After approving investment for the acceleration of energy storage deployment in developing countries to the tune of US$1 billion a few months ago, the World Bank has now approved a US$300 million loan to do the same in China.

BASF is using NGK Insulators’ sodium sulfur batteries as its entry point into the energy market, with the German chemical company signing up as a sales partner to the Japanese manufacturer.

Strong deployment figures have been posted for the US’ energy storage market in both residential and non-residential segments in the past quarter, amid warnings that an escalating trade war with China could dampen some of that enthusiasm if tariffs are applied.

The Central Indian state wants storage services to help cater for an extra 2.7 million customers brought online by electrification schemes as well as increasing penetration of renewable energy on the grid.

India is looking at gravity-based energy storage to take advantage of the technology’s short response times and flexibility when it comes to grid integration of clean energy sources.

A solar-plus-storage project in Brazil trialling different batteries, a 22MW solar farm with 2.4MW of battery storage in Senegal and NGK Insulators’ recent, huge project using sodium sulfur batteries in Abu Dhabi are among the nominees in this year’s Solar & Storage Live Awards: International project category.

World Bank Group has set up a “global international partnership” to support the deployment of energy storage in developing countries, just a few months after committing a US$1 billion sum to the sector.

Tokyo’s main power company is using blockchain distributed ledger technology to assess how customers on its new renewable energy tariffs could use solar, batteries and electric vehicles to trade energy via the grid.

Following announcements from various manufacturers of deployments and partnerships in new territories, the latest wave of flow battery news includes an agreement that could put batteries in space for mission critical applications at the likes of NASA and the International Space Station.

Thanks to “innovative business models” and the combination of PV with batteries, Japan’s “solar boom” is far from over, market expert Izumi Kaizuka of RTS PV has said.