Hospitals, schools and railways in South Australia will be powered by an electricity retailer started up by billionaire steel trader Sanjeev Gupta, following the signing of an agreement between the state government and Gupta’s SIMEC ZEN Energy.
ESS Inc, among several companies looking to commercialise a flow battery energy storage technology, has netted US$13 million in a Series B funding round from investors that include global chemical company BASF.
With energy storage deployments in the US up almost 50% year-on-year, according to GTM Research analysis, the next big question for the industry might be who gets to own all of the assets.
German-American system integrator and technology provider Younicos has completed a two-phase operation to upgrade a lead acid energy storage system for lithium batteries, at the 36MW Notrees facility in Texas.
Powin Energy has just sold 116MWh of its project assets and pipeline of future developments to esVolta and made a deal which sees Powin become exclusive supplier to the latter’s projects.
Primus Power is among a handful of makers currently commercialising their flow batteries, with rivals that include RedT, VIZn Energy and Redflow. Early customers have included Microsoft, which installed a Primus battery at its corporate HQ in a pilot project. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Primus Power CEO Tom Stepien to learn more.
Major Japanese business and government entities have extended their involvement in energy storage with the announcement of the country’s first virtual power plants, an investment in a US frequency regulation project and partnerships on technology.
Massachusetts, one of the few US states thus far to put consideration of energy storage into long-term planning decisions for electric utilities, will support 26 projects with US$20 million in grants.
Nuclear generation company Exelon and chemical company Albemarle, which has lithium mining facilities, are investigating opportunities in the energy storage space, having partnered with battery energy storage investor Volta Energy Technologies to do so.
The latest confirmed initiative supporting the restoration of power in Puerto Rico is the donation of 6MW of batteries from AES, which has suggested microgrids and large-scale solar could be the answer to long term stability issues.
