The Australian government has announced the results of Capacity Investment Scheme Tenders 5 and 6 for WA, awarding contracts to 10 projects.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has approved the the 300MW/1200MWh Soda Mountain solar project in San Bernardino County.

Francesco Oppici, co-founder and CCO of Carbon dioxide-based long-duration energy storage (LDES) company Energy Dome tied the commercialisation path of LDES to data centres.

Large-scale BESS projects have been progressed to construction, financing or operations across the EU this week, by project owners, investors and EPC firms re:cap, LONGi, Teos, Flower, Goldbeck Solar, SPP and Tavion.

Carl Coe, chief of staff at the US Department of Energy stated that the Department cares about “affordable, reliable, available energy, regardless of source.”

There’s been progress on several large-scale BESS projects in the UK, with Matrix Renewables securing financing for its Eccles project and BW ESS enlisting EDF to optimise its Hams Hall one; plus smaller announcements.

US investment group Pantheon Atlas LLC has a planned 1GW hyperscaler data centre campus in Croatia will be supplied entirely by renewables.

Energy trading firm Second Foundation is building three grid-scale BESS projects in the Czech Republic totalling 307MW this year, with the technology provided by local firm Gaz Energy.

LG ES posted a quarterly loss in Q1 2026 financial results this morning, partly due to investments in energy storage system (ESS) cell manufacturing.

We hear from industry sources about the significance of the CATL-HyperStrong sodium-ion BESS battery deal. Does it make a real turning point for the technology as an alternative to lithium-ion?