December 9, 2021: International metals manufacturing business Nyrstar said today it would build a commercial-scale green hydrogen facility at Port Pirie, the industrial port in south Australia. Nyrstar will work on the construction with the south Australian state government and commodity trading firm Trafigura, and all three will contribute to the estimated A$750 million ($540…

December 9, 2021: Vinnova, which describes itself as Sweden’s innovation agency, has agreed to fund an energy storage concept where abandoned mines could be used as hydropower facilities. Led by Swedish grid-scale energy storage company Mine Storage, an international consortium has been granted an undisclosed sum by the government agency to finalize a blueprint for…

December 9, 2021: Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say a semi-solid battery with an electrode the consistency of ‘soft-serve ice cream’ could be the answer to grid-scale, affordable energy storage. In a report for the ‘MIT Energy Initiative’ on November 30, the team said it had performed a ‘comprehensive, bottom-up analysis’, which showed…

December 9, 2021: One of the largest energy storage programmes in the US will be integrated by FlexGen Power Systems, which said on December 7 it had been selected by renewable energy developer and operator Ameresco to integrate 537.5MW/2.15GWh of storage across three substations in California. Utility Southern California Edison contracted Ameresco in October to…

December 9, 2021: Italian energy storage firm Energy Dome on November 30 closed an $11 million series ‘A’ fundraise that it will use to build a CO2 battery demonstration in Sardinia. Energy Dome says its battery, which is solar and wind charged, can discharge energy for four to 24 hours. It has a life expectancy…

December 9, 2021: Battery designer and manufacturer Powin Energy on November 29 revealed its new energy storage platform, named ‘Centipede’. The system is the firm’s first modular design and contains pre-integrated segments comprising Stack750E batteries, thermal management equipment and safety systems. It can provide more than 200MWh of energy storage per acre, Powin claims. Powin…

December 9, 2021: Engie, Macquarie’s Green Investment Group and Fluence on December 1 said they would deliver the largest privately owned utility-scale battery in Australia, at the site of the former Hazelwood Power Station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. The power station was decommissioned in 2017. The 150MW/150MWh battery will store electricity generated by the rooftop…

November 26, 2021: Plans to open a bipolar lead battery plant in northwest Bulgaria that were derailed for two years because of the coronavirus lockdowns will go ahead, battery maker Monbat said on November 9. The factory will produce bipolar batteries using the GreenSeal technology licensed to it by Advanced Battery Concepts in 2019. The…

November 25, 2021: Stryten Energy has bought the vehicle power division of Galvion, a military equipment maker whose products include lithium batteries for onboard systems typically used in combat vehicles such as tanks. In an announcement on November 15, Stryten said the deal had been struck just as the Biden administration was committing more money…

November 26, 2021: Frank Daufenbach has been appointed chief strategy officer at Belgium-based materials technology and recycling firm Umicore, effective December 6. The position is a new one, and has been made a few weeks after Mathias Miedreich was appointed CEO at the beginning of October. The company is ‘preparing Umicore’s next growth phase as…