Our selection of Guest Blogs published over the past year continues, featuring entries from July to December.
In Part 1, which you can read here, we picked out 10 blogs from among the more than 40 we were privileged to publish from a broad range of contributors. Topics ranged from predictions for the US market in 2025, long-duration energy storage (LDES), fire safety, and community engagement, along with many others.
Of course, the following 10 are again only a handful of the year’s Guest Blog content, which you can find on the site here, along with all the other great contributed blogs from previous years.
The topics covered by this selection of Guest Blogs are just as wide-ranging, spanning everything from revenue trends in ERCOT and CAISO to end-of-life regulations in Europe, procurement risks for large-scale projects and much more.
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Where is alpha? Market trends in ERCOT and CAISO impacting battery storage revenues
By Ali Karimian, director of market optimisation, GridBeyond, Alden Phinney, regional director, GridBeyond, July 2025
With the rapid evolution of opportunities for BESS in the two biggest regional markets in the US, ERCOT in Texas and CAISO in California, this blog focuses on the increasingly sophisticated trading strategies required to earn impressive returns.
Breaking free from lithium-ion supply chain risks: A domestic path to energy resilience for the US
By Tom Sisto, CEO, XL Batteries, July 2025
After the White House’s reciprocal tariff announcement and the ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act’ (‘OBBBA’) accelerated rhetoric around the US domestic content conversation (even if progress was already being made through existing policies), Tom Sisto, CEO of flow battery provider XL Batteries discussed the impetus for decoupling from imported lithium supply chains.
Peach State power play: Georgia’s blueprint for grid-scale energy storage
By Allan Oduor, associate project manager, Enertis Applus+, July 2025
While around 80% of US grid-scale BESS installations are consistently in CAISO and ERCOT, and PJM, SPP and NYISO often talked about as up-and-coming, Allan Oduor at engineering consultancy Enertis Applus+ took us on a journey through Georgia’s outpacing of every other southeastern US state in its adoption of battery storage.
Hybrid battery systems: A new frontier for Australia’s energy market
By Matt Grover, director, energy markets, Sam Markham, APAC growth and commercial strategy, Fluence, August 2025
Fluence’s APAC team contributed a series of monthly Guest Blogs this year. This entry focused on the growing opportunity for hybrid BESS projects that combine renewable generation with storage, operating behind a single grid connection point.
New EU end-of-life battery regulations create legal and commercial complexities for suppliers
By Suriya Edwards and Deborah Harvey, partners, Freeths LLP, August 2025
Partners at law firm Freeths Suriya Edwards and Deborah Harvey analysed new European Union (EU) regulations for batteries and new requirements for suppliers to collect, treat and recycle. The market is likely to see a broad range of solutions to producers’ end-of-life management, Edwards and Harvey wrote.
When quality slips through the cracks: A procurement guide to hidden BESS risks
By Jeff Zwijack, associate director, Clean Energy Associates (Intertek CEA), September 2025
In the September edition of Intertek CEA’s regular series, associate director Jeff Zwijack drew from lessons learned in more than 700 energy storage system integration inspections. Zwijack emphasised the need to focus on more than just battery cells and look at system-level quality.
Vietnam’s path from zero BESS deployments to meeting ambitious 2030 energy storage targets
By Sunita Dubey, Senior Climate & Energy Strategist, September 2025
Vietnam’s National Power Development Plan VIII (PDP8) includes a target for 10GW to 16.3GW of battery storage installations by 2030. Sunita Dubey took us behind the scenes to see the work it took to put energy storage at the forefront of policymakers’ and system planners’ minds.
Virtual battery tolls explained: Revenue certainty in a volatile market
By Matt Szwec, energy trading analyst, Fluence, September 2025
Virtual battery tolls, which offer ‘virtual’ dispatch rights in exchange for contracted payments, are becoming increasingly popular in Australia’s booming market. Fluence’s Matt Szwec gave a handy explainer.
How important is cell-to-ESS vertical integration?
By Charlotte Gisbourne, market analyst, PV Tech Research, November 2025
The differing business models of vertically integrated manufacturers versus pureplay system integrators came under the microscope in our colleague Charlotte Gisbourne’s comparison of the respective advantages of supply chain control and flexibility.
Long-duration energy storage is non-negotiable for Europe’s energy transformation
By Oonagh O’Grady, VP of international origination, Hydrostor, December 2025
In the final entry in a number of blogs this year that looked at long-duration energy storage (LDES), Oonagh O’Grady of advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) company Hydrostor discussed the complementary roles of short-duration and long-duration storage as essential to the energy future of Europe.