ScottishPower Renewables has unveiled the supplier of a 50MWh battery to go in alongside its Whitelee wind farm.

A new project is underway in the US to tear down a significant barrier for “realising the full benefits” of energy storage: the complexity and lack of clarity over interconnection rules across the country.

A roundup of news in brief from around the world in energy storage, this week with a US flavour.

Battery energy storage systems (BESS) from provider NIDEC ASI will be installed for customers Neoen and Uniper at sites in Finland and Sweden.

While lithium-ion batteries continue to take the dominant share of new installations by some distance, there are a variety of other technologies looking to complement, combine or even compete. Panellists at the Energy Storage Digital Series looked at the questions of which energy storage technologies are the likeliest contenders for that future.

Barriers have been removed allowing for battery storage projects five times the size as the current limit in Britain, in a move hailed as a “significant, positive and well-timed” step.

Taking the UK’s transmission system and the circumstances which led to a dramatic blackout as a direct example, Javier Cavada and Gary Preece of liquid air energy storage (LAES) systems company Highview Power look at how such events could be avoided, cost-effectively and with lesser environmental consequences.

US utility firm PacifiCorp has launched its largest request for proposals for energy projects yet, seeking bids for more than 1.8GW of new solar and 600MW of battery energy storage.

In the past few months Spain has announced a 2.5GW energy storage target by 2030 and Portugal is hosting a solar tender with a significant add-on option for storage. Clean Horizon’s experts Corentin Baschet and Tanguy Poirot spoke with Andy Colthorpe on the role batteries and other storage can play in the Iberian Peninsula’s energy transition in the present and future.

Despite the fundamental drivers remaining unchanged, Covid-19 will certainly leave its mark on the post-pandemic energy storage world. Florian Mayr at cleantech advisory and consultancy group Apricum examines how the energy storage industry can best adapt to the “next normal”.