ESS Inc, among several companies looking to commercialise a flow battery energy storage technology, has netted US$13 million in a Series B funding round from investors that include global chemical company BASF.

Powin Energy has just sold 116MWh of its project assets and pipeline of future developments to esVolta and made a deal which sees Powin become exclusive supplier to the latter’s projects.

Primus Power is among a handful of makers currently commercialising their flow batteries, with rivals that include RedT, VIZn Energy and Redflow. Early customers have included Microsoft, which installed a Primus battery at its corporate HQ in a pilot project. Andy Colthorpe spoke with Primus Power CEO Tom Stepien to learn more.

Energy storage inverter and power conversion company DynaPower has delivered its first ever DC-to-DC converters to large-scale solar-plus-storage projects in the US, while Ideal Power has attained UL certification for two of its products.

A 250-home ‘virtual big battery’ was switched on in Canberra, Australia last week, allowing residents to sell solar-generated power at a significantly higher price than available to them through feed-in tariff (FiT) policies.

Amidst experiencing Model 3’s “production hell”, launching a semi truck, a new Roadster and a portable battery pack, Tesla’s work on a 129MWh energy storage system in South Australia appears on track to be completed in time.

Over the past couple of weeks, various flow battery makers have touted new sales and supply chain agreements as the fledgling sector fights for a share of the stationary energy storage market.

What is thought to be the largest operating containerised vanadium redox flow machine system in the UK has been connected to the grid by manufacturer redT energy, with the 1MWh project becoming the first to sign up to a local energy market being set up by British multinational utility Centrica.

Schneider Electric and NGK Insulators have reached the conclusion of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) under which both companies will explore global opportunities to jointly market NGK’s NAS (R) battery and Schneider Electric’s inverter (Conext Core XC ES).

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.