A lithium-ion battery energy storage system that has been switched on in Rani Bagh, Delhi, will serve multiple applications and could pave the way for adoption of smarter energy networks based on renewable energy across India.

Texas’ grid and the idiosyncrasies of its electricity planning system regime made global headlines in February following a harsh winter storm and subsequent blackouts that affected millions of people and businesses for almost an entire week. It may be a unique market with unique characteristics, but what wider role can batteries — and other energy storage technologies — play in assisting the grid to remain stable and prevent a situation like this from happening again?

When turbines at a natural gas power plant in California go offline, battery energy storage will be used as a ‘much cleaner alternative’ to diesel or other fossil fuels in getting them up and running again.

While it might be more than 200 times smaller than the world’s biggest battery energy storage system so far, a 1MW / 5.1MWh project awarded to technology provider FlexGen is expected to be the biggest of its kind in the US state of Kansas.

FlexGen, an energy storage system integrator that counts GE and Caterpillar among its backers, said this week that a lithium-ion battery storage system it was supplied was used by an Indiana utility to black start a 77MW natural gas plant.

Bordesholm in Germany became a showcase for how entire communities could switch over to renewable energy with the backing of energy storage capacity.

A modestly-sized grid-scale battery will be installed at a natural gas plant in Queensland, Australia, boosting the efficiency of the existing power station and providing emergency backup, as well as helping integrate local renewable energy.

In the past week, developer RES Group has just got a front-of-meter battery project underway for a utility company in northern Germany, while storage system provider Tesvolt has just signed a deal with another utility in the European country to distribute energy storage behind-the-meter for commercial customers.

Britain’s transmission system operator (TSO) National Grid has said it wants a new procurement process for ‘black start’ capabilities up and running by the mid-2020s, and wants it to involve renewables and battery energy storage.

A distributed smart grid that can “heal” itself in the event of system components failing has energy storage and energy management software at its core, grid-scale system integrator Alfen has said.