This week’s roundup includes energy storage-relevant news from across Solar Media’s publishing stable.

A new joint venture between a UK-based asset manager and a Danish renewables investor has been signed to fund a 500MW solar and storage pipeline in the UK.

Italy’s electric system operator, Terna, approved contracts for dozens of megawatts (MWs) of energy storage facilities to serve grid-balancing applications each month throughout 2019.

Statkraft is laying claim to the first utility-scale battery in the Republic of Ireland with the completion of an 11MW project.

UK-based Gresham House Energy Storage Fund has had an active month, ringing in 2020 with a slew of asset acquisitions and optimisation deals.

While lithium-ion batteries get most of the headlines, long-duration solutions of various types are gaining ground. Alice Grundy and Andy Colthorpe profile some of the established and emerging concepts in this increasingly important field.

Battery manufacturer VARTA AG is targeting further expansion of its lithium-ion production, acquiring VARTA Consumer from Energizer Holdings.

The evolution of energy storage and decarbonisation’s direction of travel are up for discussion in a podcast first posted just before the end of 2019.

The 10 most popular blogs on Energy-Storage.news during 2019 offer a fairly strong indication of the overall topics leading industry thinking during the year – so without further ado, here they are:

This calendar year is almost finished and Solar Media Towers will shut down for a short break between 25th December and January, but we’re already looking ahead to a New Year – a New Decade – of the energy transition.