Enphase CEO Paul Nahi has said that the “unique” modularity of the company’s battery solution could be “incredibly valuable” to help it to meet the needs of customers in regions including Australia, where there is a “real economic case” for energy storage.

Some news in brief from around the world of energy storage this week: UK residential storage company chases scale with crowdfunder, Younicos could hire 150 more employees by 2017, and Southern California Edison is set to flick the switch on a grid-stabilising storage system from NEC ES.

24M, a battery company that claims it can achieve 50% cost-savings over existing Li-ion technology and hit US$100 per kWh by 2020, is positioning itself as a ‘disruptor’ of the energy storage space, an industry analyst has said.

US PV installer SolarCity is now taking orders for solar and home energy storage systems including Tesla’s new Powerwall battery pack, as part of the company’s expanded homebuilder programme.

Following another year at Intersolar Europe where energy storage has carved out an even bigger place for itself than before, SMA’s Dr. Alexsandra Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer and Volker Wachenfeld give their take on one of the big talking points in residential system design.

Makers of flow batteries have redoubled their efforts to make the technology the leading choice for utility-scale storage applications, with one installing the largest such system to date in Europe and North America just a few days ago.

Making safe lithium-ion based home energy storage systems is not really a challenging prospect, but standards need to be adopted across the whole industry, German research and education institution Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has said.

Germany’s residential storage system maker Sonnenbatterie will continue its push into the US, partnering with Sungevity, the residential PV installer founded by environmental activist and cleantech entrepreneur Danny Kennedy.

Investment by UK tech entrepreneur and inventor James Dyson into battery company Sakti3 was among the biggest deals in the sector in the first quarter of this year, a new report has found.

Following February’s Guest Blog which looked at factors- barriers, boundaries and benefits- that can influence its widespread adoption, SMA’s Aleksandra-Sasa Bukvic-Schaefer and Volker Wachenfeld focus on the discussions behind designing and implementing home solar-plus-storage.