Northvolt, the start-up aiming to manufacture lithium-ion batteries on a massive scale in Europe sustainably, has signed a contract to deliver its own first commercial energy storage system (ESS) project and revealed news on a second planned ‘gigafactory’ in Germany.

A salmon farm in Norway will become more environmentally friendly with the addition of a Tesvolt-supplied battery energy storage system, reducing the run time of diesel generators onsite by up to 18 hours a day, saving on costs and working time spent on maintenance.

Tesla will “build batteries, powertrains and vehicles” at its European gigafactory, which company CEO Elon Musk has tweeted will be in the Berlin area of Germany.

Not only can energy storage be used to “mimic” the roles of existing assets in the electricity network, a gigawatt-scale initiative in Germany shows how ways of thinking about energy storage could save transmission and networks “billions of dollars”, the COO of Fluence has said.

The rapid acceleration in energy storage deployment expected over the coming years will require innovation in the quality and safety standards underpinning new battery and associated technologies. VDE’s Jan Geder looks at the technical work underway to ensure the coming storage boom has firm bankability and insurability foundations.

Batteries are increasingly widely used in grid balancing, but there are many more applications where a battery can play an important role. With electric grids requiring periodic maintenance, batteries can stand in for the grid during downtime in order to reduce the impact on industry and households, writes Dieter Castelein.

The business models and technologies underpinning the development of stationary energy storage markets are evolving rapidly. Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Jan Figgener and David Haberschusz of RWTH Aachen University look at some of the key trends driving the sector forwards, in a paper which first appeared in PV Tech Power’s Energy Storage Special Report 2019.

A battery storage project using second-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries is set to be built in Germany, with an aim of developing an installed capacity of 20MW.

Solarwatt shows off new ‘training and explaining’ app for installers of the company’s modular battery energy storage systems.

Despite the huge strides energy storage has made, significant hurdles remain before the technology in its many guises can be claimed to have fulfilled its massive potential. E-S.n editor Andy Colthorpe assesses the key successes and ongoing challenges for this indispensable part of the future power system.