Wells Fargo, MUFG and Silicon Valley Bank have completed US$260 million of construction financing for Leeward Renewable Energy’s Chaparral Springs solar-plus-storage project in California.

South Africa’s grid operator Eskom has issued a procurement notice for two grid-scale battery projects totalling 36MW/146MWh of energy storage, while the state-owned company’s CEO resigned this week.

Cost inflation and supply chain issues have forced California utility PG&E to increase the prices it will pay for 2GWh of battery storage projects, in a move which has been approved by regulators.

Energy storage costs in the US grew 13% from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022, said the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in a cost benchmarking analysis.

Energy project integrator Ameresco and utility Bright Canyon Energy have broken ground on a solar and storage project with a 168MWh battery system at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam West Loch Annex in Hawaii.

Utility and power company AES Corporation has brought the Lancaster Area Battery (LAB), the second portion of a combined 908MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) complex in California, online.

Chilean utility Colbún has submitted plans for a solar-plus-storage project with a 1.2GWh battery energy storage system (BESS)

A large-scale solar PV plant with four-hour duration battery storage could be built on underutilised land at a US Armed Forces Base in Hawaii.

Debt and equity financing worth US$1.9 billion has been closed for one of the US’ largest solar-plus-storage power plants to date.

New York Power Authority has started a process of adapting fossil fuel peaker plant sites to host battery storage which could replace them.