Tenders for solar-plus-storage projects on French island territories including Corsica, Guadeloupe and Martinique have resulted in winning bids often 40% lower than the victors of previous reverse auctions.

Founder and CEO Paul Nahi last night announced his resignation from Enphase, the PV microinverter maker and energy management specialist, which also makes its own AC Battery for energy storage.

The sale of an NEC Corporation business division involved in manufacturing lithium-ion batteries will have no material impact on the group’s activities in energy storage, according to a company spokesman.

A 100MW tender for energy storage, part of a 400MW auction for renewable energy projects, has been officially launched by the regional government of Queensland, Australia.

French energy storage developer and system integrator Electro Power Systems (EPS) has hailed the speedy execution of a microgrid’s expansion in Somalia, which has just been completed in less than 30 days.

Developer Deepwater Wind has applied to build a 144MW offshore wind farm, coupled with 40MWh of battery-based energy storage from Tesla, off the coast of Massachusetts.

Australian energy firm Genex Power has received first-round board approval from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) for potential debt funding of its 270MW solar PV and 250MW pumped hydro projects, that are part of the Kidston Renewable Energy Hub, in Northern Queensland.

Tesla’s senior director of battery technology since 2006 has quit the company seeking pastures new, a company spokeswoman confirmed this morning.

BYD has announced a tie-up with the inverter manufacturing division of Kostal, where the former’s latest high voltage energy storage systems will be paired with the latter’s PIKO brand inverters.

Interest in energy storage in the Middle East is ‘ramping up significantly’, as we reported last week in an extract from this interview with IHS Markit analyst Julian Jansen. His firm is forecasting 1.8GW of energy storage for the region by 2025 – from an installed base of next-to-nothing today. Jansen talked us through some of the drivers, market dynamics and the general picture of what we might see developing.