Battery storage is playing an active role in helping New York City retire its fleet of peaker power plants, with around 700MW of its most polluting power generation assets already fully retired.

As storage plays an increasingly central role in the energy transition, so too is the importance of managing battery degradation. Giriraj Rathore of battery storage system integrator Wärtsilä Energy Storage & Optimisation explores some of the main strategies for successful battery augmentation, a key means of offsetting the impacts of system degradation.

This Friday Briefing looks at some big new projects already announced this year and the new BloombergNEF Tier-1 BESS list.

Developer and operator Strata Clean Energy has started construction on its 255MW/1,020MWh Scatter Wash BESS project in Arizona, US.

Panama has launched a 500MW tender auction for renewables and energy storage, the first in Central America to include storage.

SK Gas and SK D&D, two companies in the South Korean SK Group conglomerate, have entered a joint venture (JV) for the ownership of energy storage facilities in the US with Apex Clean Energy.

BloombergNEF has launched its Energy Storage Tier 1 list of providers, noting growth in new players from the China market.

Arizona utilities Tucson Electric Power (TEP) and UniSource Energy have launched a request for proposals (RFP) for 825MW of ‘firm power’, primarily energy storage, alongside 625MW of renewables.

EV and BESS company BYD will supply its product for a project from Grenergy in Chile which has been claimed as the largest energy storage project in the world.

Lithium-ion manufacturer Hithium will supply 5GWh of LFP battery cells to system integrator Powin over a three year period.