Some of the “world’s biggest insurance companies” are investigating the advantages of pairing lithium batteries with ultracapacitors in energy storage systems, which can lower costs and extend battery lifetimes, the CEO of an ultracapacitor maker has said.

NEXTracker CEO Dan Shugar sat down to talk to Energy-Storage.News about developing – and selling – energy storage systems in lithium and flow battery ‘flavours’ alongside his company’s market-leading PV tracker systems.

Since the launch of the site almost four years ago, Energy-Storage.News (and PV Tech Storage as it was previously known), has consistently brought you high-quality blogs from both guest contributors and our team of journalists and experts here at Solar Media. Here’s just a selection of some of the best guest blogs we ran from January to June, 2017:

Nuclear generation company Exelon and chemical company Albemarle, which has lithium mining facilities, are investigating opportunities in the energy storage space, having partnered with battery energy storage investor Volta Energy Technologies to do so.

Narada Power, which makes batteries and complete energy storage systems as well as acting as a project system integrator, is establishing a subsidiary for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries.

Anesco is investigating how it could adopt flow batteries into future projects instead of lithium as a response to growing uncertainty around the future of storage de-rating in the capacity market, Clean Energy News can reveal.

Tesvolt has claimed its new commercial energy storage system pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved in such devices for modularity and safety.

Lithium mining and extraction companies have made several recent high profile moves to increase their production of the metal, which is used to make the batteries in many stationary energy storage systems and EVs.

Lithium-ion energy storage manufacturer Leclanché saw revenue of around CHF28 million (US$28.89 million) through H1 2016, up 65% year-on-year, according to the firm’s interim results for the half year ending 30 June 2016.

GCL Systems Integration is poised to sink US$24.3 million into new lithium battery factory in China’s Jiangsu province.