South Korea’s LG Energy Solution and SK Innovation have reached an agreement to settle litigation between the pair which has been ongoing since April 2019 and threatened to derail plans to scale up battery manufacturing efforts in the US.

Hickory Park Solar project, a 200MW PV power plant in the US state of Georgia, will be equipped with a battery energy storage system that allows the local utility company to maximise the benefit of the renewable resource.

California’s goal of reaching 100% emissions-free retail electricity by 2045 is achievable, but will require huge deployments of long-duration energy storage, especially from 2030 onwards.

The US could see new mines and raw material production “scale up” as demand for battery energy storage systems and grid resilience increases over the next decade, according to Margaret O’Riley, battery, automotive and electrification business recruitment lead for Duke Energy Corporation.

Battery storage systems have been proven to be “extremely lucrative” for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in the US, but a lack of customer knowledge of regulations and supply shortages of battery cells could yet stymie the market’s growth.

While interconnection queues for America’s electric transmission and distribution operators are “swelling up” with growing numbers of energy storage projects, some of the big challenges ahead include enabling fair market participation for both standalone storage and storage paired with generation.

The opening up of independent system operator (ISO) services as a result of FERC 841 has led to a “huge difference” in storage dispatch strategy for merchant markets with concurrent bidding now the typical strategy.

An energy storage project pipeline of 500MW in Texas’s ERCOT market is being developed by Dallas-headquartered distributed energy resources developer and operator Hunt Energy Network.

The drive towards longer duration energy storage will likely be multifaceted, with different technologies finding their place both in front of and behind the meter.