U.K. grid operator National Grid has just put its money behind one of the world’s single largest procurements of energy storage. Late last week, the owner and operator of the transmission grid in England and Wales announced 201 megawatts of winning bids of its first-ever tender for “enhanced frequency response.”

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The oil and gas giants have fallen on tough times. We’re not talking can’t-afford-a-meal tough — they still have billions in cash lying around — but not-raking-in-billions-in-profit tough. Booms and busts have always rocked this industry, so executives could make a case for sitting on their cash until oil prices rebound and prosperous times return.

Or maybe the energy markets are changing and there won’t be a familiar status quo to go back to.

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Stem, one of the leading providers of commercial energy-storage systems, just added $100 million in new financing from energy infrastructure investor Starwood Energy Group. Stem’s project financing resources now top $350 million.

It’s going to take many billions in project financing to move the energy storage market from nascent to material — and Stem now leads in the ability to direct capital to commercial behind-the-meter storage projects. The deployments aim to combine big data, analytics and energy storage to benefit the ratepayer as well as the grid operator. 

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The federal government operates a vast network of office buildings, and they could soon become a massive new client for energy storage.

The General Services Administration, which oversees 10,000 workspaces for more than 1 million federal employees, announced at a White House summit in June that it would investigate the potential for storage on its buildings. That request for information will go out by mid-September and could lead to projects starting next year, GSA Chief Sustainability Officer Kevin Kampschroer said in an interview last week.

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When Elon Musk unveiled his intent to acquire the solar installer SolarCity, many observers and investors balked.

Some have wondered if the deal amounts to nothing more than a bailout for the Musk-supported SolarCity at Tesla’s expense. After all, what does a car company have to do with putting modules on people’s roofs? The business models are very different.

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According to a new report from GTM Research, The German Energy Storage Market: 2016-2021, Germany’s energy storage market will grow elevenfold in megawatt terms between 2015 and 2021 to reach an annual value of $1.03 billion.

Germany is already one of the world’s leading energy storage markets. At the end of 2015, Germany was home to 67 megawatts of energy storage (128 megawatt-hours) with a value of $169 million. Factors including the nation’s declining feed-in tariffs, high retail electricity rates and abundance of installed renewables make it an attractive market for the energy storage value proposition.

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It’s easy to focus on states where the burgeoning commercial energy storage markets are already thriving.

“Everyone knows California and New York are ripe,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage.

But there are some sleeper states where the economics already work, even though rates of adoption are low. A new report from GTM Research, The Economics of Commercial Energy Storage in the U.S, outlines the states where demand charges at the largest utility in each state would create a favorable rate of return for commercial energy storage. Even if the numbers pencil out, however, there can be other factors that help or hinder behind-the-meter energy storage, from fire codes to utility regulation.

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The U.S. commercial energy storage segment is growing faster than both the residential and utility-scale segments. GTM Research’s latest report provides an economic analysis of the U.S. commercial storage market and finds that commercial storage is financially viable in just a handful of markets today. However, the report notes that by 2021, commercial storage will make economic sense in more than a third of U.S. states.

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It’s a busy time for corporate deals in the energy sector. Multibillion-dollar mergers are happening across the U.S. utility sector. PV monitoring companies are trading hands at a brisk pace. But what of energy storage?

The stakes are rising in the nascent storage market as technologies approach commercialization and business models get more sophisticated.

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We’ve heard about the value of energy storage for integrating renewables, shaving peak demand and regulating frequency, but there’s another service it can provide: combating air pollution.

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