First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the first of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe learns what the flow battery industry faces in the fight for commercialisation.

The residential energy storage market in the US has just enjoyed one of its biggest growth spurts so far, although action is mostly centred in specific states with supportive policies and conditions.

Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.

The commercial and industrial segment is one of the most promising sub-sectors of the energy storage space. Julian Jansen of IHS Markit describes recent efforts to model the US C&I storage landscape and what it reveals about this dynamic emerging market. As told to Andy Colthorpe.

The US is expected to remain the world’s biggest market for energy storage until 2022, with China its closest rival, GTM Research has said.

Already this year we’ve been able to learn directly about the energy storage market in Europe from the Energy Storage Summit in London at the end of February and Energy Storage Europe in Dusseldorf, which just took place last week. Andy Colthorpe summarises what he’s seen and heard.

While research published this week demonstrates that the US as a whole is embracing energy storage technology, with regulator FERC’s recent wholesale market ruling likely to have a “significant impact”, the picture varies greatly when looking from state-to-state, an analyst has said.

While energy storage system price declines have slowed down in recent times in the US, standardisation of design and engineering will be among the key drivers in bringing down balance-of-system hardware and EPC costs.

A new study from Navigant Research into the strategy and execution of various lithium-ion battery providers in the utility-scale energy storage industry identified Korean companies LG Chem and Samsung SDI as “leaders” of a rapidly-growing sector.

Over 9,000MWh of battery energy storage could be deployed in Britain over the next five years as the sector enjoys a trend towards “explosive growth”, a market analyst has said.