With Japanese companies keen to learn from their counterparts in deregulated energy markets such as the UK, the Japan Energy Challenge provided the ideal forum for exchanging ideas. Andy Colthorpe reports.

Batteries are to be used for reactive power services for the UK grid as part of a ‘world-first’ project to create a new reactive power market for distributed energy resources.

Blackstone Energy Partners, a private equity business belonging to investment firm Blackstone, has bought up NRStor C&I.

China’s energy storage industry entered a period of “rational adjustment” in 2019, as overall growth in new projects and capacity slowed down, yet deployed around 519.6MW/855MWh of new electrochemical energy storage capacity domestically.

US utility company Dominion Energy has started development of four large-scale battery storage plants totalling 16MW of output in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Manz AG, manufacturing equipment supplier, has signed off on a €20 million (US$21.83 million) deal with “high performance” battery maker AKASOL for planned ‘gigafactories’ in Germany and in the US.

Investors are queuing “all the way down the street” but many require the first projects to be built before committing, Gridserve’s chief investment officer Mark Henderson has said.

Ares Infrastructure and Power has signed off on a partnership with Dimension Renewable Energy that will see both parties build and develop a portfolio of utility-scale battery energy storage projects in the state of New York.

PV Evolution Labs (PVEL), has introduced a Product Qualification Programme (PQP) for energy storage, which “identifies and validates battery-based energy storage solutions for specific applications”.

Germany-headquartered renewable energy generation company Innogy will construct its first battery storage facility in Ireland.