There has been growing uptake in battery energy storage in Midwestern US states that have traditionally depended on burning coal for electricity, with some “very big projects planned,” an analyst has said.

Retail power company Vistra Energy has followed up its recent completion in California of the world’s biggest battery storage facility by proposing a new facility in the state with twice the rated output.

Virginia’s clean energy policies introduced during 2020 included the US’ biggest state-level target for deployment of energy storage – and the state’s regulator has now introduced the rules intended to enable achievement of that target.

Australian utility AGL has furthered its plans to develop 850MW of large-scale battery storage across a number of sites in the country, announcing a new project in Victoria.

US utility company Dominion Energy has started development of four large-scale battery storage plants totalling 16MW of output in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

A 1.2GW hybrid tender in India coupling pumped hydro, batteries, solar and wind power has achieved tariffs that are highly competitive against coal power, according to prominent industry figures.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s annual State of the State Address has reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to combating climate change and growing the green economy, while West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s address spoke of “fighting” to retain coal jobs.

The first solar-plus-storage microgrid in Asia to use Tesla’s Powerpack energy storage system is designed to end power reliability issues for a Philippines community, long used to losing light and productivity to brownouts.

Battery storage and demand-side response have continued to play a crucial role in the UK’s power mix, together landing more than 500MW of contracts in the most recent T-1 Capacity Market auction.