After a recent tender process, up to 1,300MWh of grid-connected energy storage will be deployed in combination with renewable energy in South Africa through a number of large-scale projects.

Battery storage projects may be either standalone or colocated with renewable generation and must account for 20% of nameplate capacity if colocated.

Enel Green Power North America has begun construction of a wind-plus-storage hybrid resources project in Texas that will serve off takers including breakfast cereal maker Kellogg Company.

Solar PV bidders secured two-thirds of allocated capacity in the first of Spain’s new renewable energy auctions, while energy storage was not included in any of the winning bids.

South Africa’s Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy is conducting a fairly unique procurement programme for 2GW of energy capacity, to come from a “range of energy source technologies”. Clean Horizon head of market analysis, Corentin Baschet, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about what the “almost technology agnostic” tender aims to do and the type of companies and projects likely to be successful in it.

This week’s roundup comes once again from the pages of our UK sister sites, where there’s been plenty of action.

By the middle of the 2020s, using hybrid ‘portfolios’ of batteries and renewable energy sources will economically outperform existing gas power plants, while the combination of technologies is already cost-competitive with building new gas plants, a new report from the US-based Rocky Mountain Institute has said.

Japanese developer Eurus Energy and Australian-headquartered wind developer Windlab have signed an MoU with Kenyan authorities to develop an 80MW solar-plus-wind-plus-storage facility.

Grid-connected energy storage deployments have enjoyed a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 74% worldwide in the years 2013 to 2018, with a “boom” in deployment figures expected over the next five years, analysis firm Wood Mackenzie has said.

Guidance issued by Britain’s transmission grid operator on how to co-locate energy storage with generation facilities has been welcomed by an analyst at industry group the Renewable Energy Association.