Scottish Renewables has announced the launch of a new Storage Network.

The network is open to the organisation's members who are interested in energy storage, or those who want to get involved in the sector.

In addition, a white paper titled 'Energy Storage: The Basics' was released on 24 September.

Some of the technologies covered in the paper include:

• Hydrogen fuel cells – building on knowledge from Aberdeen's hydrogen bus fleet and two Scottish universities who are at the forefront of research into this area.

• Large-scale heat storage – for which potential has already been identified in disused mines in the central belt and abandoned railway tunnels in Glasgow.

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• Supercapacitors – which range in size from miniscule to large, and can be used in fractions of a second to balance electricity grids.

Joss Balmore, Senior Policy Manager at Scottish Renewables, said: "It is of vital importance to our energy system that we have a strong energy storage sector to complement Scotland's growing renewable electricity and heat sectors and to increase our energy security.

"Being able to store when it is generated and deploy it is needed would help to maximise our use of renewables generation, cut carbon emissions further, and revolutionise the way we use energy.

"The global market for large-scale energy storage has been estimated at almost £20 billion ($30bn) by 2022. Scotland has already taken a lead in the development of technologies such as grid-scale batteries, which are currently being used on some of our remote islands, and pumped storage hydro, but there is far more we could do. This new network aims to keep that progress going."

To download 'Energy Storage: The Basics', click here.

(LM/CD)