The White House announcement of new developments and investment in energy storage has been characterised as “the first executive office push for energy storage” that will “undoubtedly galvanize” the industry, in a new GTM Research brief by the firm's energy storage director Ravi Manghani.

As part of the initiatives propounded by the Obama administration, investors are announcing US$130 million in new funding commitments for energy storage. According to the report, in aggregate, these new commitments could lead to around US$1 billion in investments in energy storage.

Apart from significant financing announcements, other key takeaways from the federal government announcement are its commitment to increasing its storage and microgrid capacity through programmes that will both provide funding for rural microgrids and enable federal and military bases to be more resilient. Furthermore, the US Department of Energy is promoting the standardisation of energy data which will be more economical for the industry and individual stakeholders, as well as creating an accessible pool of information that will ensure efficiency and consistency across the industry.

In addition, sixteen developers and power companies in at least eight states have announced new storage procurement and deployment targets for the next five years on the back of the announcement, to aid in the push for what is known as the second wave of energy storage; in 2015, the US doubled its installed capacity of energy storage to 500MW.

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