The US energy storage industry remained “remarkably resilient” during what most of us have found to be a difficult year – to say the least. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Key Capture Energy’s CEO Jeff Bishop and FlexGen’s COO Alan Grosse – two companies that made 2020 one of growth in their energy storage businesses – to hear what lessons can be learned and why economics rule.

Updated 7 January 2020: Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) will supply lithium-ion batteries to energy storage system integrator FlexGen for two large-scale energy storage projects totalling 220MWh in Texas.

Barriers to financing for energy storage could hold back the growth of solar in the US, while an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage should be introduced, the audience heard as our publisher Solar Media hosted the Solar and Storage Finance USA event last week.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.

Texas-based Vistra will develop nearly 1GW of solar and storage projects in the next two years as the utility plans to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Relative industry newcomer Broad Reach Power is set to equal in size the largest standalone battery project announced so far in Texas, with two new 100MW facilities under construction in the US state.

Agreements to deploy 1GWh of novel aqueous zinc battery energy storage in Texas and 500MWh in California have been struck by technology provider Eos Energy Storage, marking a massive scale-up in expected installations for the systems.

The largest battery storage system online so far in the US state of Texas has been proven an “all round success” by an independent auditor, a year and a half after it went into commercial operation.

Construction on a 100MW battery energy storage project in Texas has begun through partners Able Grid Energy Solutions, Map Energy, Astral Electricity and Mortenson.

Key Capture Energy (KCE) will build three large-scale energy storage systems (BESS) to participate in Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) energy markets, using a “custom solution” based on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.