Wednesday, 12 August 2026

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has published an initial list of transmission infrastructure projects expected to be eligible for its Bill Discount Scheme, which cuts electricity bills for households sited close to new grid build.

Eligibility turns on distance. The scheme covers households within 500 metres of new or significantly upgraded electricity transmission infrastructure, such as pylons, in England, Scotland and Wales, according to the department.

Payments for eligible projects are expected to start in the first half of 2027, the department said.

The published list is described as initial, covering the projects anticipated to qualify rather than a closed register. The department frames the discount as directed at communities living near new transmission network infrastructure projects.

The 500 metre threshold is the operative test for households seeking the discount, and it applies to upgrades of existing infrastructure as well as entirely new lines.

Batteries in Italy's SUD region earned EUR 592,000/MW/year on a four-hour configuration in June, the third straight month above EUR 500,000/MW/year, according to Clean Horizon's June Battery Profitability Index reported by ESS News.

Clean Horizon attributed the SUD result primarily to a higher weighted average price in the intraday market.

Belgium posted the index's standout recovery. Revenue there reached EUR 340,000/MW/year, the highest level since July 2015, which Clean Horizon linked to a rebound in solar and wind generation that pushed energy prices up.

In Spain, two-hour battery revenues climbed 18.9% month-on-month to EUR 252,000/MW/year, per the index. Clean Horizon pointed to higher earnings from the continuous intraday market, alongside better spreads on automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR) and day-ahead contracts.

The sharpest monthly move came in Estonia, where two-hour index revenues rose 84% against May to EUR 322,000/MW/year. Manual frequency restoration reserve (mFRR) was the dominant earnings stream, at 58% of the total, ESS News reported.

Latvia and Lithuania followed with gains of 31% and 32%, landing at EUR 443,000/MW/year and EUR 431,000/MW/year respectively.

Poland ran against the trend but stayed near the top of the table. Two-hour battery revenue there fell 35% from the previous month, yet still registered EUR 529,000/MW/year.

The index measures battery market share across energy and ancillary services markets, covering frequency containment reserve (FCR), aFRR and mFRR. Its benchmark asset assumes 85% round-trip efficiency, 1.5 cycles per day and full availability.

Slovenia's electricity market operator Borzen shut its battery storage grant call ahead of schedule after bids came in at more than twice the EUR 10 million on offer, according to ESS News.

ESS News reported that 278 applications arrived in the first three days of the call. The oversubscription figure covers the full application set against the EUR 10 million budget.

Successful applicants can claim up to 45% of eligible investment costs under the scheme, with support capped at EUR 225/kWh, per ESS News.

The grant call sits alongside a larger state aid decision. Earlier in August 2026, the European Commission approved a EUR 59 million funding program backing 370 MWh of new battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity in Slovenia, ESS News reported.

Behind-the-meter photovoltaic (BTM PV) output across New England could fall by 600 to 800 MW during the partial solar eclipse on August 12, according to ISO New England, which said the reduction will be noticeable but manageable.

The grid operator attributed the width of that range to cloud cover and wildfire smoke, both of which shape how much rooftop and other distributed solar output is available when the moon crosses the sun.

Obscuration varies sharply across the footprint. ISO New England said the moon will cover about 23% of the sun as seen from northern Maine, falling to roughly 10% in southwest Connecticut.

That gradient explains why the grid operator expects minimal power system impacts from the event. The comparison it drew is the April 8, 2024 eclipse, when parts of northern New England saw a total eclipse and BTM PV generation dropped by more than 2,800 MW. The upper end of the August 12 estimate is well under a third of that earlier swing.

BTM PV sits behind customer meters, so its output is not directly dispatched by the grid operator and instead appears as a change in net demand that other resources must cover as sunlight returns.

Verano Energy has picked Sungrow to supply a 152 MW / 606 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) for its Observatorio project in the O'Higgins region of Chile, according to ESS News.

The order covers Sungrow's PowerTitan 2 product and a 25-year long-term service agreement, ESS News reported. Sungrow will also deliver SG350HX-20 inverters for the 135 MW photovoltaic plant paired with the batteries at Observatorio.

Chile's storage build-out gives the award scale context. ESS News put the country at 19.2 GWh of battery capacity under construction as of June 2026, with a further 11.8 GWh in the testing phase.

In Australia, Global Power Generation selected Hithium for a 421 MWh BESS at the Fraser Coast project in Queensland, ESS News reported. The supplier will provide 84 liquid-cooled storage units with grid-forming capabilities, plus design and testing services and site support.

Fraser Coast pairs 330 MW of solar PV with a 180 MW battery, according to ESS News. Naturgy holds 75% of GPG and the Kuwait Investment Authority owns the remaining 25%.

On the supply side, Sungrow ranked first among BESS integrators in a global ranking by Wood Mackenzie, with six of the top 10 integrators based in China.

A scandium surface coating applied to a layered sodium-ion cathode held 91.2% of its initial capacity after 300 cycles in a full cell, according to ESS News.

The work compared two routes for using scandium in O3-Na[Ni1/2Mn1/2]O2 cathodes: bulk doping through the material and a coating confined to the particle surface. ESS News reported that researchers from Tokyo University of Science and the Institute of Science Tokyo in Japan carried out the comparison.

The contrast with untreated material is the headline number. Capacity retention after 100 cycles rose from 18.6% for the undoped baseline to 75.4% for the coated NNMO-SC800 sample, ESS News reported. The doped variant, NNMSO at 8% scandium, reached 67.8% over the same window.

In full cells paired with hard carbon anodes, the doped sample held 71.4% of initial capacity after 300 cycles, according to ESS News. That leaves the coated cathode ahead of the doped one on the longer test, on the figures reported.

The two approaches work through different mechanisms. Bulk doping stabilized the layered crystal structure and cut volume changes during cycling, while the surface coating formed a protective layer that suppressed interfacial degradation and side reactions, per ESS News.

The technique appeared in the journal Small, in a paper titled "Scandium Doping and Coating for Improving O3-NaNi1/2Mn1/2O2 Electrode in Sodium Battery," ESS News reported.

Cathode durability is the constraint that has kept nickel-manganese layered oxides awkward for sodium-ion cells, and the undoped retention figure of 18.6% after 100 cycles shows the scale of the fade being addressed. Both scandium routes narrow that gap, with the coated electrode delivering the stronger result across both the 100-cycle and 300-cycle tests.