Energy Storage

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched a hydrogen funding call for African projects, while the European Commission has registered 265 supply opportunities under its Hydrogen Mechanism.

Escalating Middle East tensions and global energy supply risks are accelerating Europe’s shift toward solar and storage, particularly in commercial, industrial, and utility-scale segments where energy security, resilience, and price stability are becoming central investment drivers. At the same time, expanding manufacturing capacity in China and India is redirecting surplus solar and storage supply toward Europe, creating a highly competitive and increasingly selective market where long-term success depends on quality, reliability, ESG alignment, and strategic market positioning.

Researchers in Canada designed an air-source heat pump integrated with an air-based solar collector and radiant floor heating for cold climates, showing that the proposed system configuratuon could improve the coefficient of performance from 2–4 to 2–6 and reduce significantly annual energy consumption.

ESS Tech is complementing its iron flow storage offering, which is engeeneered for the 8–24 hour long-duration segment, with sodium-ion battery products aimed at short and medium-duration applications.

The system features AI-driven energy management, 10,000-cycle battery life, and scalable expansion up to 126 kWh.

While the exact specifications of the new product, such as dimensions and weight, haven’t been disclosed, available imagery suggests potential transportation challenges.

The March 2026 Energy Sector Construction and Investment Projects Report, released by the Chilean Ministry of Energy, records 38 storage systems under construction, for 4,597 MW and 18,780 MWh.

In a week marked by the largest sodium-ion battery order to date, widely seen as a watershed moment for the technology’s commercialization at scale, one of Europe’s emerging players, Spain’s Bihar Batteries, is strengthening the outlook for European-made sodium-ion batteries.

Some of the consequences of the blackout include a 589% increase in installed BESS capacity in Spain between April 2025 and April 2026, the introduction of renewable participation in voltage control, a greater role for gas in the generation mix, and continued progress on interconnections.

For years, the battery energy storage (BESS) story has followed a familiar script: costs fall, deployment accelerates, economics improve. Even when cell costs rose and system prices briefly flattened during the 2021-22 lithium price spike, the narrative largely held. Paola Perez Peña, senior principal analyst at S&P Global Energy, examines why the latest jump in lithium prices has only had limited impacts on overall BESS costs so far.