Tuesday, 14 July 2026

Construction has begun on a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery manufacturing site in Brindisi, southern Italy, according to ESS News. The developer is Eni Storage Systems, a joint venture that pairs Eni Industrial Evolution with FIB, part of Seri Industrial Group.

A later development phase at the Brindisi plant will add LFP cathode active material production and battery recycling, ESS News reported. Both lines are sized to feed the two gigafactories.

Eni has taken a stake in Faenix, the Seri Industrial Group company set to market battery energy storage systems made at the Teverola and Brindisi facilities, according to ESS News.

Ofgem signed off on six of eight amendments NESO proposed for Dynamic Response market rules, phasing them in on two separate dates, ESS News reported.

Providers active in Great Britain's balancing market feel the first shift from July 31, 2026. Any balancing mechanism unit that fails to file a valid Final Physical Notification counts as unavailable for Dynamic Response under the new terms.

That first batch ties how a provider signals availability in the balancing market to whether it can operate in frequency service markets.

Dynamic Response participants that stay outside the Balancing Mechanism are the ones caught by the second batch, which lands Jan. 1, 2027.

NESO ran ten amendments through industry consultation between November 20 and December 19, 2025, then pulled two before sending its final package to Ofgem, ESS News reported. That left eight for the regulator to weigh.

Ofgem knocked back two of those eight. It refused NESO's four-step penalty ladder for providers that underperform and rejected a bid to widen the grid operator's authority to suspend participants from the market, both on grounds of insufficient industry consultation.

The penalty ladder would have introduced stricter penalties and suspension powers against providers that failed to deliver. Ofgem's refusal leaves the graduated sanctions and the broader suspension trigger out of the rulebook.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero published final reports for Stream 2 Phase 2 projects under the Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration Programme on 7 July 2026. According to the department, over £69 million of capital funding was made available across the programme's two competition streams.

Stream 1 was set to award around £37 million in innovation funding as capital grants, with recipients required to secure matched private investment, according to the department. Stream 2 was set to award around £30 million in innovation support through Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) contracts, which required risk-sharing.

Five projects were funded through Stream 1 Phase 1, covering power-to-X energy storage and electrical energy storage, according to the department. No projects were awarded funding in the thermal energy storage category under that stream.

Stream 2 supported a wider set of awards. The department funded 19 projects through Stream 2 Phase 1 and 7 projects through Stream 2 Phase 2, each covering all three technology areas.

The programme set boundaries on eligible technologies. Solutions with widely deployed UK commercial demonstrations, such as lithium ion, pumped hydro or large water tanks, were out of scope, according to the department.

Spark Renewables' Dinawan solar and battery project in southwest New South Wales has been approved under Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, according to ESS News, moving the AUD 1.35 billion (USD 940 million) development closer to construction.

The project combines an 800 MW solar installation with a battery energy storage system of up to 300 MW and provision for up to four hours of storage, ESS News reported. It also includes a separate 707 MW wind component, according to the outlet.

The facility is to be built across a 2,600-hectare site about 30 km north of Jerilderie, ESS News said.

Spark Renewables is targeting a final investment decision in 2027, with construction expected to start later that year, according to ESS News. The project is anticipated to support approximately 400 jobs during the construction phase.

Spark Renewables is owned by Malaysian electricity company Tenaga Nasional Bhd, ESS News reported.

Once operational, the facility will generate clean energy to power the equivalent of about 142,000 homes annually, according to the outlet.

The EPBC decision follows approval from the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission in April, ESS News said.

Sicona Battery Technologies has secured up to AUD 45 million (USD 31.3 million) to build a commercial-scale facility for silicon-carbon anode materials, according to ESS News.

The funding was awarded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) under its Battery Breakthrough Initiative, ESS News reported.

According to ESS News, the money will support construction and operation of a commercial-scale demonstration facility at BlueScope Steel's Port Kembla precinct in New South Wales, Australia.

Sicona is backed by Himadri Speciality Chemical Ltd, per ESS News.

Kearsarge Energy has brought 88 MW of distributed solar and battery storage projects online across the northeastern United States, according to ESS News.

The developer plans to commission more than 160 MW of additional capacity by the end of 2026, ESS News reported. The 2025 deployment spans Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Maryland, and New Hampshire.

In Orleans, Vermont, Kearsarge deployed a 20 MWh standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) alongside a 7.5 MW solar array, according to ESS News. That array delivers over 8.7 million kWh annually to the Vermont Public Power Supply Authority.

In North Reading, Massachusetts, the company installed a 22.5 MWh standalone BESS designed to help the Reading Municipal Light Department shave local peak load, ESS News reported.

Kearsarge currently manages a USD 900 million, 400 MW national project pipeline, according to ESS News. The developer reports a track record of 300 MW and USD 600 million in solar and storage assets developed since 2011.

More than 800 MW of grid-scale battery energy storage have been installed around Ireland since 2018, according to ESS News.

The pipeline for further projects stands at 2.3 GW, covering developments that already hold planning permission and connection contracts, ESS News reported.

Storage gained full access to electricity markets in Ireland in November 2025, and since then storage assets have set peak output records of almost 500 MW, according to Minister Darragh O'Brien.

An AFRY report commissioned by ESI found that energy storage could deliver up to EUR 102 million in annual savings for consumers in Ireland and Northern Ireland with 2 GW of additional storage on the system compared with today.

AFRY also found that when gas prices are high, the benefit of 2 GW of additional storage could reach up to EUR 150 million.

David Rossiter of ESI said building 2 GW of storage by the early 2030s could deliver a 10% reduction in grid emissions and an 11% reduction in wasted wind and solar energy.

O'Brien, Ireland's Minister for Climate, Energy, and the Environment, said the government will commit to a long-term energy storage rollout strategy.

By 2026, 24 western power entities had used preemptive shut-offs, according to the Western Electricity Coordinating Council, the independent grid reliability authority for the West. Some of those outages have left communities without power for up to five days, The Conversation reported.

Utilities in the West cut power ahead of high-fire conditions to reduce the risk that equipment sparks a blaze. In California, electricity infrastructure has ignited eight of the state's 20 most destructive wildfires, according to The Conversation.

The financial stakes are set by past liability. In 2019, Pacific Gas & Electric was forced into bankruptcy over an estimated USD 30 billion in wildfire liabilities from equipment-caused blazes, including the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of the town of Paradise, The Conversation reported.

The practice has spread beyond California. Colorado's Xcel Energy implemented its first major preemptive blackout in 2025, according to The Conversation.

Hardening equipment offers one alternative to cutting power. By the end of 2025, Southern California Edison had installed over 700 circuit miles of insulated tree wire in high-fire districts over about a year, and committed to modify an additional 1,481 miles by 2028, The Conversation reported.

Software-driven monitoring could safely unlock 300 GW of capacity on existing U.S. grid infrastructure within three to five years without new transmission lines or power plants, GridCARE founder and CEO Amit Narayan said on the Energy Empire podcast, according to pv magazine.

Narayan tied the opportunity to how the network is currently run. According to pv magazine, the American grid operates at only about a third of its capacity for most of the year because of conservative N-2 contingency planning, leaving infrastructure idle. Narayan argued that shifting from that legacy planning model to software-driven monitoring is what would free the additional 300 GW.

A Duke University analysis led by Tyler Norris found the grid can absorb nearly 100 GW of new demand if large loads accept curtailment for just 0.25% of the year, according to pv magazine. That share amounts to roughly two hours at a time during the most stressed peaks.

GridCARE identified more than 650 MW of previously invisible capacity at National Grid in New York, pv magazine reported. In Oregon, the software unlocked over 400 MW in Hillsboro for Portland General Electric, allowing the utility to connect six data centers years ahead of schedule.

Grid operators are also applying automation to interconnection queues. PJM Interconnection, the nation's largest grid operator, used an artificial intelligence system to review 811 generation applications representing 220 GW of capacity in under an hour, according to pv magazine, a process that normally takes weeks.

Tesla is letting outside startups test technologies on its live battery cell line at Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg through a new Cell Giga Challenge, according to Electrek on July 7, 2026.

The program runs with JUNI, a Berlin-Brandenburg startup platform that UNITE gGmbH operates with backing from Germany's federal economics ministry and the EXIST program, Electrek reported. Startups can apply through July 24, 2026, ahead of an August 2026 launch.

Behind the challenge sits a scale-up push. Tesla is raising 4680 cell output at Grünheide toward a planned 18 GWh of yearly capacity, Electrek reported. A further USD 250 million commitment more than doubles the site's cell target from 8 GWh to 18 GWh, bringing cumulative investment in the cell unit to EUR 1 billion.

At full run rate, the plant would turn out enough cells for roughly 250,000 to 350,000 vehicles a year, with Tesla planning to make both cells and finished cars on site, Electrek reported.

Cell production alone will require more than 1,500 workers, and output is set to scale through the first half of 2027.

The Electrify 2515 project on the NSW south coast has around 500 households progressively swapping gas appliances for efficient electric alternatives while installing solar, batteries and smart energy devices, according to RenewEconomy.

The trial has generated more than one billion data points over 18 months, according to RenewEconomy, giving Endeavour Energy a detailed picture of how households electrify and use electricity.

Endeavour Energy is the local network operator for the area covered by the project, according to RenewEconomy.