Along with TEPCO, Mercom named other major utilities and companies with a background in oil and gas as investors in the battery storage sector during the quarter.

The development of systems capable of storing over six hours of energy economically is being supported in New York with an Innovation Challenge launched by the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Urban Future Lab, a cleantech innovation centre.

Uncertainty persists around the impact bankruptcy proceedings brought about at investor-owned utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) could have on renewables contracts and energy storage projects as it faces “extensive litigation” and “significant liabilities” for California wildfires.

UK water utility Northumbrian Water is to pilot the use of battery storage units at a number of its sites under a new revenue-sharing partnership with developer Argonaut Power.

The opening address and a handful of sessions took place on Monday for SPI/ESI at Anaheim Convention Center, California. While the two shows are national and international, it is expected there will be a great deal of attention paid to the state’s SB100 bill.

The fact that lithium-ion batteries experience degradation over time with use should not necessarily be a limiter for their widespread use in stationary storage systems, but requires long-term strategies for their management.

US utilities deployed more than 520MWh of energy storage on their networks in 2017, bringing the country’s cumulative installed capacity of grid-connected energy storage systems to over 1GWh, trade organisation Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) has found.

The doors opened for Intersolar Europe/ees Europe this year. Here are some photographic highlights taken from the exhibition.

Enel has completed its first grid-scale stand-alone battery, becoming the latest developer in the UK to complete a project backed by an Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) contract from the transmission system operator.

In the past week, developer RES Group has just got a front-of-meter battery project underway for a utility company in northern Germany, while storage system provider Tesvolt has just signed a deal with another utility in the European country to distribute energy storage behind-the-meter for commercial customers.