While headlines about energy storage in Australia have been dominated by news of batteries in large-scale utility projects and the residential sector, the country’s government and renewable energy agency have identified numerous possibilities for developing pumped hydro storage assets.

News in brief from the week in energy storage around the world.

Automation and engineering group ABB has signed on to become a supplier to a planned European lithium-ion battery ‘Gigafactory’ for Swedish start-up Northvolt.

Australian homes and businesses will soon be able to use renewable energy stored in their batteries to bid into a local energy market and provide a range of grid services using a new software platform backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

The secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Anand Kumar has stressed the importance of energy storage to the overall renewables sector and invited industry to come and set up battery manufacturing in India.

Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.

A test and demonstration facility operated by South Africa’s main utility Eskom will trial Primus Power’s flow batteries, after a local developer was awarded a grant for the project by the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).

Energy storage battery and system maker Leclanché will pilot the use of stationary energy storage to support fast charger networks for electric vehicles (EVs) in Holland.

Shifting responsibility for product safety onto manufacturers, rather than installers, of residential energy storage systems would be a positive step forward for Australia’s industry, the country’s Clean Energy Council has said.

Fernhill Corporation, a Nevada-headquartered company that invests in and acquires companies for “long-term sustainable cash flow”, has applied to patent a hybrid capacitor-battery energy storage system.