Samantha McGahan of Australian Vanadium on the electrolyte, which is the single most important material for making vanadium flow batteries.

Another serving of news in brief from around the world in energy storage.

System integrator Energy SpA and its vertically integrated peer Pylon Technologies have formed a joint venture (JV) to set up a gigafactory in Italy producing batteries for energy storage.

Italy is seeing “too many solar developers moving into storage” and issues around the spike in BESS capex costs shortly after 2022’s capacity market auction, sources told Energy-Storage.news.

Charley Grimston from battery storage insurance firm Altelium compares the sector’s development with the early stage of the wind market.

Energy firm EnBW has been given the go-ahead to start work on a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) project in Germany.

System operators Amprion and E.ON are launching a series of non-wires alternative energy storage projects totalling 250MW in Germany, claimed to be the first of their kind.

Switzerland-based renewable energy firm Axpo has acquired its second energy storage development in Sweden, a co-located project with 25MW of energy storage.

Another edition of news in brief, this time from the UK’s booming large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) market.

UK-based utility Octopus Energy will optimise UK battery storage projects for UAE-based Masdar, which has committed to investing £1 billion (US$1.25 million) in the country’s grid-scale market.