The India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) has welcomed provisions in finance minister Nirmala Sitharam’s Union Budget 2020-2021 to support renewables and prioritise climate change policy, although the group hopes more will be done to support in-country manufacturing of batteries for applications including ESS.

DC-coupling of combined solar and energy storage plants could be a more effective way to save energy that would otherwise be clipped and ‘lost’, benefitting the grid and helping efforts to reduce the amount of carbon pumped into the air, the COO of Fluence has said.

This year has already seen “significant acceleration” of activity in the global grid-connected energy storage market, with 4.3GW expected to be deployed this year, analysis firm IHS Markit has said.

Southern California Edison, one of the US’ top-ranking utilities for energy storage capacity already deployed, has signed contracts for seven more projects, totalling 195MW in its California service area.

Many of the most polluting thermal power plants on the US grid today are also the most lucrative to run, but the service they provide could already be done twice as cheaply using solar and storage, developer 8minutenergy has claimed.

California has proved energy storage is both effective and cost-effective as a capacity resource, leading to one utility being instructed to hold competitive solicitations for energy storage, the head of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) has said.

The requirement of nine hours of energy storage duration at a project touted as a possible replacement for a new natural gas plant in California makes it tough for the newer technology to compete on cost, an analyst has said.

Welcome to Part 2 of our in-depth talk with Nancy Pfund, managing partner at DBL Partners, a venture capital firm specialising in companies and start-ups that offer both rewarding financial returns and positive social impacts. As well as being one of the earliest backers to Tesla and SolarCity, to utility-scale solar tracker company NEXTracker to Off-Grid Electric, which deploys solar in rural Africa; to others in energy storage like Advanced Microgrid Solutions and Primus Power, Pfund is extremely well-placed to offer a quick Q&A ‘masterclass’ in energy storage investing.

Queensland-based developer SolarQ is planning to build a 350MW(ac) solar plant combined with a ground-breaking 4,000MWh of lithium-ion battery storage in the Gympie Region of Queensland, Australia.

James P McDougall, CEO of Younicos blogs on the possibilities of establishing a solar-oriented baseload – and why his company is convinced of the scaling potential of utility-scale batteries.