The COVID-19 crisis is bringing into the public eye the US’ dependency on importing goods, particularly batteries for advanced energy storage and electric vehicles, the CEO of a battery materials startup has said.

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is planning to host a technical conference on ‘hybrid resources’ – energy storage paired with generation – in July this year.

Australian state governments of Western Australia and the Northern Territory have budgeted for measures to support renewables in the past few days, primarily through supporting batteries at large-scale, residential and community level.

While we have avoided risking the spreading of false information or reacting too hastily to an ever-changing situation, here are some of the latest developments. This blog continues on from the first edition which ran from 17 March 2020 to 3 April 2020.

With everything going on right now around COVID-19, there has been an increase in installers’ and customers’ desires for information. Aric Saunders of Electriq Power, based in California, goes back to basics to support the large group of installers that are just now trying to get into the storage business.

Plans to build five large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) across the islands of Hawaii will come up for public input via web links and community TV channels.

Home batteries in a South Australia delivered significant revenues from their first six months of participation in a virtual power plant to help balance the grid, even with only an initial 1MW – 2MW of aggregated customer systems participating.

Realising the theoretical promise of solar-wind-storage hybrids is far from straightforward, with individual projects likely to vary considerably. Ben Willis examines some of the technical complexities of combining different technologies into a single, profitable entity.

Technology provider Sinexcel has announced the successful commissioning of a 72MWh pair of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery energy storage projects in Illinois and West Virginia in the US, to deliver frequency regulation services to the PJM Interconnection service area.

An optimal power system portfolio for the US state of California that would drive the world’s fifth largest economy towards greenhouse gas reduction goals for 2030 and then to zero carbon by 2040, includes 1GW of long duration energy storage.