Swiss-headquartered power and automation specialist ABB is to use its PowerStore technology, involving flywheels with wind and batteries plus solar, to integrate renewable energy and reduce reliance on diesel fuel in two separate micro-grid projects in Africa.

Adobe is among the participants earning revenues from what is claimed to be an energy storage industry first – a trial rewarding California storage system users for conferring benefits to the grid.

Germany’s market leader for intelligent lithium ion energy storage systems has signed up as the first Technology Partner for the new Energy Storage division of PV Tech Storage’s publisher, Solar Media.

On a visit to heat battery maker Sunamp’s office, Scotland’s energy minister Fergus Ewing outlined aims to collaborate with his counterparts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on nationwide storage strategy, while Sunamp CEO Andrew Bissel says greater understanding of heat source batteries is needed for the technology to be included.

Highview Power Storage, a UK company which makes energy storage systems based on liquid air technology, has said that work is well underway on a 5MW demonstration project in the north-west of England.

Tesla’s much-hyped battery announcement in April raised important questions over what business models will drive the deployment of stationary battery storage. As Andy Colthorpe reports, one answer is the virtual power plant, in which residential and commercial battery systems are aggregated to provide grid services.

Solar cell and battery hybrid technology could become a commercial success as long as it clears the “valley of death” out of academia, a scientist working on the project has claimed.

Through a brief history of batteries and some findings from his own team’s work, Volker Wachenfeld of SMA Solar Technology answers a frequently asked question in energy storage; how can compatibility with the existing variety of batteries in the market be put into practice?

Construction has begun on what is claimed to be the world’s first modular large-scale battery storage system, a 5MW device at a research university in Aachen, Germany.

Effective ways of assigning economic value to services provided by aggregated storage systems must be found to progress the use of such technology, according to a technical consultant involved in a recent report assessing Australia’s energy storage landscape.