A new consortium, V2GB (Vehicle to Grid Britain), will develop driver-centred business models to support the rapid roll out of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies, enabling millions of electric car batteries to become a vital part of the UK energy system. National Grid, carmaker Nissan’s European Technical Centre, Moixa and energy consultancy Element Energy have come together to help work out how to reward drivers who use electric vehicle (EV) batteries to support the power network. Chris Wright, the Chief Technology Officer of UK home battery company Moixa, talks us through the mission behind V2GB and the potential impact of the study.

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units – and other distributed energy equipment – into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.

Voltstorage, a German company founded in Munich in 2016, is launching a vanadium-redox-flow (VRF) energy storage system aimed at the residential market.

A glass packaging facility in Scotland is getting a 2MW Tesla battery on a ‘no-money-down’ deal after Irish state-owned utility ESB agreed to take on the risk for raising commercial revenues from the asset.

Technology provider ABB has inaugurated a microgrid solution at its Vadodora manufacturing facility in Gujarat, India.

A mining operation in South Africa will start managing the cost of its consumed energy with the deployment of eight flow batteries from Primus Power.

South Australia state-run firm SA Water plans to deploy 152MW of solar PV and 35MWh of energy storage over the next two years in order to reach its target of zero net electricity costs by 2020.

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.

Bulgana Green Energy Hub, a renewable energy project powering commercial crop farms in Victoria, Australia, including large-scale wind and battery energy storage, will be designed and constructed by Siemens Gamesa.

In short, energy storage technology is set to revolutionise our society, EVs and beyond, with power companies among the most affected – whether they like it or not. The sector needs to wake up to this and decide what it is going to do about it. Education could provide the wake-up call that power professionals need, says Bo Normark of InnoEnergy.