Companies in the battery storage industry raised US$9.6 billion in corporate funding during H1 2021, with European manufacturing startup Northvolt once again the biggest single recipient of venture capital (VC) investment.

The July 2021 episode of the Solar Media Podcast, sponsored by Honeywell, is now available to stream, as we delve into everything you need to know about recent polysilicon trade sanctions in the US.

There’s still a disconnect between what’s achievable and what is actually being achieved in the drive to decarbonise. Despite a boom in renewable energy generation, Australia’s government line is instead commitment to “a gas-fired recovery”. That commitment is a dangerous one, says Lillian Patterson of the Clean Energy Council.

A seasonal heat storage plant which will have a capacity of about 90GWh looks set to begin construction next year in Vantaa, Finland, with water stored in underground caverns heated to 140°C using renewable energy and waste heat.

Battery storage is flexible, remarkable — and investable — but you need to know what you’re doing and know where the market opportunities and limits lie. Renewable and clean energy financier Laurent Segalen from Megawatt-X explains some of the things he’s seen as batteries have become an infrastructure asset in their own right.

London-headquartered investment fund GLIL Infrastructure has invested £150 million into Flexion Energy, a “modern utility company and energy storage infrastructure specialist” which is aiming to build 1GW of energy storage in the UK over five years.

NASDAQ-listed zinc-based electrochemical battery storage provider Eos Energy Enterprises has said that a subsidiary of Koch Industries has committed to investing US$100 million into the company.

Energy storage can make a “positive contribution everywhere” in Southeast Asia, but the industry needs to be proactive in helping market regulators to understand the best ways to facilitate its role in their energy systems.

This edition of news in brief focuses on recent acquisitions of three US developers of solar and storage projects, taken from the pages of our sister site PV Tech.

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund (GRID) is on track to own more than 1.2GW of operational battery energy storage systems after securing a deal to acquire 425MW of projects from Gresham House Devco and expanding its exclusive pipeline by a further 427MW.