plans to ditch more than 700MW of coal generation and partly replace it with up to 1GW of solar PV.

While utility Hawaiian Electric (HECO) stands poised to announce the finalists of its recent massive procurement of solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage projects, developers with winning bids seem determined to steal the utility’s thunder.

The number of sites pairing renewable energy with energy storage in the US more than doubled from 2016 to 2019 and the trend is expected to continue, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Long duration energy storage is an “essential” technology to help accelerate renewable deployment, according to the US Department of Energy’s Dr Imre Gyuk, but will require “appropriate regulatory frameworks”.

Residential energy storage provider Sunverge has won out in a competitive bidding process to provide systems and software for a proposed virtual power plant (VPP) project in Maryland in the US.

South Korean lithium-ion battery manufacturer SK Innovation will begin construction on the second of two manufacturing plants in the US state of Georgia this summer, with the first already under construction.

A solar-plus-storage microgrid is powering a mobile intensive care unit (ICU), set up to treat people suffering from COVID-19 symptoms at a migrant camp on the border between Texas and Mexico.

A new guide has been published in the US to “help stakeholders assure prudent use of funds by electric utilities” when it comes to upgrading the distribution grid.