Siemens and Macquarie Group have created a new joint venture that will develop distributed energy resources such as solar and battery storage for US corporations and institutions.

Construction looks set to begin this year on a factory building flow batteries, as a joint venture (JV) formed by German tech company Schmid Group and Saudi Arabian investment company Nusaned closed the transaction to seal its partnership.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.

Former Governor of New York George Pataki has welcomed the possible siting and construction of a vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) factory in the state.

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.

Ontario’s policy of rewarding large users of energy that reduce their demand for grid energy at peak times has resulted in Shell New Energies announcing 21MWh of projects with Convergent Energy + Power.

Liquid air energy storage (LAES), so far only deployed at scale at two sites in England, will be available in a number of new territories after manufacturer Highview Power signed a deal claimed to be worth €1 billion (US$1.12 billion).

Nippon Koei, one of Japan’s largest engineering firms, has formed a joint venture with a British battery storage firm to construct two 50MW behind-the-meter energy storage projects in the UK.

Automotive giant Toyota and electronics firm Panasonic have announced a joint venture which will look to lead the field in EV battery technology.

Leclanché and VRB Energy, two providers in very different areas of energy storage, have struck up joint ventures (JVs) intended to assist them in scaling up and hitting new markets, while Ice Energy has netted fresh funding.