South Africa’s Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy is conducting a fairly unique procurement programme for 2GW of energy capacity, to come from a “range of energy source technologies”. Clean Horizon head of market analysis, Corentin Baschet, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about what the “almost technology agnostic” tender aims to do and the type of companies and projects likely to be successful in it.

A community choice energy provider run by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in California has signed contracts for battery storage with EDF Renewables and NextEra Energy totalling 260MWh, to be deployed in combination with solar PV.

Australian startup Vast Solar said it has picked a site in Queensland where it could develop a AU$600 million (US$427 million) power plant combining different low emissions technologies to provide baseload power cost-effectively over a 30-year lifetime.

Two community energy suppliers in California followed up an agreement to buy power from a large-scale solar-plus-storage farm with another, project developer EDF Renewables has announced.

NextEra Energy Resources and utility Salt River Project (SRP) have completed the Pinal Central Solar Energy Center in Arizona, an integrated PV plant equipped with a battery system that will store energy and allow SRP to provide power to its customers.

US utility Florida Light & Power (FPL) has followed up the US’ first DC-coupled grid-scale battery system with the announcement of a solar-plus-storage project pairing 10MW / 40MWh of energy storage with an existing 74.5MW PV plant.

Utility Florida Power & Light claims that a just-completed battery addition will increase output from a large-scale solar farm in its home state, thought to be the first time a DC-coupled solution has been used at this scale in the US.

ZEN Energy’s newly appointed chairman has said he believes there is a “great future for energy-intensive industries in Australia,” as his company approved a 1GW plan for dispatchable renewables aimed at South Australia’s commercial and industrial sector.

Australia’s defence minister has welcomed the start of work on a solar-plus-energy storage microgrid at a military base in Perth by developer Carnegie Clean Energy.

There is increasing high-level interest in the potential for energy storage in the Middle East, with grid-connected systems forecast to reach 1.8GW in the region by 2025, according to I.H.S Markit.