Solar industry veteran and PV Tech blogger Edgar A. Gunther was told by the New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s office that clean energy legislation proposed for the state is “on his desk” but appear to be no closer to receiving his approval.

Providers of solar-plus-storage into the continent of Africa have said that it is a misconception that lead acid batteries used in off-grid systems are recycled efficiently back into the supply chain.

Kokam has deployed high power battery storage at an off-grid site in Australia, which the company claims increases efficiency of onsite gas turbines at lower cost than rival grid-scale lithium projects.

South Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries will install a 70MWh standalone energy storage system at its own facilities in Changwon, as well as a smaller battery installation co-located with solar PV.

Philadelphia Solar, a vertically-integrated PV company headquartered in Jordan, said this morning it has reached financial close on a project to bring battery storage to a large-scale solar farm in the Middle East kingdom.

JLM Energy, a US maker of residential ’microstorage’ systems that pair with individual solar panels, is leaning on its US$25 million project finance fund to develop larger storage projects for commercial businesses.

Axiom Exergy, a US manufacturer of energy storage units that use stored energy for cooling buildings and produce, has netted close to US$8 million from investors including Shell’s venture capital unit and Tesla battery guru JB Straubel.

Hawaii’s position as one of the leading US states for energy storage deployment shows no sign of weakening as Hawaiian Electric Co last week announced 120MW of new battery storage across two projects in Oahu.

Convergent Energy + Power, a US-Canadian project developer which has attracted investment from the venture capital arm of Statoil, has acquired 40MW of flywheel energy storage already in operation in grid-balancing markets in New York State and Pennsylvania.

The US government Department of Energy is funding research into storing energy for periods of between 10 and 100 hours, announcing last week that “up to US$30 million” will be available through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).