The financial services arm of engineering giant Siemens will be offering no-money-down options for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in the UK to purchase energy storage systems.

BYD has announced a tie-up with the inverter manufacturing division of Kostal, where the former’s latest high voltage energy storage systems will be paired with the latter’s PIKO brand inverters.

Interest in energy storage in the Middle East is ‘ramping up significantly’, as we reported last week in an extract from this interview with IHS Markit analyst Julian Jansen. His firm is forecasting 1.8GW of energy storage for the region by 2025 – from an installed base of next-to-nothing today. Jansen talked us through some of the drivers, market dynamics and the general picture of what we might see developing.

Ideal Power, the US company best known for its power conversion systems for energy storage, has announced two recent project orders totalling 1.6MW in northern Texas and in California.

There is increasing high-level interest in the potential for energy storage in the Middle East, with grid-connected systems forecast to reach 1.8GW in the region by 2025, according to I.H.S Markit.

Swiss battery maker Leclanché could apply for listing on a US stock exchange and is targeting the acquisition of an “energy management storage software company”, despite emerging from a recent period of “technical insolvency”.

Canadian utility Alectra Energy Solutions, which has over a million customers in Ontario, will offer large-scale energy storage to commercial and industrial operations in its service area, having formed a partnership with developer AMP.

The amount of energy storage investment that came from VC (venture capital) funding more than doubled in the first half of 2017 compared to last year, a new report has found.

Aquion Energy, maker of energy storage batteries and whole systems based on a novel electrolyte with a chemical composition similar to saltwater, is back in business.

Despite a bill to create a rebate programme for energy storage systems purchased in California being dropped from a recent round of legislative decision-making, the state’s industry still has a “bright future”, commentators have said.