Updated: Spain’s government has approved an energy storage strategy that it says will put the country “at the forefront” of what is being done in Europe and help it move towards its 2050 climate neutrality target.

Leclanché will deploy a short duration battery energy storage system (BESS) and energy management software to a natural gas power plant in Levice, Slovakia.

Ireland’s first grid-scale battery system was commissioned at the beginning of 2020 but was followed just a few months later by another one 10 times larger. The opportunities for further development in the country appear huge, with a grid operator willing to recognise the role energy storage can play in balancing the network.

Global energy major Total has continued its flurry of utility-scale solar acquisitions, picking up a 2.2GW pipeline of assets in Texas.

The February 2021 episode of the Solar Media Podcast is now available to stream and asks the question: Could solar energy deployment in 2021 top 200GW?

A US$70 million funding round has been successfully closed by Highview Power, a UK-headquartered company which has developed a liquid air energy storage (LAES) system called the ‘CRYOBattery’.

Now very much an annual fixture of the industry’s event calendar, the Energy Storage Summit hosted by Solar Media returns again this year.

Battery storage was called into action in Britain after a newly-inaugurated interconnector with France tripped.

A lithium-ion battery recycling plant is under construction in Norway, focusing initially on electric vehicle (EV) batteries, but the CEO of the company behind it has said that it will also be capable of processing batteries from stationary energy storage systems (ESS).

The results of Spain’s auction last week for 3GW of renewables capacity have been widely welcomed by the country’s solar sector, but calls have been made to tweak future auctions to support smaller-scale projects as well as encourage the participation of bids with energy storage.