Germany’s sonnen introduced a scheme a while back in which customers pay a flat, reduced rate for their electricity each month while the company aggregate their batteries together to benefit the grid – and now the offer has been extended to electric vehicle owners.

Intended to “kick start concrete projects”, the European Commission is set to allocate a further €200 million (US$235.53 million) towards supporting the scale-up of lithium battery manufacturing on the continent.

News in brief from around the world of energy storage.

Energy storage battery and system maker Leclanché will pilot the use of stationary energy storage to support fast charger networks for electric vehicles (EVs) in Holland.

A City of London investment bank has said it agrees that Swiss energy storage maker and integrator Leclanché will reach profitability, but expects it to take a year longer than the company itself has predicted.

Swiss battery maker Leclanché could apply for listing on a US stock exchange and is targeting the acquisition of an “energy management storage software company”, despite emerging from a recent period of “technical insolvency”.

In Europe the number of e-buses in circulation is far smaller than in China, which accounts for 98% of the world’s fleets. However, the market is entering a period of rapid growth. This comes with significant challenges for batteries, Anil Srivastava of Leclanché writes.

At least two global technology leaders could set up Gigafactories to manufacture lithium-ion cells in India in the next couple of years, and most major Indian firms are setting up energy storage divisions, according to the head of the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA).

German luxury carmaker Mercedes Benz has officially launched a dedicated energy division, focusing on its range of lithium-ion storage battery systems, following a series of related announcements including tie-ups with inverter maker SMA.

While most of the press attention around decarbonising transport has centred on electric cars, Leclanché has supplied lithium-ion batteries to power a ferry in Latvia for an EU demonstration project.