Octopus Australia has referred the Blackstone battery energy storage system (BESS), a 500MW/2,000MWh standalone facility, to Australia’s federal government for assessment under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

OptiGrid has been selected by Vena Energy to provide trading optimisation services for the 408MW Bellambi Heights BESS in Australia.

East Point Energy, owned by Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor has completed construction and started operations at the 100MW/200MWh Citrus Flatts energy storage project in Harlingen, Texas, US.

Power firm Engie and IPP Grenergy are advancing three solar-plus-BESS projects in Chile.

Developer-operator MN8 Energy, zinc hybrid cathode battery and storage system maker Eos Energy Enterprises, and tech giant Google are backing a multi-technology renewables project on the PJM grid in the US.

ONE Nuclear Energy has executed a binding letter of intent to develop a 2.88GW natural gas plant and 700MW/2.88GWh energy storage system, co-located with a high-capacity data centre campus.

Two VPP bills are awaiting California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature, meanwhile, Octopus Energy US has completed its investment in Uplight.

North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued its most urgent grid reliability warning in response to artificial intelligence data centres causing massive, near-instantaneous power fluctuations.

Rural and distributed battery energy storage system (BESS) projects could be emerging as critical infrastructure in the US as grid reliability risks intensify nationwide.

Developers who buy or flip battery storage projects mid-life risk inheriting decommissioning liabilities they had not properly accounted for.