Primus Power, a flow battery maker which claims its systems can cost less than half the price of lithium-ion energy storage over its lifetime, is establishing manufacturing lines in China.

With the rise of solar-plus-storage applications round the world, Frank Qiao, sales director at Growatt New Energy, talks to PV Tech about some of the key inverter trends and new products.

While the global energy storage industry has continued its pace of rapid growth during the past year, well-established markets remain highly concentrated in specific regions of the world. Alex Eller of Navigant Research discusses many of the factors influencing growth trends for energy storage at both utility-scale and distributed levels.

San Diego, California’s ultracapacitor-based energy storage manufacturer Maxwell Technologies has signed a stock purchase agreement with China’s SFIC Fund Management – a significant investor in China’s storage industry – at US$6.32 per share.

California-headquartered grid-scale electrical energy storage company Primus Power has secured US$32 million in equity financing from a range of investors including a well-known Saudi family, to help accelerate its EnergyPod 2 storage system.

A large-scale energy storage system designed and developed by Narada Power for GCL Silicon has successfully been put into service. The system now stands as the first commercialised energy storage system in China.

Turnkey energy storage system provider Demand Energy has commissioned a solar-plus-storage microgrid in Costa Rica at a medical manufacturing facility.

China’s deployment of energy storage looks set to continue an upward trajectory, with almost 600MW in the pipeline as of the third quarter this year.

Vertically integrated energy storage solution company Leclanché and global battery manufacturer Narada Power have agreed to a strategic partnership for the manufacturing and development of lithium-ion battery technology for the Chinese and global markets.

Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow has supplied its inverter and battery storage technologies to a large-scale solar-plus-storage microgrid project in a remote area of Tibet.