The EU’s European Investment Bank has pledged support for a long-duration thermal energy storage project and a gravity-based energy storage demonstration project.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.

A new CEO-led organisation representing a broad range of long-duration energy storage technologies and their role in achieving global energy system decarbonisation has launched today. 

Special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Novus Capital Corporation II chose to merge with novel gravity and kinetic energy-based storage Energy Vault after receiving target proposals from more than 100 different firms. 

This edition of our news in brief from around the world focuses on novel technologies promising several hours or more of competitively-priced energy storage.

The energy storage market is poised for strong growth over the next decade and opportunities are likely to emerge for alternatives to lithium-ion that offer longer durations of storage, but three key challenges remain for those technologies.

A hybrid energy storage system combining lithium-ion batteries with mechanical energy storage in the form of flywheels has gone into operation in the Netherlands, from technology providers Leclanché and S4 Energy.

There’s a race to develop new technologies – and adapt existing ones – that can either be complementary to lithium batteries, or even compete with them. Representatives from three technology providers offer up some case studies, data, insights and opinions on where they think the market could go.

UK energy storage start-up Gravitricity is to build a 250kW demonstrator project in Scotland.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.