Developers Agilitas Energy and On.Energy have raised a total US$125 million in debt financing towards solar, energy storage and hybrid solar-plus-storage projects in the US.

Natron Energy has started commercial-scale operations at its sodium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Michigan, US, and elaborated on how its technology compares to lithium-ion in answers provided to Energy-Storage.news.

This Friday Briefing looks at the battery manufacturing race that Europe and the US are set to get into, with both currently trailing far behind leader China.

According to IEA and BloombergNEF, battery storage was the most invested-in energy tech, with biggest-ever growth in deployments recorded.

Energy Vault and utility NV Energy have put a 220MW/440MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) into operation in Nevada, US.

The New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYCIDA) has approved five BESS projects while governor Kathy Hochul has announced groundbreaking on a sixth, all in all totalling around 42.5MW of capacity.

The energy storage arm of Canadian Solar said the technology ‘has more complexity than solar’ when it comes to nearshoring manufacturing away from China, and local cell manufacturing could be part of the long-term strategy to leverage domestic content incentives.

The CFO of Goldman Sachs-backed US battery storage developer-operator GridStor discussed its recent investment tax credit (ITC) transfer deal for a California BESS project, highlighting some downsides as well as positives from the new mechanism.

Clearway Energy has put two large solar and storage projects into operation in California, it announced on the same day as an industry letter asking Congress to reform siting, permitting and transmission before this year’s elections.

Rapid technology improvements and trade policy risk pose a dilemma for US battery storage procurement decision-makers, write George Touloupas and Jeff Zwijack of consultancy and market intelligence firm Clean Energy Associates (CEA).