VC funding for battery energy storage companies in the first half of this year has already exceeded 2016’s total and looks on the way to bettering 2017, with US$539 million raised across 29 deals.

Lithium and sodium sulfur batteries will be used for the first time in new territories, after NEC ES and NGK inked deals to deliver projects to an island archipelago in Brazil and in Dubai respectively.

Despite the growing interest and deployment figures for lithium-ion batteries for stationary energy storage, its ‘predecessor’ lead acid still has a strong role to play in enabling more and more people to go solar, a representative of Trojan Battery has argued.

Even among high level stakeholders, there are real gaps in education, knowledge and understanding of what energy storage is, and what it can do. We were privileged at last week’s Intersolar Europe/ees Europe shows in Munich, Germany, to be joined by four leading thinkers – and doers – in the energy storage industry, who helped us tackle this difficult question.

Increasingly, solar energy and behind-the-meter battery storage assets are being deployed on an ‘as-a-service’ basis and system integrator Younicos has decided to replicate the strategy for microgrids.

First developed by NASA, flow batteries are a potential answer to storing solar – and wind – for eight to 10 hours, far beyond what is commonly achieved today with lithium-ion. In the first of a two-part special report, Andy Colthorpe learns what the flow battery industry faces in the fight for commercialisation.

Advisory and certification house DNV GL is supporting Turkish plans to source 30% of total electricity generated in the country from renewable sources, carrying out a feasibility study for combinations of solar PV and energy storage.

Volume 15 of PV Tech Power, from our publisher Solar Media, has just hit the virtual shelves – and the quarterly technical journal is free to download from the PV Tech site.

Close on heels of its recent announcement on forming a new global unit focused on the hybrid and energy storage market, Indian EPC Sterling and Wilson has won a captive solar-diesel-storage microgrid project in Africa. Energy-Storage.News caught up with Vish Iyer, global head of business development, strategy and marketing for the Hybrid and Energy Storage division at Sterling and Wilson, to find out more.

Indian EPC firm Sterling and Wilson has won its first large-scale hybrid and energy storage turnkey EPC contract order in Western Africa, including what it believes to be both the largest battery storage project and single battery installation in the whole continent.