Sodium sulfur (NAS) batteries produced by Japan’s NGK Insulators are being put into use on a massive scale in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

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.

Philadelphia Solar, a vertically-integrated PV company headquartered in Jordan, said this morning it has reached financial close on a project to bring battery storage to a large-scale solar farm in the Middle East kingdom.

Lebanon could reconfigure its laws and regulations to allow private sector actors to generate renewable energy for sale to the grid, it emerged as the Middle Eastern country opened up its first solar-plus-storage tender process.

Since the launch of the site almost four years ago, Energy-Storage.News (and PV Tech Storage as it was previously known), has consistently brought you high-quality blogs from both guest contributors and our team of journalists and experts here at Solar Media. Here’s just a selection of some of the best guest blogs we ran from January to June, 2017:

The power purchase agreement (PPA) for what is claimed to be the Middle East’s largest solar-plus-storage project has been signed.

Interest in energy storage in the Middle East is ‘ramping up significantly’, as we reported last week in an extract from this interview with IHS Markit analyst Julian Jansen. His firm is forecasting 1.8GW of energy storage for the region by 2025 – from an installed base of next-to-nothing today. Jansen talked us through some of the drivers, market dynamics and the general picture of what we might see developing.

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.

A consultancy contract for a 250MW pumped hydro energy storage plant in Dubai has been awarded to French power company EDF by the emirate’s main public infrastructure company.

Sami Khoreibi, CEO of renewable energy project developer Enviromena, discusses storage in the Middle East and Africa’s energy market in the next decade.