South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom has unveiled its Distributed Battery Storage Programme at an event this week, committing to solar-plus-storage and energy storage projects totalling 1400MWh.

Just a few months after Mozambique’s first ever large-scale PV project reached financial close and construction work began, the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has awarded a grant to pay for a feasibility study for a new project of up to 100MW capacity.

Zola Energy, one of two US-headquartered providers of off-grid solar-plus-storage solutions to the African continent profiled in Energy-Storage.news’ recent Global Storage Opportunity 2018 report, has obtained US$20 million debt financing.

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.

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.

Providers of solar-plus-storage into the continent of Africa have said that it is a misconception that lead acid batteries used in off-grid systems are recycled efficiently back into the supply chain.

Solar Media, the publisher of sites including Energy-Storage.News and PV Tech, has just launched the latest edition of the annual Global Energy Storage Opportunity report for this year – available now as a free download.

A mining operation in South Africa will start managing the cost of its consumed energy with the deployment of eight flow batteries from Primus Power.

Madagascar’s Ministry of Water, Energy and Hydrocarbons (MEEH) has released a list of six pre-qualified bidders for the country’s 25MW(AC) Scaling Solar tender, which is the first to include energy storage in its remit.