In today’s episode, ESN’s Andy Colthorpe and Liam Stoker explore the way grids are changing in the Middle East to accommodate clean energy, the role virtual power plants are playing in Italy, and the contrasting role coal is playing in Germany and bush fire-stricken Australia.

Recommendations made to the government of India as it prepares to publish its union budget for 2020 from industry group India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) include measures to support both the upstream of industry and the downstream of clean energy deployment.

Portugal is already speeding up work to follow its record-breaking solar auction of 2019 with a fresh tender this year.

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has issued tenders for 1.2GW of wind and solar hybrid capacity as well as 4MW of floating PV with 2MW/1MWh of battery storage.

Back on home turf this week: news in brief from around the world in energy storage.

Storelectric CTO Mark Howitt puts forward the case for his company’s ‘innovative’ adiabatic compressed air energy storage, which he claims is a long duration technology complementary to other existing and advanced tech such as batteries.

Manz AG has signed an agreement with China’s Shenzhen Yinghe Technology for strategic cooperation in lithium-ion cell and module production.

Ørsted has appointed REMAP as its marketing agent for its flexible generation and revenue optimisation services in the UK.

Canada-headquartered start-up Li-Cycle has claimed a victory in commercialising its lithium battery recycling processes, with a shipment sent to a customer just before the end of last year.

Gore Street Energy Storage Fund has awarded NEC Energy Solutions both EPC and long-term O&M contracts for 100MW of storage in Northern Ireland.