New research finds that battery safety rankings are not universal but highly dependent on application scenarios, and shows that LFP batteries can emit high levels of hydrogen fluoride, challenging their reputation as the “safest” chemistry.
By combining semi-solid-state battery technology with immersion cooling, the new battery cells and energy storage solutions from Wanxiang A123 Systems Corp. exhibit both robust thermal safety and strong economic performance.
The EU-funded pilot – the first of its kind in Europe – demonstrated the ability of the company’s iron-air LDES technology to deliver multi-day energy storage in a real-world utility environment.
The multi-project cluster includes the world’s largest single-site electrochemical energy storage facility: the 4 GWh Envision Jingyi Chagan Hada Energy Storage Power Station.
The Chinese manufacturer will supply 5.5 GWh of energy storage products to Saudi Arabia and another 6 GWh to Egypt, as it works to expand its global footprint.
The Finnish start-up says its sand battery technology is scalable from 20 to 500 MWh with charging power from 1 to 20 MW, depending on industrial needs.
The Dutch start-up, founded by former Tesla leaders, is taking a novel approach to sodium-ion battery technology, optimizing it for integration with solar power plants. Its technology is set to be deployed for the first time in a Dutch solar-plus-storage project later this year.
The pilot showcases a reversible solid oxide fuel cell battery and represents the first fully containerized, modular ultra-LDES system to be operated for thousands of hours, achieving more than 200 hours of energy storage capacity.
Iola Hughes, Head of Research at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, tells ESS News that 2026 is set to be another strong year for BESS, with forecast additions exceeding 450 GWh and no material supply constraints in sight. Meanwhile, the initial impact of rising lithium prices is already visible at the cell level, but the full effect has yet to ripple through to system pricing.
With lithium prices reaching a two-year high in early 2026, sodium-ion batteries are once again in the spotlight, as innovators on both sides of the Atlantic announce major milestones.