A roundup of energy storage news from across the EU, involving Polar Night Energy’s ‘Sand Battery’ in Finland, GazelEnergie and Q Energy in France, and Spain’s MITECO awarding financial support to 45 projects.

IPP Nofar Energy has agreed a Flexibility Purchase Agreement (FPA) for a 209MWh BESS project in Germany, the first of its kind in Continental Europe, it claimed.

Global average lithium-ion battery prices have fallen 20% to US$115 per kWh this year, going below US$100 for electric vehicles (EVs), BloombergNEF said.

A large-scale hybrid project has been connected to the grid in China, combining BESS and supercapacitor technology to provide numerous services to the grid including black start.

We get the reaction from other BESS suppliers, consultancies, research firms, optimisers, investors and IPPs to BYD launching a BESS using sodium-ion battery cells, a technology many see as a potential competitor to lithium-ion.

The deadline has now passed for Bulgaria’s EU-backed support scheme for standalone energy storage, and the bids submitted amount to four times the available capital available.

Technology provider Rongke Power has completed a 175MW/700MWh vanadium redox flow battery project in China, the largest of its type in the world.

Clean energy loan and grant activity from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its Loan Programs Office (LPO) has soared around the election of Donald Trump, analysis by Energy-Storage.news shows, with officials reportedly keen to get deals over the line before the new administration comes in.

Renewable developer and IPP TagEnergy will soon start construction on the largest BESS project in France, a 240MW/480MWh project with Tesla providing BESS and EPC services.

A tender for the provision of BESS technology for a ‘decentralised grid booster’ deployment has been launched by Aprion, one of the four major transmission system operators (TSO) in Germany.