The US Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 890 holds a lot of interest for energy storage. Amongst its provisions is the demand for generators to reduce the imbalances between scheduled and actual delivery of energy.

Whilst not explicitly mentioning it, the Order implies that, given the increasing importance of variable output renewable energy resources, energy storage is going to become a must for grids everywhere. This, according to Lux Research, will propel grid storage to a USD$10 billion annual market.

It is clearly a wonderful opportunity… and one which will mostly be taken up by European concerns, according to Lux analyst Steve Minnihan. Speaking to MSN Money, Minnihan said European system integrators such as ABB, Siemens and Schneider Electric, plus GE of America, will take the lion’s share of the market by evolving their current custom-engineered installations to standardised systems for simple deployment.

The article goes on to identify ABB in particular as a potential good bet to invest in, share-wise. In addition to GE, US companies name-checked were S&C Electric and AES Energy Storage.