Mexico’s economy, international competitiveness and quality of power on the electric grid – as well as its environment – could be given a serious boost if battery energy storage systems were given a greater chance to contribute, a developer of projects based in the country has said.

Despite the fall in unit prices for energy storage, a total of US$3.6 billion of investment was committed to energy storage projects in 2020, around the same amount as in 2019.

Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the national Energy Storage Association (ESA), has been named in the newly appointed senior leadership team at the US Department of Energy (DoE).

Renewable Energy Hub has announced the first transactions as part of its new ‘Virtual Storage’ electricity swap contract in Australia..

Vertically-integrated vanadium mining, production and supply company Largo Resources wants to launch its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) onto the market within a year-and-a-half, predicting that the technology will play a “critical role” in addressing significant demand for energy storage.

The amount of corporate funding coming into the global battery storage industry in 2020 was more than double the amount the previous year, with over US$6.5 billion raised last year compared to around US$2.8 billion in 2019.

Renewable energy uptake and the falling costs of battery energy storage are “inexorably linked” as the global economy faces a crucial decade ahead in its urgent need to decarbonise, according to work by McKinsey & Company.

Solar-plus-storage systems at customers’ homes in Hawaii will create a “comprehensive” virtual power plant (VPP) network on three Hawaiian islands of up to 6,000 individual systems.

Siemens has partnered with the company behind what is to be the UK’s first lithium-ion battery gigafactory, providing it with its Digital Enterprise Technology, which can simulate gigaplant production processes and flows ahead of construction.

At first glance, renewable power generation has created, in the eyes of traditional industries, an investment nirvana. By understanding how these better-capitalised companies view renewables’ merchant risk, we can identify where future energy storage projects should seek finance partners, says Charles Lesser, a partner at Apricum – The Cleantech Advisory.