Andy Colthorpe

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units - and other distributed energy equipment - into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Energy-Storage.News editor Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) can greatly increase the value of home energy storage systems for a range of stakeholders including grid operators, utilities and their customers, according to SolarEdge, which has just launched a VPP software platform.

New Jersey is the latest US state to set itself targets for the deployment of energy storage, with newly passed legislation calling for 600MW of the technology within three years.

Australia-headquartered engineering and professional services company WorleyParsons said its first engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for a battery storage project in the US shows how the energy sector is moving from “mega projects” to “portfolios of smaller projects”.

The US is expected to remain the world’s biggest market for energy storage until 2022, with China its closest rival, GTM Research has said.

PV inverter manufacturer Sungrow and energy storage system integrator / software specialist Greensmith are working on the first community solar-plus-storage project to be delivered in the US state of Massachusetts.

Lebanon could reconfigure its laws and regulations to allow private sector actors to generate renewable energy for sale to the grid, it emerged as the Middle Eastern country opened up its first solar-plus-storage tender process.

Various companies in the Hyundai engineering and industrial construction group will work together on a 65MW solar PV plant with 130MWh of co-located battery energy storage in Seosan, South Korea.

Cypress Creek Renewables, which developed 1GW of PV projects in an 18-month stretch up to the beginning of this year, has used Lockheed Martin’s lithium-ion battery storage solutions in a dozen just-completed solar-plus-storage projects.

Speakers at Energy Storage Europe were confident, despite a few reservations, that Germany’s new government which grants Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term in office will be good for the environment and for renewable energy.