Wärtsilä spinning out its energy storage activities and divesting a 50% stake this week reflects difficulties in making the business profitable and synergistic within the wider group activities, analysts said.

Octopus Energy Generation has partnered with ZE Energy to invest in and build one of Italy’s biggest BESS projects, while Eco Stor has secured financing for one of Germany’s, which it is already building. Optimiser Entrix has also won two large contracts in Germany and the Netherlands.

SECI is inviting bids for 4,800MWh of firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) capacity supported by co-located energy storage.

Around 4.9GW/14.6GWh of large-scale BESS came online in May, with a much more balanced regional breakdown than usual.

Energy Dome is advancing a 10-hour CO2 Battery project in Arizona, with SRP and Google, while Invinity announces the sale of North America’s largest VRFB, in California.

Virginia’s biggest standalone BESS comes online, Cypress Creek raises funding for a gigawatt-scale hybrid resource, and Kore Power’s mobile solutions subsidiary is sold, in this edition of news in brief.

Western Power has started construction on 18 community battery energy storage systems across Perth and Bunbury in Western Australia.

There has been another twist in the long-running saga of Wärtsilä’s energy storage business and how the company aims to run it going forward.

ESN Premium speaks with ASL on the latest FERM tender results in South Australia and why batteries excelled.

APAC’s AI data centres look set to lock in a decade of coal and gas dependency, but long-duration energy storage can break that cycle, says Pavina Adunratanasee of ArkTerra Partners.