Iron electrolyte flow battery company ESS Inc has become the latest energy storage industry player to target public listing of its stock, announcing a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Largo Resources, a vertically-integrated vanadium supplier launching its own line of redox flow batteries for energy storage, is establishing 1.4GWh of annual battery stack manufacturing capacity.

ESS Inc, currently the only maker in the world of a commercially available flow battery using iron electrolytes, will deploy an energy storage system with more than six hours duration to a microgrid in Chile.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.

The April 2021 episode of the Solar Media Podcast, sponsored by Honeywell, is now available to stream. We discuss everything from long-duration energy storage and floating solar technologies to the UK’s greenest weekend ever and Vietnam’s solar rush.

A zinc-air energy storage system (ZESS) offering 10 hours of storage is being trialled in a New York Power Authority (NYPA) project, while a US Department of Defense-funded investigation into flow batteries has moved into a physical validation and evaluation phase in Colorado.

South African vanadium producer Bushveld Minerals is investing US$7.5 million in vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage company Enerox, which is planning to scale up its manufacturing capabilities.

The drive towards longer duration energy storage will likely be multifaceted, with different technologies finding their place both in front of and behind the meter.

This edition of the round-up is an eclectic mix of stories from the US and Europe.

US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said yesterday that flow batteries are “good for grid storage” as her Department of Energy (DoE) announced funding to support domestic manufacturing for the energy storage technology.