The amount of corporate funding coming into the global battery storage industry in 2020 was more than double the amount the previous year, with over US$6.5 billion raised last year compared to around US$2.8 billion in 2019.
The Green Investment Group (GIG), a company owned by financial services group Macquarie, is investing an unspecified sum into esVolta, a US-headquartered developer and owner of utility-scale energy storage projects.
Renewable energy uptake and the falling costs of battery energy storage are “inexorably linked” as the global economy faces a crucial decade ahead in its urgent need to decarbonise, according to work by McKinsey & Company.
A plan to invest CA$2.5 billion (US$1.97 billion) in the clean energy economy by the Canada Infrastructure Bank could lead to involvement in one of the world’s biggest battery energy storage projects so far.
Solar-plus-storage systems at customers’ homes in Hawaii will create a “comprehensive” virtual power plant (VPP) network on three Hawaiian islands of up to 6,000 individual systems.
Energy company Total and solar-plus-storage developer 174 Global, a division of Hanwha Group, have formed a joint venture to develop utility-scale solar and storage projects with a total capacity of 1.6GW in the US.
At first glance, renewable power generation has created, in the eyes of traditional industries, an investment nirvana. By understanding how these better-capitalised companies view renewables’ merchant risk, we can identify where future energy storage projects should seek finance partners, says Charles Lesser, a partner at Apricum – The Cleantech Advisory.
The lion’s share of new funding announced this week to help scale-up potentially disruptive technologies by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) of the US government Department of Energy (DOE) will go to battery and smart grid technologies.
Canadian Solar said that construction has begun on a large-scale solar PV project combined with a four-hour duration battery storage system in California which the company has just sold to Goldman Sachs Renewable Power.
Virginia’s clean energy policies introduced during 2020 included the US’ biggest state-level target for deployment of energy storage – and the state’s regulator has now introduced the rules intended to enable achievement of that target.
