News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

ESS Inc, US maker of the only flow battery that uses a battery chemistry based on iron and saltwater electrolytes, is making its first incursion into the Brazilian energy storage market.

SMA Solar Technology’s new Sunny Boy Storage battery inverter has the ability to integrate up to three batteries, a feature that allows for a simple way to expand storage systems.

Shell has continued to scale-up its interest in distributed energy by participating in a €60 million (US$70.23 million) investment round by German battery storage firm sonnen.

Automotive giant Nissan has confirmed the UK launch of its home solar-plus-storage product, first revealed in February this year.

Providers of solar-plus-storage into the continent of Africa have said that it is a misconception that lead acid batteries used in off-grid systems are recycled efficiently back into the supply chain.

Kokam has deployed high power battery storage at an off-grid site in Australia, which the company claims increases efficiency of onsite gas turbines at lower cost than rival grid-scale lithium projects.

There are now just three weeks left to nominate your projects for the Solar Power Portal and Energy-Storage.News Awards 2018.

JLM Energy, a US maker of residential ’microstorage’ systems that pair with individual solar panels, is leaning on its US$25 million project finance fund to develop larger storage projects for commercial businesses.

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge launched a software platform for aggregating household energy storage units – and other distributed energy equipment – into virtual power plants, last week. The company’s solution has already been chosen for a VPP project in Australia by AGL, one of the country’s biggest utilities. The commercial launch of the VPP platform direct to customers is now underway. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Lior Handelsman, one of SolarEdge’s founders and vice president of marketing and product strategy.