It’s likely a strong indication of the way the world is adopting renewable energy rapidly that just under a month ago, one of the best-established trade shows for solar in the US featured what seemed like almost as much space dedicated to national and international energy storage companies and technologies, as it did for solar.
Just over US$28 million has been awarded by the US Department of Energy to projects that could deliver energy storage durations of up to 100 hours, while also committing US$120m to the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR).
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.
Leclanché and VRB Energy, two providers in very different areas of energy storage, have struck up joint ventures (JVs) intended to assist them in scaling up and hitting new markets, while Ice Energy has netted fresh funding.
Axiom Exergy, a US manufacturer of energy storage units that use stored energy for cooling buildings and produce, has netted close to US$8 million from investors including Shell’s venture capital unit and Tesla battery guru JB Straubel.
1414 Degrees, an Australian startup manufacturing thermal energy storage systems using a proprietary silicon storage medium is preparing to launch an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and build a 200MWh ‘module’ at a renewable energy facility.
Already this year we’ve been able to learn directly about the energy storage market in Europe from the Energy Storage Summit in London at the end of February and Energy Storage Europe in Dusseldorf, which just took place last week. Andy Colthorpe summarises what he’s seen and heard.
New York has become the latest US state to decide to support energy storage through its legislature and will be setting targets for deployment of the technologies in the coming weeks.
The government of the state of South Australia has named four utility-scale energy storage projects which it will support with grants toward the total cost of development.
Calmac, a provider of ice-creating thermal energy storage systems – and ice rinks – has been bought out by a subsidiary of major US manufacturer Ingersoll Rand.
