A recycling process for lithium-ion batteries already up and running, by Finnish state-owned energy services company Fortum could make dramatic reductions in their environmental footprint, the company has said.

A megawatt-scale energy storage system will be rented out to power a gold mine in Western Australia by Aggreko, the mobile power solutions company which bought up energy storage provider Younicos last year.

Australian firm Resolute Mining has signed an agreement with Africa-focused power developer Ignite Energy to set up a 40MW hybrid solar, battery and heavy fuel oil (HFO) plant at its Syama Gold Mine in Mali, according to an Australian Stock exchange (ASX) filing.

Using energy storage – and often renewables – could see mines, cement companies, data centres and other large industrial operations in emerging markets reduce their electricity costs drastically, the CEO of Greensmith has said.

Increasingly, solar energy and behind-the-meter battery storage assets are being deployed on an ‘as-a-service’ basis and system integrator Younicos has decided to replicate the strategy for microgrids.

A mining operation in South Africa will start managing the cost of its consumed energy with the deployment of eight flow batteries from Primus Power.

The government of the state of South Australia has named four utility-scale energy storage projects which it will support with grants toward the total cost of development.

While energy storage can be considered “critical” to Australia’s transformation to a distributed, low carbon energy mix, a lack of investment and planning for the technology could have negative consequences for the network.

The remote microgrid market is maturing regarding technology and financing. Now improved sales and marketing methods are needed to commercialise the huge potential on offer in this burgeoning market segment, writes Thomas Hillig.

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.