Steps forward have been taken New South Wales, Australia, for the largest battery storage system anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.

Neoen has proposed building a gigawatt-scale BESS in a region of Australia with close and continuing ties to the coal industry.

A real estate and infrastructure investment arm of BlackRock has committed to investing US$700 million into Akaysha Energy’s pipeline.

The Department of Planning and Environment in New South Wales gave development approval to a proposed 500MW/1,000MWh battery storage project.

Generate Capital has acquired US large-scale battery storage developer esVolta.

Quinbrook developing A$2.5 billion ‘Supernode’ site in Queensland for storing energy and data that would include 2,000MWh of battery storage.

Western Australia will retire its two state-owned coal power plants by 2030 and invest in renewable energy and energy storage.

Developer Alcemi and investment group CIP have partnered for the development, construction and operation of a 4GW UK BESS portfolio.

Construction has started on a 3.5GWh pumped hydro plant in Gran Canaria, Spain, and progress has been made on two other projects totalling 18GWh of storage in mainland Spain and Nevada, US.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has provided dates and a partial breakdown of grants totalling US$2.9 billion to boost the production of batteries for the electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage markets, as promised by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal.