New energy battery cabinets are unreliable

Is battery storage a bad policy?

"Simply put, it is not just a bad policy, but a dangerous one, and the city is literally playing with fire by allowing this to happen." Holden is talking about proposals to build more battery energy storage system (Bess) centres - large-scale power storage sites based on the same lithium-ion batteries that are used in laptops and electric cars.

Is the EU a single market for battery energy storage?

"It is all organised on a national level, which means that the EU is not actually a single market as it's meant to be for battery energy storage systems. And that's one of the reasons that big deployments are going a bit slower than they should be."

Will Holden build more battery energy storage centres?

Holden is talking about proposals to build more battery energy storage system (Bess) centres - large-scale power storage sites based on the same lithium-ion batteries that are used in laptops and electric cars. The batteries are stored, thousands together, in large metal boxes.

Should battery safety be harmonised?

When it comes to safety, experts are calling for greater, and more unified, regulation. "From our point of view, it's important to have it harmonised as far as possible, because certainly in the European Union there is no such thing as an EU-wide standard for the quality and maintenance of battery assets," says Mr Acke.

Are there any international standards on Bess battery safety?

While there may not yet be any international standards on Bess facility safety, countries including China, the US, the UK and Australia are all working on technical guidelines. Meanwhile, battery safety is improving all the time, with newer systems equipped with improved suppression systems and more fire-resistant battery chemistries.

Should we increase battery deployments by a factor of 10?

And that's where Bess come in. "For the moment, in the European Union, what we are looking at is that we should increase battery deployments by a factor of 10," says Driese Acke, deputy chief executive of SolarPower Europe.