Construction has started on BHP’s “first off-grid large-scale renewable energy project”, totalling 38 MW of solar power and a 10.1MW/5.4 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), at two nickel mines in Western Australia which supply Tesla for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

A 100MWh gravity-based energy storage system developed by Energy Vault is expected to begin construction in China in the second quarter of this year, the Swiss-American startup has claimed. 

Microsoft, Google and 10 other companies have joined the Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Council, a CEO-led organisation launched at COP26 in November to push for the global deployment of technologies that can store and discharge energy for eight hours or longer.

The Indian government’s decision to classify grid-scale energy storage as infrastructure addresses the industry’s “biggest concerns” by making investments easier to facilitate, Energy-Storage.news has heard. 

A clarification of the status of energy storage systems (ESS) in India’s power sector, issued by the government’s Ministry of Power, has described the various technologies as “essential” to achieving national renewable energy goals. 

Battery storage companies raised 159% more corporate funding in 2021 than in 2020, with funding activity reflecting the “significance of battery energy storage in the energy transition,” analysis group Mercom Capital has said. 

Two new battery projects announced this week will see mining sites in Western Australia and the South American nation of Suriname greatly reduce their dependency on fossil fuel generation.

Hydrostor believes it can get three advanced-compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) projects totalling 1.1GW/8.7GWh built in California and Australia by 2026, but regulators elsewhere need to remove barriers for A-CAES and other long-duration storage technologies to thrive, the company’s CEO has said.

In the Philippines, Fluence has brought into commercial operation the first project in an order totalling nearly half a gigawatt, for vertically-integrated power company SMC Global Power Holdings (SMCGPH).

The year has gotten off to a frenetic start, with plenty of news from the global solar and energy storage sectors to digest on the January 2022 episode of the Solar Media Podcast.