US battery manufacturer, ViZn Energy, has teamed with financial services company, LFC Capital, on a programme to lease integrated solar and storage systems to property owners.

UK PV installer Martin Cotterell argues that the renewables industry needs something in place to make sure that battery systems are sold appropriately; for instance, there is the potential for customers to get charged extra for a battery ‘add-on’ that doesn’t really give them a whole lot of benefit.

Energy storage is likely to be worth “tens of billion dollars in the next five to 10 years” across a number of global regions, according to executives at solar microinverter firm Enphase.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla has revealed that its home battery storage products will be available “fairly soon”.

EOS Energy Storage has placed an order totalling more than 1MW from NASDAQ-listed power converter specialist Ideal Power, while both companies have launched new products since the start of the year.

Two providers of large-scale battery systems for energy storage have announced expansion plans this month, with Vizn Energy opening new headquarters in Texas, and Younicos forming three separate new business units to address “rapid growth” in the market.

For decades Australia has been at the forefront in deploying renewable energy, coupled with energy storage solutions, in off grid and fringe of grid areas across remote Australia.  Many communities have transitioned away from polluting and expensive diesel generators and now use reliable and sustainable renewable energy and energy storage solutions.  But it is only now that the full impact of lower energy storage costs are becoming clear, writes John Grimes of the Australian Energy Storage Council.

The head of a company selected by the UK government to deploy residential energy storage under a pilot scheme believes that his network of installers could deploy 10,000 units, equivalent to 30MWh of storage per month.

E.ON, the German utility giant with 61GW of generation assets, has announced plans to split its business in two. The company will stake its future on renewables in a major restructuring, spinning off its conventional power generation business, in part as a response to the growth in distributed generation. Cosmin Laslau of Lux Research digs deeper.

The UK’s Renewable Energy Association (REA) has launched two new trade groups to represent the solar and storage industries respectively.