Energy storage news - March 9th, 2018

This week’s TOP 5 includes the United States IRS to accept battery retrofitting on existing PV systems for the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), U.S. Democrats' grid upgrade infrastructure plan (energy storage funding included), Bosch selling its EV manufacturing start-up, GE announcing their new storage platform, and finally the reason why your digital clock in Europe has been off a few minutes.

1. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has indicated that a battery retrofit on an existing PV installation (even at the residential scale) can qualify for the investment tax credit – as long as the battery charges from the PV system.
2. Bosch decides to sell Seeo (the U.S. battery startup Bosch acquired in 2015) and abandon EV manufacturing.
3. GE announced their new energy storage platform called the “Reservoir”.
4. United States democrats have released their new infrastructure plan which includes USD$80 billion for grid upgrades - including energy storage.
5. Since January, the ENTSO-E network frequency is off by 4 mHz on average due to a political disagreement between Serbia and Kosovo. A short calculation shows that this deviation could increase the utilization rates of the batteries providing FCR by up to 45% (assuming the absence of a deadband).