While the renewable energy industry has suffered significant blows such as loss of employment during the COVID-19 crisis, venture capital (VC) funding into the battery energy storage sector in the first quarter of this year nonetheless saw a significant increase over the previous year’s equivalent period.

By the middle of the 2020s, using hybrid ‘portfolios’ of batteries and renewable energy sources will economically outperform existing gas power plants, while the combination of technologies is already cost-competitive with building new gas plants, a new report from the US-based Rocky Mountain Institute has said.

VC funding for battery energy storage companies in the first half of this year has already exceeded 2016’s total and looks on the way to bettering 2017, with US$539 million raised across 29 deals.

SunEdison founder and solar financing pioneer Jigar Shah talked to Andy Colthorpe about having the ‘freedom to invest’ for the biggest impact and why, with traditional lenders still reluctant to finance energy storage, there will always be space for frontrunners who are able to properly understand the value propositions of new and innovative sustainable technologies.

VC funding for energy storage projects increased significantly, while debt and public market financing remained “steady” during 2017, Mercom Capital has found.

Nuclear generation company Exelon and chemical company Albemarle, which has lithium mining facilities, are investigating opportunities in the energy storage space, having partnered with battery energy storage investor Volta Energy Technologies to do so.

The amount of VC funding invested in battery energy storage companies in the first nine months of this year has more than doubled from the equivalent period of 2016, according to a report from Mercom Capital.

Vionx, National Grid and the US Department of Energy have teamed up to install a 3MWh flow battery-based energy storage system in Massachusetts.

Primus Power, a flow battery maker which claims its systems can cost less than half the price of lithium-ion energy storage over its lifetime, is establishing manufacturing lines in China.