The World Bank plans to make energy storage an integral part of its ‘Scaling Solar’ program, that until now has been focused purely on facilitating large-scale solar tendering, predominantly in Africa.

The real-world performance of batteries paired with “Hywind” – the world’s first floating wind farm – will be analysed by the wind project’s owners, Masdar and Statoil.

New Zealand’s small handful of advanced energy storage systems will be added to with the NZ$2 million (US$1.45 million) trial deployment of a grid-scale Tesla Powerpack 2 by energy generator and retailer Mercury.

Major oil company Shell and European utility ENGIE are among investors to have pumped US$20 million into Husk Power Systems, a developer of microgrids which is expanding its efforts in Asia and Africa.

The Australian Capital Territory, the country’s federal district and home of national capital Canberra, is supporting the planned roll-out of 36MW of customer-sited batteries by funding a further AU$3 million (US$2.39 million) in rebates.

Northern Ireland’s Queens University Belfast (QUB) has found that battery-based energy storage can provide inertial response for system reliability much more efficiently, at a lower cost and with substantially reduced emissions than thermal generation. Dr Marek Kubic at Fluence, which is working with QUB, explains.

Energy storage provider Connected Energy has secured £3 million (US$4.13 million) of investment from Macquarie Group and ENGIE to fuel its growth plans in the UK and abroad.

AES Energy Storage and Siemens, which between them have delivered 500MW of energy storage worldwide already, will target 160 different countries and build a 400MWh battery system in California through new joint venture Fluence.

The first ‘smart neighbourhood’ in the US state of Georgia is being created by utility Georgia Power and homebuilder PulteGroup, with each home equipped with solar PV, battery energy storage and other smart, clean and distributed energy resources.

Fresh details have emerged surrounding UK-headquartered utility Centrica’s rumoured 100MW battery after a planning application was submitted to Kilkenny County Council in Ireland through a joint venture formed in part by local subsidiary Bord Gáis Energy.