Major Australian utility company AGL has signed a 15-year contract for “operational dispatch rights” to a 100MW battery storage system to be built in Queensland.

Former Governor of New York George Pataki has welcomed the possible siting and construction of a vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) factory in the state.

New-build solar and wind could outcompete most existing fossil fuels by 2025, while standalone energy storage also has a future in its own right, Nextera Energy executives have predicted.

Despite making huge strides forward, the energy storage industry’s work in helping stakeholders across the value chain understand the technologies and the roles they can play in a renewable energy future is far from done. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Energy Storage Association chief executive, Kelly Speakes-Backman, at the forefront of the industry’s push into unchartered regulatory, policy and public affairs matters.

Schneider Electric has partnered with Autogrid for a “grid management solution” that can incorporate and optimise diverse assets including customer-sited energy storage.

The proposed merger between flow energy storage companies Avalon Battery and redT continues to progress, with the transaction set to be completed around the end of March 2020.

Asset manager Capital Dynamics has purchased the mammoth Eland solar-plus-storage complex under development by 8minute Solar Energy in California.

While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.

The success of efforts to decarbonise economies in the UK and elsewhere could hinge largely on how governments and business communities – particularly large commercial lenders – engage with the sector in 2020, a UK-based financier of solar and storage has said.

In today’s episode, ESN’s Andy Colthorpe and Liam Stoker explore the way grids are changing in the Middle East to accommodate clean energy, the role virtual power plants are playing in Italy, and the contrasting role coal is playing in Germany and bush fire-stricken Australia.