Wednesday, 19 August 2026

UK energy regulator Ofgem has identified 16 long-duration energy storage (LDES) projects it is "minded to" support under a new cap-and-floor scheme, according to Carbon Brief.

Carbon Brief reports that the use of LDES technologies is expected to cut UK energy system costs by more than GBP 24 billion between 2030 and 2050.

The technology class already has an incumbent at scale. Dinorwig power station in North Wales is a 1,728 MW pumped-hydro station opened in the 1980s and used to manage short-term surges in electricity demand, according to Carbon Brief.

Newer chemistries are arriving at a much smaller scale. The UK's largest vanadium flow battery site opened in May 2026 at Uckfield, East Sussex, co-located with a 3 MW solar farm, Carbon Brief reported. The site consists of 90 vanadium flow batteries able to store 21 MWh of electricity.

That pairing of a flow battery installation with on-site solar sits at the opposite end of the size range from Dinorwig, whose capacity is measured in gigawatt-scale power output rather than tens of megawatt-hours of stored energy.

A cap-and-floor scheme sets a revenue floor and a revenue ceiling for supported assets, the mechanism Ofgem is applying to the 16 shortlisted projects.

A 57 MW / 120 MWh battery energy storage system near the town of Lipnice nad Sázavou in Czechia's Vysočina Region has been energized by Czech industrial holding Suas Group and Slovak investment firm EIF, ESS News reported.

The project cost 400 million CZK (USD 19.1 million) and is now the largest operational battery storage system in Czechia, according to ESS News.

On the technical side, ESS News reported the installation is built from 144 battery cabinets, 18 power conversion systems and nine transformer skids.

Suas Group believes the plant will pay for itself within five to eight years, drawing revenues from multiple electricity markets and using algorithmic management to schedule day-ahead and intraday trading.

The ranking it takes over is fresh. The second-largest system in the country, a 37.95 MW / 41.7 MWh battery at the Modlany Energy Park in northern Czechia, was commissioned earlier in the same month, ESS News said. On an energy basis, Lipnice stores almost three times as much.

Both projects sit inside a build-out that state aid has underwritten. The European Union approved an aid package covering 1.5 GWh of storage capacity in the Czech Republic in March 2025, according to ESS News.

Aurora Energy Research forecast that total battery storage capacity in Czechia will reach 6 GWh by the end of the decade. Measured against that projection, the 120 MWh at Lipnice accounts for a small share of the capacity the country would need to add.

Bayernwerk Netz has introduced a new allocation procedure for grid connections covering battery storage systems with import capacity above 300 kW and consumers whose power requirement exceeds 1,000 kW, according to ESS News.

Bayernwerk Netz is the major distribution system operator serving the German state of Bavaria and a subsidiary of E.ON, ESS News reported. The thresholds set the point at which storage projects and large industrial or commercial loads fall under the revised connection criteria rather than standard treatment.

The operator is spending heavily on the network the new procedure governs. ESS News reported that the Bayernwerk subsidiary plans to invest around EUR 12 billion in grid expansion between 2026 and 2030.

The 300 kW import threshold captures grid-scale and larger commercial battery systems, which draw power from the distribution network when charging rather than only exporting to it. Consumers below the 1,000 kW mark sit outside the change.

Clearstone Energy has lost its appeal against the refusal of the Axminster Energy Hub, a 150 MW battery energy storage system, ESS News reported. The appeal was dismissed by planning inspector Helen Heward, who set out her reasoning across 17 pages on August 13, 2026.

Heward said the evidence on deflagration and explosion mitigation fell short. She was "not persuaded" that the proposed strategies would work effectively, or that hazards "would be satisfactorily controlled for cabinets 10cm apart".

ESS News reported that Clearstone nominated the Wärtsilä Quantum 1 system for the site, with 52 units scheduled for installation. Cabinet separation of 10cm was the configuration the inspector examined.

East Devon District Council refused the planning application in May 2025, according to ESS News. The council then dropped its objection while the appeal was running, after a meeting on January 14, 2026. The appeal was dismissed regardless.

LG Energy Solution has begun battery production at a newly built 226-acre plant in Lansing, Michigan, according to ESS News. The site will supply cells for both utility-scale energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles.

ESS News reported the plant carries an investment of more than USD 2 billion since 2022. Production started at the newly constructed 226-acre facility.

Two chemistries will run in parallel at the site. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells are destined for utility-scale storage, while higher-density nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells are built for electric vehicles, per ESS News.

DTE Energy is among the first customers lined up to deploy Lansing-made LFP cells in its upcoming storage projects, according to ESS News. On the vehicle side, the NMC output is earmarked for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, which will use the cells in the 2027 Toyota Highlander EV.

Staffing currently stands at about 900 people on site. ESS News reported the plant is projected to employ roughly 1,700 workers and reach annual output above 35 GWh at full scale.

The Lansing ramp feeds a wider shift in where LG Energy Solution builds storage cells. The company projects that 80% of its global ESS manufacturing capacity will sit in North America by the end of 2026. ESS News reported the plant also advances a target of more than 50 GWh of North American LFP manufacturing capacity by the same point.

That split between an LFP line pointed at grid batteries and an NMC line pointed at a single vehicle program puts one plant on both sides of the demand curve, with a named utility offtaker and a named automaker offtaker attached from the start.

Switzerland's Phenogy AG and Germany's HD Advanced Technologies (HDAT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, will work together on developing and manufacturing sodium-ion battery cells in Europe, ESS News reported.

The cell development runs through a joint venture company, according to ESS News. Phenogy brings its sodium-ion cell chemistry and cell design; Heidelberg contributes its specialized printing process.

A separate manufacturing agreement covers hardware rather than cells. Under it, HDAT will produce cabinets, containers and other system products for Phenogy, ESS News reported. That arrangement starts with Germany and Europe, with plans to extend to the US in the future.

Phenogy entered the European energy storage scene in September 2025, when it launched a megawatt-hour-scale sodium-ion energy storage system at a commercial site in northern Germany, according to ESS News.

Sodium-ion cells use no lithium, and the chemistry has drawn interest from European system integrators looking for supply outside lithium-based cell chains. The tie-up pairs a cell developer with a manufacturer whose parent business is printing machinery, applying a printing process to cell production rather than conventional coating lines.

Enrolling 10% of California's projected electric vehicles in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) programs by 2036 could supply roughly 9 GW of 12-hour storage, more than one-third of the state's long-duration storage procurement target for that year, according to a report covered by Solar Builder.

The study was carried out by grid experts at GridLab, Kevala, and E3, and drew on roundtable discussions facilitated by the Energy & Efficiency Institute at the University of California Davis, Solar Builder reported.

Its central argument is that opening up V2G infrastructure alongside other customer-owned resources could help address California's affordability and reliability problems. The framing treats parked EV batteries as procurable capacity rather than as passive load on the distribution system.

On the barrier side, the authors call for standardized, interoperable program frameworks to lift participation and better align incentives across utilities. That points at fragmentation between utility programs as a constraint on enrollment rather than at battery hardware or vehicle availability.

The new numbers build on earlier work from the same lead author. GridLab's 2024 study with The Brattle Group concluded that virtual power plants could save California utilities and consumers USD 550 million a year while covering more than 15% of the state's peak electricity demand using commercially available technologies, according to Solar Builder.

Read together, the two figures place aggregated customer-owned resources in the same conversation as utility-scale procurement: one measured against a peak demand share, the other against a long-duration storage target.