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.

AES Corporation has closed US$2 billion in finance for the 1.4GW Southland Repowering Project.

Expected since the beginning of this year, Massachusetts has confirmed that it will implement an “aspirational” 200MWh energy storage procurement target for electric distribution companies.

Nancy Pfund is managing partner at DBL Partners, a venture capital firm which specialises in investing in companies and start-ups that offer both rewarding financial returns, and positive social impacts. There have been some serious clean tech companies in DBL’s portfolio, including a pre-IPO investment in Tesla. With this in mind, we spoke to Nancy about how to invest in energy storage wisely and heard her views on the waves of the future. Part 2 to be published tomorrow.

Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU), arms of US firm PPL Corporation, have developed a research centre for energy storage at a power plant in Kentucky.

Stem’s virtual power plants (VPPs) have been utilised to provide emergency demand response services in California during a major heatwave.

Work begins this month on solar-plus-storage projects in North Carolina that will deploy a total 12MWh energy storage, by developer Cypress Creek Renewables and turnkey solar and storage provider United Renewable Energy.

A distributed infrastructure subsidiary of Southern Company, one of the US’ biggest utilities, has formed a partnership with Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) to execute behind-the-meter distributed energy projects.

An analyst at Navigant Research has said he was surprised to see Tesla dominate California’s SGIP (Self-Generation Incentive Program) applications, with the Silicon Valley car and tech company accounting for half of all requested funds.

US-based trade industry groups NY-BEST and the Energy Storage Association, have welcomed the passing of bills in New York providing a framework for the state’s regulator to establish an energy storage deployment programme.