One of Germany’s largest utilities wants to build what it says could be the biggest ‘battery’ in the world to date – using underground caverns filled with saltwater as a giant redox flow energy storage system.

An open fund for solar energy and energy storage in various emerging markets has been launched by Franck Constant, the co-founder of Sonnedix Group and director of Sithe Pacific, Energy-Storage.News’ sister site PV Tech revealed today.

The global grid-connected energy storage project pipeline is forecasted to hit 2GW this year; a 20% increase on the figures for the end of 2015, according to new analysis by IHS.

Andy Colthorpe and Ben Willis profile some of the companies and technologies making waves in the fast-changing world of stationary energy storage, in a feature article which originally appeared in the seventh issue of PV Tech Power.

Anthony Price of consultancy Swanbarton previews the International Flow Battery Forum in Germany with a quick primer on the technology, its uses and some of the players attending the event.

Aquion Energy’s non-toxic ‘saltwater’ batteries will be used to illuminate a dedicated bicycle lane at an airport in Thailand.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries accounted for 90% of all proposed grid storage projects in 2014, according to a new study by Lux Research.

A team at Harvard is pursuing a metal-free battery chemistry based on organic molecules called Quinones. The technology potentially offers an abundant and safe material to use for scaling up flow batteries, but according to the energy storage team at Lux Research in Boston, there are significant limitations based on project cost.

A remote town in Canada which lies 55km away from the nearest electrical substation, was supplied with a battery system aimed at shoring up the reliability of its electricity supply.