A Silicon Valley-headquartered flow battery maker will provide energy storage for telecommunications networks in China, replacing diesel use in a pilot programme ahead of “wide-scale deployment”.

Australia-based flow battery provider Redflow has halved the price of its zinc-bromide battery (ZBM) to the point where the cost of energy produced from its battery drops below the price of energy from the grid.

Tom Tipple, regional VP for Imergy Power Systems, a flow battery maker headquartered in Fremont, California, recently visited the PV Tech Storage offices to share his thoughts on the global market for energy storage.

News in brief: Australia gets its largest battery storage system to date, Tesla man persuaded to go back to Sonnenbatterie and Gildemeister installs PV-linked flow battery systems in Czech Republic.

The latest claimant to the crown of ‘largest flow battery installation in North America and Europe’ has emerged, with the award of a 2MW project in Canada to US manufacturer Vizn Energy.

A research project conducted in partnership between Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), an independent university focused on sustainable technology, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will develop an energy storage system using Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs).

Mercom Capital Group’s second quarter 2015 report into VC funding in the energy storage, smart grid and energy efficiency sectors made for interesting reading for the battery and storage space. As PV Tech Storage noted on 21 July from the report, VC funding almost doubled over the first quarter of the year and the sector saw Arnold Schwarzenegger put his money where his green credentials are, bringing some celebrity investor gloss to the proceedings. PV Tech Storage spoke to Mercom Capital chief Raj Prabhu to delve deeper into the statistics.

Lilia Xie of Lux Research spoke with the founders of 24M, which claims to have reduced lithium cell costs by 50% over existing technologies and is targeting US$100 per kWh by 2020.

Makers of flow batteries have redoubled their efforts to make the technology the leading choice for utility-scale storage applications, with one installing the largest such system to date in Europe and North America just a few days ago.

Energy storage developer Imergy Power Systems has announced the installation of a 30kW, 120kWh ESP30 vanadium flow battery to be tested with PV systems at the SunEdison and Global Academy of Technology (GAT) solar research and testing centre in Bangalore, India.