The repercussions of Texas’ Winter Storm events in February, may be felt for years. Scott Burger, Annie Baldwin, Jason Houck and Marco Ferrara at long-duration energy storage start-up Form Energy discuss how in-depth system modelling of current and future grids offers some early takeaways which might help prevent the next crisis and how multi-day energy storage could play a leading role.

A US$70 million funding round has been successfully closed by Highview Power, a UK-headquartered company which has developed a liquid air energy storage (LAES) system called the ‘CRYOBattery’.

A plan to invest CA$2.5 billion (US$1.97 billion) in the clean energy economy by the Canada Infrastructure Bank could lead to involvement in one of the world’s biggest battery energy storage projects so far.

Australian startup Vast Solar said it has picked a site in Queensland where it could develop a AU$600 million (US$427 million) power plant combining different low emissions technologies to provide baseload power cost-effectively over a 30-year lifetime.

Wärtsilä has been contracted to deliver a hybrid solution combining battery energy storage with liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and light fuel oil (LFO) engines on the US Virgin Islands.

There exist opportunities for flow batteries to target areas of the market lithium-ion “can’t provide in an economically justifiable way,” the chief commercial officer of Invinity Energy Systems has said.

“The elimination of solar energy’s intermittency and ensuring its 24-hour availability at grid-competitive cost is the holy grail and RayGen has found it”.

A key missing piece in the clean energy puzzle is the question of how to provide baseload power in an electricity system dominated by intermittent renewables. Javier Cavada of Highview Power examines cryogenic long-duration storage as a possible solution.

Nova, an Edinburgh-headquartered firm has claimed a world first in pairing Tesla batteries with its own tidal energy turbines in Scotland, supported by government funding.

Islands around the world provide ideal conditions for trialling new approaches to energy provision. David Pratt reports on how cutting-edge renewable energy, storage and smart grid technologies are being rolled out to geographically isolated communities. Part 2 of this feature article continues with a look at how some of these projects could provide real-time lessons for the global clean energy transition.