North Carolina has significant opportunity to promote energy storage manufacturing in the state. But, it will likely lag in actually putting storage and its services on the power grid.

A panel of experts at the Energy Storage Association’s Annual Conference and Expo at the Charlotte Convention Center discussed what the state is doing now — and could do in the future — to build on the presence of companies in the industry to expand the energy hub already being developed in the Carolinas to include storage.

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SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY) and Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) are natural partners, especially because Elon Musk happens to be the biggest shareholder of both companies. But there’s also another natural tie between the companies: SolarCity’s effort to democratize energy production has a growing need for Tesla Motors’ ability to store energy.

And it was recently uncovered by GTM Research that SolarCity has grand plans for Tesla Motors batteries in 2016.

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The energy world is full of complicated technologies and regulations, usually expressed in a thicket of off-putting acronyms. It’s enough to make your brain hurt.

So today, let’s look at something simple.

It’s a new technology for storing energy, an important part of enabling more wind and solar power on the grid. It’s from a company called ARES. Here’s how it works:

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The Intertubes have been buzzing with news that a research team based at UC-Irvine has created a new type of energy storage device that can last for more than 100,000 charges. For all practical purposes, that counts as an infinite battery. Under real life conditions, such a battery would most likely outlive the device it powers, and it might even outlive the owner of the device as well.

The new battery is still in the early research stage, but if it pans out, it would have a significant impact on lifecycle and supply chain issues for the ballooning number of smart phones, electric vehicles, energy storage products, and countless other battery powered devices inhabiting the Earth.

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According to a new report from GTM Research and SoliChamba Consulting, 58 gigawatts of monitored PV will be added to the world’s total in 2016, bringing the cumulative PV monitoring market to 242 gigawatts. In addition to a growing installation base, the PV monitoring landscape is undergoing tremendous change as it integrates into the broader PV software ecosystem, deals with additional regulatory and cybersecurity requirements, and faces challengers from the energy management market.

Now in its fourth edition, the report, Global PV Monitoring 2016-2020: Markets, Trends, and Leading Players, is the industry’s most comprehensive analysis of the global PV monitoring market.

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In order to meet emission reduction targets, the challenge to engineers to develop clean, reliable energy technologies has never been so pressing. With the global potential for grid energy storage by 2017 expected to account for 185GWh (52GW) of capacity, renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power both offer potential solutions but the unresolved issue has always been consistency of supply and how to store power generated for use at a later date.

One energy storage solution that has come to the fore is Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES), which uses liquid air to create an innovative energy reserve that delivers large scale, long duration energy storage.

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