A roundup of news in brief from the energy storage industry, this time with a special focus on the UK market.

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.

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.

A survey of COVID-19 impacts on China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA) members has underscored their faith in recovery, despite the worries over income and liquidity reported by nearly 80% of respondents.

Utility company RWE has begun marketing a tech solution through which data centres, which already integrate batteries for uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, can use their UPS to “help stabilise the grid”.

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.

Production of commercial energy storage systems has begun at Tesvolt’s new 255MWh annual capacity factory in Wittenberg, Germany, with staff working in isolation due to the risk of COVID-19 infection.

SimpliPhi Power closed down its manufacturing operations briefly due to the COVID-19 pandemic last week before reopening this week, having made adjustments to try and ensure the safety of workers.