The participation of venture capital (VC) investors seems to have cooled, while project funding has conversely seen a sharp rise, in the latest quarterly report into funding and mergers and acquisitions from Mercom Capital.

Grid-scale energy storage developer Eos Energy Storage has raised proceeds of US$23 million through the initial closing of a private placement transaction and expects to use the money to increase deployment of its battery storage product.

Commercially viable energy storage has the potential to change the game by solving the energy trilemma. Arshad Saleem, from KIC InnoEnergy, which invests in and supports European sustainable energy, says marrying start-up innovation and big business experience could accelerate the journey to viability.

Energy storage system integrator Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) has secured US$200 million of project finance from Macquarie.

Trina Best, the energy storage company begun as part of Trina Solar but now a separate entity in its own right, wants to go public by 2020 and has not ruled out building its own battery cell production facilities in future.

While parallels are often drawn between the solar and storage industries, financing energy storage projects is a lot more complex than simply “transposing” learnings from solar to batteries.

Secure financing for energy storage is likely to be the main driver for its deployment, the chief of the UK’s biggest solar developer has said, echoing views given to Energy Storage News by analysis firm Lux Research.

Workable alternatives to utility power involving energy storage are beginning to emerge with new and innovative business models, according to an investment advisor who worked on Younicos’ recent US$50 million “land grab”.

Energy storage is already competitive in a number of mainly grid-based applications, while lithium-ion battery prices could fall by as much as 50% in the next five years, financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard has found.

Raj Prabhu of cleantech research and communications firm Mercom Capital talks through some of the interesting findings and trends highlighted by his company’s recent “Smart Grid, Battery/Storage, Efficiency Funding and M&A” report for Q1 2015.