After approving investment for the acceleration of energy storage deployment in developing countries to the tune of US$1 billion a few months ago, the World Bank has now approved a US$300 million loan to do the same in China.

Eelpower, a UK-based developer which has executed renewables and cleantech projects including hydroelectric-plus-storage, has secured a £20 million (US$28.5 million) investment from investment trust Gravis Capital Management to build out its pipeline of permitted energy storage sites and pursue new development opportunities.

We continue with the second part of our feature interview with clean energy entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah of Generate Capital. We’ve just left off discussing the risk profile of various investors and how the industry is gradually drawing attention from more traditional sources of capital, from the early adopter-venture capital mentality we have seen to date.

Solar entrepreneur and financier Jigar Shah probably requires little introduction. The SunEdison founder and former CEO is now president at Generate Capital, a project financing venture for sustainable infrastructure investment. Shah spoke with Andy Colthorpe about Generate Capital’s latest solar-plus-storage projects for a school district in California, as well as sharing his thoughts on the economics of energy storage today.

Jigar Shah has said that the addition of backup power helped persuade a California school district to add energy storage as well as going solar and that adding batteries can help “decision makers” see the true value of PV.

California-based energy storage technology developer Gridtential announced that it has closed US$11 million in financing led by 1955 Capital, with assistance from East Penn Manufacturing, Crown Battery Manufacturing, Leoch International and Power-Sonic Inc., as well as an existing investor in The Roda Group.

The financial services arm of engineering giant Siemens will be offering no-money-down options for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers in the UK to purchase energy storage systems.

A Swiss fund aimed at encouraging institutional investors to get on board with energy storage has reached its first closing at €66 million (US$70.4 million).

A “first-of-its-kind” project financing deal will bring 50MW of Tesla Powerpacks online in California, Macquarie Capital, the investing and advisory arm of global finance corporation Macquarie Group has said.

US solar installer Sunworks has selected Sharp’s SmartStorage system as it expands its offering.