A 1.2GW hybrid tender in India coupling pumped hydro, batteries, solar and wind power has achieved tariffs that are highly competitive against coal power, according to prominent industry figures.

The India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) has welcomed provisions in finance minister Nirmala Sitharam’s Union Budget 2020-2021 to support renewables and prioritise climate change policy, although the group hopes more will be done to support in-country manufacturing of batteries for applications including ESS.

Wärtsilä Corporation has announced 126MWh of energy storage across two project deals in the past week in two far-apart regions of the world.

Major Australian utility company AGL has signed a 15-year contract for “operational dispatch rights” to a 100MW battery storage system to be built in Queensland.

New study predicts the energy storage industry will grow to employ millions by 2050, fuelling a renewables jobs boom as fossil fuel industries shed millions of workers.

While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.

As energy storage becomes an increasingly integral part of a renewables-based system, interest in and discussion around non-lithium (and non-pumped hydro) technologies increases. A team of experts from CENELEST, a joint research venture between the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technologies and the University of New South Wales take a deep dive into redox flow batteries.

Recommendations made to the government of India as it prepares to publish its union budget for 2020 from industry group India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) include measures to support both the upstream of industry and the downstream of clean energy deployment.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Environment Ministry of the Maldives have launched a plan to roll out solar–battery–diesel hybrids across 48 islands.

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has issued tenders for 1.2GW of wind and solar hybrid capacity as well as 4MW of floating PV with 2MW/1MWh of battery storage.