Private equity fund SoftBank Vision Fund has officially signed off on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) to develop 3GW of PV and energy storage capacity within Saudi Arabia.

The amount of VC funding invested in battery energy storage companies in the first nine months of this year has more than doubled from the equivalent period of 2016, according to a report from Mercom Capital.

Independent accreditation and testing company DNV GL has created Battery XT, the first testing-based verification of battery lifetime for Li-on batteries.

One of the ‘value of energy storage’ questions that was being asked a lot two or three years ago was around the use of batteries and decentralised system architecture instead of traditional “poles and wires” grid networks. However, advancements in this area have been slow to materialise and Navigant Research’s recent ‘Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Deferral’ report sought to fill the knowledge gap. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to ask lead author Alex Eller three quick questions around the topic.

In the latest edition of downstream solar PV technology journal PV Tech Power, writers from Energy-Storage.News and PV Tech have profiled 10 of the top system integrators working in grid-scale energy storage today.

Casablanca-based confectionery and chewing gum producer Maghreb Industries is close to fully implementing a 1,361kWp rooftop solar system combined with an ice-based storage system on the roof of its new factory.

Energy storage will increasingly be deployed to save money on electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure, with nearly half of the global market to be found in the Asia-Pacific region by 2026, Navigant Research has said.

Accreditation and certification house DNV GL has just published an updated version of GRIDSTOR, a best and recommended practice guide for stakeholders in the grid-connected energy storage sector.

A test and demonstration facility operated by South Africa’s main utility Eskom will trial Primus Power’s flow batteries, after a local developer was awarded a grant for the project by the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).

While lithium-ion is rapidly racing ahead to become the “de facto grid storage solution” and is the most popular technology choice by far, vendors of other types of batteries are also targeting the market, with varying degrees of success.