Younicos’ CEO Stephen Prince gives the lowdown on the hottest trends in energy storage, why standardisation will create a mainstream market and more.

Tesla has announced the first programme to aggregate the capabilities of hundreds of its residential and commercial stationary storage systems in a partnership with Vermont utility Green Mountain Power.

Multinational energy company Engie Group has contracted NEC Energy Solutions and NEC Chile to provide a 2MW / 2MWh energy storage system to its subsidiary Engie Energia Chile in Latin America.

A 500MW energy storage facility with “5-8 hours” storage duration could be built in San Diego, California, with a local water authority seeking detailed proposals for such a project to support the grid and help integrate renewable energy.

Clearly, renewable energy is now a viable alternative to traditional generation from a cost perspective. However solar and wind’s penetration of the grid is constrained by ageing infrastructure, high grid connection costs and their intermittent, weather-dependent nature. Scott McGregor looks at how long-duration energy storage on an industrial scale can help.

Energy storage companies “have suffered significant and detrimental harm” from changes to rules governing the frequency regulation market in US regional transmission organisation (RTO) PJM Interconnection’s service area, the Energy Storage Association has said.

Siemens has been contracted by German public utility Stadtwerke Schwäbisch Hall to deliver and install a 1.4MWh battery storage system to be used to market primary control reserves.

To date, Primary Control Reserve (PCR) has dominated the energy storage debate in Germany with more than 100MW of battery storage installed in 2016 alone specifically for participating in the PCR market. At the same time, with close to 25,000 systems sold in 2016, residential storage has been stealing the limelight in the behind-the-meter segment. Julian Jansen of Delta-ee looks at how his team expects the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment to start catching up.

There is a significant opportunity for energy storage under the Trump administration, the US Energy Storage Association has said.

A 20MW energy storage project set to be completed by March will use gas/diesel fired generation to deliver millions of pounds in revenue from balancing services to the national transmission network.