The world of electric vehicles and energy storage are becoming increasingly intertwined, after German carmaker BMW last week became the second major carmaker in as many months to announce plans to enter the home energy storage market.

BMW told delegates at the Electric Vehicle Symposium & Exhibition 29 conference in Montreal last week it will use the high voltage batteries deployed in its i3 range of electric vehicles to create a new residential storage product in collaboration with German firm Beck Automation.

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Energy Storage News – California State University (CSU) says it is installing what will be the largest battery storage project at an educational institution in the nation—a project that is expected to reduce the university system’s electric utility costs by more than $3.3 million.

University officials say that Advanced Microgrid Solutions, a company that provides energy storage systems for electric utility grid support, will initiate the project by installing and operating a 1 Megawatt energy storage system at the Cal State Long Beach campus. The company also plans to install energy storage systems at the CSU’s Office of the Chancellor and at the Dominguez Hills campus.

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The energy storage industry enjoyed a moment in the spotlight last week when theWhite House hosted a summit on that topic. Now this burgeoning sector will work to capitalize on this new exposure to get policies in place that allow storage markets to grow.

The core message energy storage companies are trying to send is that their products provide a value to the grid, but it’s a value that the markets currently aren’t designed to compensate. The rules were written before this technology came into its own, and now they’ll need to be amended for storage providers to recoup investments that yield tangible services to the grid. As electric generation shifts away from central, thermal plants to more distributed and variable renewable sources, the ability to flexibly store energy will play an ever more critical role. 

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Energy Storage News – On Thursday, the Obama Administration announced a number of initiatives that plan to help the US transition to a smart, more energy efficient, 21st century power grid.

The White House is proposing a number of new executive actions and 33 state and private sector commitments are proposed to “result in at least 1.3 gigawatts of additional storage procurement or deployment in the next five years.”

A “smart grid,” according to the Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability, is a system that uses computer-based remote control and communication technologies to help utility workers to monitor and gather data. It’s used in other industries, but has only recently been introduced in things such as power plants and wind farms.

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Microsoft has partnered with battery technology provider Primus Power to work on a pilot program to advance energy storage at datacenters globally.

Planned to be implemented in partnership with NRG Energy, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and battery technology providers, the project is a part of Microsoft’s broader focus to explore new technologies for energy storage and management for its datacenter.

The team will determine effective ways to store large scale renewable energy to ensure electricity it is inexpensive and available for future needs.

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Government agencies, companies, and organisations in the US have committed to generate a minimum of 1.3GW of energy storage capacity across the country over the next five years.

According to the US Government, any procurement, deployment, and investment commitments made are expected to result in nearly $1bn.

The federal government has also promised to increase its storage and microgrid capacity at both federal and military bases with the establishment of a new 50MW-100MW grid-scale battery project at California’s naval weapons station Seal Beach, alongside other projects.

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Energy Storage News – Money doesn’t make the world go round; energy does. With energy, modern society is capable of achieving the once unthinkable, from face-to-face communication around the world in real time, to sending a man to Mars.

In recent decades, energy research has focused both on capturing power from renewable sources and making our existing electric infrastructure as efficient as possible. Energy storage solutions are vital to both areas of research.

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Energy Storage News – SolarEdge Technologies Inc., a provider of PV inverters, power optimizers and module-level monitoring services, and LG Chem Ltd. have announced the compatibility of SolarEdge’s StorEdge solutions and LG Chem’s new high-voltage RESU10H and RESU7H lithium-ion batteries.

“Through this collaboration, SolarEdge is adding LG Chem RESU batteries to our StorEdge solution compatibility in order to extend our offering of cost-effective and integrated energy generation, storage and consumption,” states Lior Handelsman, marketing and product strategy vice president of SolarEdge. “Building on our respective expertise, we hope to lower the cost of solar energy and accelerate the adoption rate of integrated solar energy generation and storage.”

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Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light Company announced an innovative new energy storage pilot project Thursday in conjunction with a White House summit on scaling renewable energy and storage with smart markets.

Combining energy storage with renewable resources, especially solar panels, has been touted an inevitable combination or as an alternative to the elimination of incentives such as net metering. A new study by MIT finds that storage can make economic sense in today’s market in some instances, but that the opportunity might not last.

The MIT researchers found that as the cost of wind and solar power systems comes down, the cost of storage systems will need to come down as well or they will no longer be profitable because at some point it would be more profitable to simply add more generating capacity rather than more storage capacity.

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