News in brief: Younicos partnership on Bavaria’s renewables integrating flow battery, Greensmith raises US$12.3 million including investment from utility AEP, UK virtual power plant triallist Moixa extends crowdfunding period.

The International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA) recently released its electricity storage technology roadmap, looking at how electricity storage can support the increased deployment of renewable energy.

While a project to run a Spanish island off renewable energy which gathered media attention this week might only have successfully met the region’s energy demand continuously for four hours, the project is nonetheless “very significant”, an expert with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has said.

Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) released a hefty report on global energy storage and how it relates back to the domestic situation last month. Tom Kenning investigated one of the report’s main conclusions – that the value for energy storage in Australia, initially at least, will most likely be found behind-the-meter.

Effective ways of assigning economic value to services provided by aggregated storage systems must be found to progress the use of such technology, according to a technical consultant involved in a recent report assessing Australia’s energy storage landscape.

A research project conducted in partnership between Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), an independent university focused on sustainable technology, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will develop an energy storage system using Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs).

The closing of Feed-in-Tariffs (FiTs) for solar installations in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) at the end 2016 presents a “perfect marketing opportunity” for energy storage retailers, according to industry members.

Energy storage technology is now used in 44% of US microgrids with 92% of that storage commissioned since 2012, according to GTM Research’s latest report.

Utilising renewable energy instead of traditional diesel generators on islands and in remote areas would bring “substantial socio-economic benefits”, according to a new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

In less than a week, more than 180,000 Spanish citizens have signed a petition against plans for a new ‘sun tax’ on use of batteries for residential self-consumption of solar energy in Spain.