Australian energy provider MPower has been selected to deliver a grid-scale battery energy storage system in New South Wales that could save the local grid operator AU$1 million (US$0.78 million) a year in network upgrades.

An ambitious project to convert the “grey fleet” of a care home for old folk in Scotland to a sustainable “green fleet”, using solar PV and battery energy storage, was winner of the Residential, Commercial and Industrial-scale Storage Project category at this month’s Solar Power Portal Awards.

What does it mean to be all things to all people? Does it overstretch resources to breaking point, or does it give you a chance to cast a wider net and capture market share? Vivint Solar recently joined Tesla in a race to offer whole packages including solar, storage, EV charging and other components to US customers. We talked to GTM Research’s Brett Simon on some of the dynamics of those parallel strategies.

Microsoft is going to be the off-taker of power from a 37MW wind power project in Europe, trialling the use of integrated battery energy storage to trade the energy.

One of New Zealand’s main gas and electric distribution companies has turned to distributed energy storage systems as a cost-effective alternative to long-distance wires and related infrastructure.

Battery vendors are being hit by a combination of rising prices for raw materials and continuing currency uncertainty, resulting in rapidly changing costs for businesses according to Easystart.

Automation and engineering group ABB has signed on to become a supplier to a planned European lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’ for Swedish start-up Northvolt.

India’s Central Electricity Authority (CEA) is debating how and whether to introduce a mandate for solar and wind projects above a certain size to be coupled with energy storage.

Australian homes and businesses will soon be able to use renewable energy stored in their batteries to bid into a local energy market and provide a range of grid services using a new software platform backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.