Utility Dive highlighted a new Guidehouse market report on distributed storage companies, including overall market observation by AEE's Ryan Katofsky. Read excerpts below and the entire UD piece here. 

ENGIE, Enel X, Tesla, Honeywell, Con Edison Battery Storage, EDF, and NantEnergy were ranked as top leaders in the distributed energy storage integrator sector, according to a report released Wednesday by Guidehouse Insights. "The distributed energy storage (DES) market has grown increasingly competitive since 2016, representing significant opportunity," Guidehouse Insights said in its report, which evaluated the strategy and execution of 15 distributed energy storage integrators...

Distributed energy storage also is key to load management, an important grid service, according to a trade association leader.

"Distributed energy storage has emerged as an important enabling technology for achieving better integration of clean distributed generation, helping customers manage loads and energy costs, and for providing valuable grid services," Ryan Katofsky, managing director of Advanced Energy Economy told Utility Dive in an email. "As costs continue to fall and performance improves, we expect its importance to a modern grid will only grow," Katofsky said.

The leaders in the market have moved away from originating and developing distributed energy storage projects, according to the report, and are concentrating on core competencies such as software development, system design, and ongoing system operation and optimization. The role of the integrators has become one of ensuring projects are successfully built and profitable.

By focusing on providing integrated hardware and software solutions, these "pure-play" integrators have become better at optimizing the value of energy storage for different commercial and industrial customers, according to Guidehouse Insights' report...

Read the entire UD piece here.