A 10MW / 20MWh battery energy storage project in Belgium has achieved financial close and is expected to begin construction shortly, the consortium behind the project has said.

Australian utility AGL has furthered its plans to develop 850MW of large-scale battery storage across a number of sites in the country, announcing a new project in Victoria.

A tourism development in Saudi Arabia which will have its own international airport and hopes to attract over a million visitors each year will be 100% powered by renewable energy, with the help of a 1,000MWh battery storage facility.

After a series of large-scale battery announcements in Australia from Federal and state governments, utility company AGL has followed up by saying it plans to build a battery system in South Australia with up to 1,000MWh of capacity.

Construction work has begun on Technology provider Highview Power’s 50MW / 250MWh liquid air energy storage (LAES) facility in Greater Manchester, England.

While the Federal government of Australia resists public and political pressure to commit to net zero targets, the states of Victoria and Queensland have made progress in advancing plans for a large-scale standalone battery project and a wind-plus-storage plant respectively.

Another contract has been signed for energy from a large-scale solar-plus-storage plant by one of California’s Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) groups.

Wärtsilä has installed the first utility-scale battery storage project in Singapore and received an order from a customer in Southeast Asia for a further 90MW / 90MWh of battery storage.

A 50MW / 75MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Western Sydney, Australia, will receive AU$21.5 million (US$15.35 million) in assistance from the federal and state governments towards its total cost of AU$61.9 million.

The first phase of a 1,000MW behind-the-meter virtual power plant (VPP) is expected to begin deployment in Australia as soon as the state of Victoria’s COVID-19 lockdown is over.