Arlington Energy, a clean energy investment group, has announced plans to build out a 1GW portfolio of energy storage and gas peaker projects across the UK after securing initial funding of £200 million (US$255 million) from an offshore fund of institutional investment.

The UK’s government has shied away from supporting large volumes of solar and other distributed energy technologies through subsidies, but commercial and industrial energy storage and solar-plus-storage could be a huge market opportunity in Britain and abroad.

The UK’s transmission system operator National Grid’s redesigned Capacity Market targets around 50GW of reserves up to 2023 and could be an early step towards longer duration energy storage batteries.

Halfway through 2018 and large-scale battery storage in the UK has reached over 450MW installed capacity, with around 250MW being completed this year alone. This is made up of projects bigger than 1MW, including larger behind the meter projects that have begun to emerge.

California-based energy storage technology developer Gridtential announced that it has closed US$11 million in financing led by 1955 Capital, with assistance from East Penn Manufacturing, Crown Battery Manufacturing, Leoch International and Power-Sonic Inc., as well as an existing investor in The Roda Group.

The UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) has published its long-awaited Code of Practice for Electrical Energy Storage Systems, filling what has been described as a vacuum of clear guidance for installers and their customers.

The UK and Ireland subsidiary of the Virginia-headquartered AES Corporation has signed an agreement with a Northern Irish government agency to build a 100MW battery storage array.

A “first-of-its-kind” project financing deal will bring 50MW of Tesla Powerpacks online in California, Macquarie Capital, the investing and advisory arm of global finance corporation Macquarie Group has said.

Berlin-based energy storage firm Younicos and German utility WEMAG have started work on expanding the storage capacity of a battery park in Schwerin, Germany, from 5MW to 10MW power output and 5MWh to 14.5MWh capacity.

Tesla strikes again in Southern California Edison’s infrastructure overhaul, picking up 7MW battery storage contract at Orange County water agency.