CATL’s EnerC liquid-cooled unit at the Tokyo exhibition. Image: CATL At World Smart Energy Week in Japan last week CATL, Jinkosolar and Sungrow exhibited battery storage products, with the country’s utility-scale BESS and commercial and industrial (C&I) markets showing strong potential. The Tokyo show plays host to a number of co-located exhibition and conference strands, including PV Expo and Battery Japan. While it had been much quieter than usual during the first two years of the pandemic, the show attracted tens of thousands of guests in years prior to that. Held last week, the 2023 sh ..read more

Left to right: Sam Mayberry, Energy Queensland; Brittany Lauga MP; Minister Mark Furner; Barry O’Rourke MP; Bart Mellish MP, at the site of the Emerald battery storage project. Image: Queensland Government. Battery storage projects at least 1GWh of capacity have been proposed or progressed in Australia by companies Synergy, SkyLab and the Queensland government. A site has been chosen in Emerald, Central Queensland for a 4MW/8MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project, the Queensland government said yesterday (20 March). The town is home to nearly 2,000 home solar systems and the BESS wil ..read more

The Department of Energy Loan Programs Office director Jigar Shah. Image: Miljøstiftelsen Zero/CC. The US is now taking the stance on climate change its European counterparts have been demanding for years, the Department of Energy’s Jigar Shah told Energy-Storage.news in a wide-ranging interview. The Inflation Reduction Act and its US$369 billion package of support and incentives for the US’ clean energy industry has already had a huge impact on the market just six months on from its passing. As director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) with responsibility for up to US ..read more

Edison Power and Gotion executives sign the deal. Image: Gotion High-Tech. Chinese battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech has continued recent moves into new markets across Asia, signing a deal with Japan’s Edison Power. The two companies will target growing demand in the Japanese market for large-scale stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS), as well as developing a joint offering on battery recycling. Renewable energy solutions company Edison Power will “introduce Gotion’s batteries into the Japanese market,” according to a press release, with an initial 1GWh planned sales target ove ..read more

A map of the proposed solar-plus-storage project from AES’ environmental impact assessment (EIA). Image: AES Chile / Typsa. The Chile arm of global energy firm AES Corporation is looking to build another large co-located battery energy storage system (BESS), this time with a capacity of 2,710MWh. AES Chile filed an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the Cristales Photovoltaic Park project with the country’s EIA authority at the start of the month (2 March). The project in Antofagasta, part of the Atacama desert region, would pair a 379MW solar PV park with a BESS unit of 542MW power and ..read more

Lars Christian Bacher of Morrow and Jon Anders Hammersmark of Eldrift shaking on the deal. Image: Morrow / Eldrift / Mynewsdesk. Norwegian firms Morrow Batteries and Eldrift have announced a non-binding offtake agreement for 1.5GWh of Morrow’s lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. The agreement sees Eldrift, a new battery storage system solutions firm, commit to buying 1.5GWh of Morrow’s batteries starting in 2024 when the latter’s gigafactory starts production. Morrow Batteries is building a LFP battery cell production facility in Arendal, Norway, which will have a 1GWh annual production ca ..read more

Electriq Power’s Power Pod2 as it would look in a customer’s garage. Image: Electriq Power. Electriq Power, a US provider of battery storage solutions for residential and small business customers, has secured a deal that could be worth more than US$300 million. The company designs and manufactures a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) lithium-ion battery storage system, Power Pod 2, which in addition to storing onsite generated solar energy and providing backup power, can participate in automated demand response (ADR) programmes in Electriq Power’s home state of California. Last September, Electriq P ..read more

Onslow Dam at Lake Onslow, New Zealand. A PHES plant at the site was conceptualised by Associate Professor Earl Bardsley from the University of Waikato in 2004. Image: Mohammed Majeed. The government of New Zealand is considering the viability of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) among its options to plug energy deficits of between 3TWh and 5TWh. As the country increases it share of renewable energy on the grid, along with solar PV and wind, hydroelectric power (hydropower) will play a major role in the energy mix. However, in ‘dry years’, which the government said are hard to predict coming ..read more

Infracapital invested in Infram through Infracapital Greenfield Partners. Image: Infracaptital Independent power producer Amarenco has purchased a 90% stake in PV developer Infram from investment company M&G’s infrastructure equity investment arm Infracapital. Both Amarenco and Infracapital agreed on a joint venture (JV) in January 2017 with a 19MW operational project and two seed projects, with 25MW combined, in the late stages of construction. According to Infram, it constructed a portfolio of 220 sites with a capacity of over 125MW from an initial operational portfolio of 19MW. Infram f ..read more

Eku Energy’s Head of Technologies EMEA Andy Hadland, second from left, at the Energy Storage Summit in London last month. Image: Solar Media. The European Commission has cleared an investment by Canadian pension fund BCI into Eku Energy, a new utility-scale BESS platform launched by Macquarie last year. The deal was approved last week (10 March) by the Director-General for Competition at the EC, the EU’s executive arm. Global investor Macquarie only launched Eku Energy in November last year through its Green Investment Group (GIG) arm, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time. That was quic ..read more