A trio of Germany grid-scale BESS news items, with Next Kraftwerke and ju:niz Energy agreeing a seven year toll, Alpiq announcing a 370MW pipeline, and WBS Power selling the country’s largest solar-plus-storage project and planning a data centre on the same site.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are networks of small-scale, distributed energy resources, such as solar panels or batteries (and in some instances vehicles) which can together function as a single power plant, providing stability to the electric grid.

Another edition of news in brief from the UK, as the National Energy System Operator pledges to improve Balancing Mechanism ‘skip rates’ and a 1GW project gets local authority approval.

Oil and gas major Shell is putting its residential battery storage and virtual power plant (VPP) company sonnen up for sale, according to German outlet Handelsblatt.

Engineering firm KBR will work with Shell to design an energy storage facility combining green hydrogen and battery storage at a wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands, the first of two similar pieces of news.

Development of battery systems to help integrate renewables and boost grid reliability continues to pick up pace in New South Wales.

Shell Overseas Investments BV has acquired German virtual power plant (VPP) operator Next Kraftwerke, expanding its footprint in the space.

A 100MW battery storage project – consisting of two 50MW batteries – has begun construction in the UK.

Convergent Energy & Power’s first projects out of a joint venture with Shell have come online, while GE Renewable Energy touted the imminent implementation of the country’s ‘first hybrid electric gas turbine’ project.

Volume 19 of PV Tech Power has just hit the (digital) shelves and once again the quarterly technical journal from our publisher Solar Media includes ‘Storage & Smart Power’, the dedicated section created and curated by Energy-Storage.news.