The EU is ‘stepping up its game on battery gigafactories’, European Commission executive VP Maroš Šefčovič said at the Giga Europe conference today (12 March).

System integrator Powin is working on a new grid-scale BESS product to compete with increasingly competitive product from China, senior VP Danny Lu told us, while also discussing its Waratah project in Australia and fire safety.

We heard from system integrator, developer and EPC delegates at the Energy Storage Summit EU in London last month about the implications of falling BESS prices.

Investor NextEnergy Capital has received a US$110 million capital commitment for its solar PV and energy storage-focused fund, NextPower V ESG (NPV ESG).

This Friday briefing looks at the trend of long-duration energy storage (LDES) technology companies eyeing project development, the role Europe’s gigafactory projects play in the continent’s energy storage system (ESS) market, and the inherent challenges that come with vertical integration.

Utility EWEC (Emirates Water and Electricity Company) has invited developers to submit expressions of interest (EOI) for a 400MW battery energy storage system (BESS) project in the UAE.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is putting US$2.3 billion into projects increasing energy resiliency in rural communities, with two energy storage projects already shortlisted for awards in Arizona and Nebraska.

The regulator in Germany has given the green light to transmission system operator (TSO) Amprion’s five ‘decentralised grid booster’ BESS projects, totalling 250MW.

Developer rPlus and utility PacifiCorp have amended an existing PPA for a solar-plus-storage project, to increase the energy storage resource’s planned size from 400MWh to 1,600MWh.

We discuss a 40MWh project in Finland with both the BESS provider Merus Power and customer/project owner eNordic, the investment manager in the region for private equity firm Ardian.