Thursday, 20 August 2026

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an emergency order under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to cut the risk of power outages across the mid-Atlantic region, according to Energy.gov.

The order clears PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., working with Talen Energy Corporation, to operate Unit 4 at the Wagner Generating Station in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, beyond its current operating limit to meet anticipated electricity demand.

It takes effect on August 20, 2026, and runs through November 17, 2026, per the same announcement.

Energy.gov said the measure is intended to strengthen grid reliability and minimize the risk of energy shortfalls in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

The stated purpose of the Section 202(c) action is outage risk reduction across the mid-Atlantic footprint rather than a permanent change to the unit's authorization, with the relief bounded by the November end date.

Appalachian Power (APCo) has launched two separate solicitations for grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Virginia, United States, according to ESS News. Bids for both close on September 30, 2026.

The larger of the two tenders covers up to 500 MW of BESS capacity, to be contracted through one or more purchase and sale agreements, ESS News reported. The second solicitation is structured differently: up to 300 MW procured under one or more capacity purchase agreements.

APCo will give preference to projects able to reach commercial operation by March 31, 2030, though the utility will still weigh proposals that miss that date, per ESS News.

The procurement sits inside a statutory build-out schedule. Under the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA), APCo must add roughly 780 MW of short-duration battery storage by 2040, ESS News reported. A separate obligation covers 520 MW of long-duration storage by 2045.

The split between purchase and sale agreements and capacity purchase agreements gives developers two commercial routes into the same procurement window. Under the first structure, APCo takes ownership of the asset; under the second, it contracts for capacity from a project that stays in third-party hands. Both tracks run to the same September deadline, and both feed the short-duration and long-duration targets the VCEA sets out to 2040 and 2045.

The March 2030 preference date sits well ahead of either statutory deadline, indicating APCo wants capacity on the system early rather than at the compliance horizon.

Waldevar Energy has won the engineering, procurement and construction contract for GEN-I Sonce's 55 MW / 220 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at Gheorgheni in eastern Transylvania, Romania, according to ESS News.

The contractor will complete its scope of works by Q3 2027, covering engineering, procurement, construction, installation, testing and commissioning, ESS News reported.

The project sits inside a wider build-out by the developer. GEN-I Sonce has previously said its portfolio of utility-scale BESS under operation would reach 800 MW by the end of 2026, per ESS News.

GEN-I Invest bought three operational BESS sites in Bulgaria in July, adding 30 MW / 76 MWh across facilities at Belovo, Momchilgrad and Parvomay 1, according to the same report. That purchase brought already-running assets into the group's books, in contrast with the Gheorgheni site, which still has to be built.

At four hours of duration, the Gheorgheni system is configured for longer discharge than the acquired Bulgarian fleet, which averages closer to two and a half hours across its 30 MW and 76 MWh.

Arbitrage earnings for utility-scale batteries across Australia's National Electricity Market came to $53 million in the second quarter of 2026, down 57% from the same quarter a year earlier, BNEF said. Realized spreads on that trading fell 84% year on year, landing at $60/MWh.

BNEF pointed to a growing utility-scale battery fleet, and the competition between those assets, as the force squeezing arbitrage returns lower. Batteries set the wholesale price in 39% of intervals during the quarter, against 19% in the same period a year earlier.

The wider price backdrop moved in the same direction. BNEF's 3Q 2026 Australia Power Market Quarterly report puts the year-on-year drop in average NEM power prices in a range of 40% to 65% for the quarter.

Intraday arbitrage across the NEM averaged $103 (USD 73) per MWh, 79% below the year-earlier level, a decline BNEF attributed to a milder winter and softer evening demand.

At 6 pm, batteries covered an average 8.4% of power demand over the quarter, compared with 3.1% twelve months earlier. Gas held 6.8% of demand in that same interval, down from 12.6%.

Wind and solar together accounted for 35% of NEM generation share in Q2 2026, up from 31% year over year.

Geely says its next-generation solid-state EV battery will reach an energy density of up to 500 Wh/kg, according to Electrek. The automaker is already running the cells through real-world validation ahead of a pilot rollout in 2027.

On range, Geely says vehicles fitted with the cells will travel over 1,000 km on a single charge, a figure the company describes as "comparable to diesel-powered cars". Durability is pitched at the same order of ambition: Geely claims a lifespan of up to 1 million km, or 621,000 miles, per Electrek.

The density target sits well above what is shipping today. Electrek reports that the best high-nickel NMC cells in production EVs land around 250 to 300 Wh/kg at the cell level. Hitting 500 Wh/kg would roughly double the upper end of that band.

Geely is not alone on the timeline. CATL is targeting 2027 for pilot production of its own 500 Wh/kg sulfide solid-state cell, according to Electrek. Two pilot programs aiming at the same density figure in the same year puts the validation stage, rather than the laboratory result, at the center of the competitive question.

Pilot production is a narrow step. It establishes whether a cell chemistry can be built repeatably on a line, not whether it can be built at automotive volume and cost. Geely's disclosure covers validation and a pilot date; the claimed cycle life of up to 1 million km is the number that would have to hold through that process to matter for a production vehicle.

Solrite Energy is entering the Illinois market with a program that puts battery energy storage in households for USD 20 per month and makes those batteries available to support the local power grid, according to Inside Climate News.

Illinois becomes the fifth state where Solrite owns virtual power plants, alongside California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Texas, Inside Climate News reported. The company has about 50 employees and runs systems in roughly 7,500 homes.

The hardware is deliberately oversized. Solrite installs a 60-kilowatt-hour battery, far more than a single house typically needs, leaving capacity to serve the address and send power to the grid, per Inside Climate News. For scale, households in ComEd territory consume an average of about 20 kilowatt-hours per day.

The launch follows a state law creating demand for aggregated household storage. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act in January, requiring utilities to develop virtual power plant programs among its provisions, Inside Climate News reported.

Europe installed 36 GWh of new battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity in 2025, according to a report by SolarPower Europe, the European solar PV and storage sector association. Annual installations rose 48% year-on-year, increasingly driven by utility-scale projects.

The additions pushed total operational battery capacity in Europe past 100 GWh for the first time, SolarPower Europe said.

Germany held its position as the region's largest market despite the slowest growth among the leaders, adding 6.6 GWh of new BESS systems for an annual expansion of just 2%. The United Kingdom placed second with 5.2 GWh, a 64% rise on the previous year. Italy followed in third with 5 GWh.

Ukraine broke into the top five on a roughly fivefold increase in annual installations, reaching 2.9 GWh, while Bulgaria took fifth place with 2.7 GWh of new capacity.

Deployment is spreading beyond the traditional leaders. The five largest markets accounted for 62% of all installations across Europe in 2025, down from almost 80% of annual deployments concentrated in top-tier markets a year earlier, according to the association.

Diamondback Energy Inc. will need twice as much electricity within ten years, its chief executive predicts, and that holds whether or not the producer adds a single barrel of output, World Oil reported.

Chief Executive Officer Kaes Van't Hof described Permian power draw as having "gone through the roof" in remarks to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Citigroup analysts see Far West Texas exposed to rotating outages as early as next summer, according to World Oil.

Diamondback ranks among the largest producers in the Permian basin, and Van't Hof says the doubling in power needs arrives regardless of production levels.