The development of data centres has emerged as a possible lifeline for ongoing projects in the battery energy storage system (BESS) industry.

The Community Development and Infrastructure Department at Santa Cruz County has become the latest California jurisdiction to publish a draft zoning ordinance regulating the deployment of battery energy storage systems. 

In a major week for European BESS deal-making, project acquisition and financing deals have been done in the Poland, Germany, Finland, the UK and Romania for grid-scale projects totalling well over 1GW of capacity.

From the US, Maxwell Technologies is acquired for its third time, by Clarios, Fullmark Energy completes a tax credit transfer, and OATI partners with Colville Tribes on microgrid solutions.

The battery storage industry’s race for higher energy density should be put into a site-level perspective, rather than focusing solely on larger cells.

Pacific Green’s Portland Energy Park, Victoria’s largest BESS at 1GW/2.5GWh, has secured federal approval via Australia’s EPBC Act.

Battery energy storage systems in Australia’s NEM are facing new operational and revenue challenges due to minimum system load events.

An energy storage agreement (ESA) between Toronto, Ontario-headquartered developer Hydrostor and California community choice aggregator (CCA) Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) is set to be amended for the third time. 

Europe is on track to reach 100GW of cumulative energy storage deployments this month, according to LCP Delta and Energy Storage Europe.

Swedish renewable energy developer OX2 has formally taken ownership of the 1.2GW Dinner Hill Wind Farm and the co-located 400MWh Harvest Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in Western Australia.