Wednesday, 30 September 2026

Ultium Cells, GM's joint venture with LG Energy Solution, will produce GM's new lithium manganese rich (LMR) battery cells at its Spring Hill, Tennessee facility, the company announced on Tuesday.

The Spring Hill plant is expected to be the first in the world to mass-produce prismatic LMR battery cells, according to Ultium Cells.

Ultium Cells says LMR batteries could deliver 33% higher energy density than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells at a comparable cost.

GM plans to use the batteries in upcoming electric trucks and full-size SUVs, targeting more than 400 miles of range.

Eversource and Dartmouth Engineering have been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Electricity under its Speed to Power (SPARK) program for an initiative to improve grid reliability and keep costs low for customers, according to GlobeNewswire Energy.

The collaboration, named the Dynamic Rating Enhancement Advancements and Modernization (DREAM) initiative, will use grid-enhancing technologies to increase capacity on the existing electric grid, improve system resiliency and help lower customer costs.

The initiative will deploy dynamic line rating technology across approximately 4,000 miles of Eversource's transmission network in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, giving operators real-time visibility into system conditions and enabling more efficient use of existing infrastructure, according to GlobeNewswire Energy.

Subject to successful negotiations and execution of a final award agreement, the award could provide approximately USD 47.7 million in funding for the initiative, which would be expected to begin in 2027.

Sunrun and Tesla pooled 580 MW of home battery capacity across California for a single grid dispatch, which Solar Builder reported as the largest residential virtual power plant (VPP) event to date.

Of that total, 517 MW came from Tesla Powerwall units and 63 MW from other batteries in the fleet, according to Sunrun.

The companies said the dispatch ran for three hours in the evening, called by the California Energy Commission and several utilities.

Sodium-ion batteries are due for commercial rollout in South Korea by 2030 under a government target that names energy storage among the markets in view, ESS News reported.

Energy density goals sit at the center of the plan. A battery industry roadmap issued on September 22 seeks cells reaching 160 Wh/kg by 2027, then climbing to 220 Wh/kg by 2030, according to ESS News.

Under the roadmap, sodium-ion cells become a focus for both energy storage systems and cheaper electric vehicles, ESS News reported.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced a new publicly owned grid company, Great British Grid, set up to challenge private-sector energy network operators, according to pv magazine.

The UK government says the move will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up grid connections, pv magazine reported.

Alongside the new company, the government committed to reforming self-build connection rules, pv magazine reported. The change would let developers and businesses build their own connections where appropriate, rather than waiting for network companies.

The government also said it will accelerate competitive tendering for transmission projects, according to pv magazine. That would allow a wider range of organizations, including GB Grid, to compete to deliver network infrastructure.

Decade Energy signed a supply framework agreement with Sungrow to provide up to 200 MWh of battery energy storage equipment for projects across France, according to SolarQuarter.

In a separate deal, US second-life energy storage firm B2U Storage Solutions formed a strategic partnership with South Korea's LG Energy Solution (LG ES), according to Energy-Storage.news. Announced September 24, the arrangement allows B2U to repurpose battery energy storage system cells from LG ES for grid-scale solutions.

General Motors and LG Energy Solution plan to invest USD 1 billion to convert their battery facility in Spring Hill, Tennessee, into what they describe as the world's first plant dedicated to mass-producing prismatic lithium manganese-rich cells, according to World Today Journal.

GM has set up a pilot production line in Warren, Michigan, that can make 2,500 test cells per day to refine the chemistry before volume production begins in Tennessee, according to World Today Journal.

Kurt Kelty, GM's battery chief, said the lithium manganese-rich chemistry offers about 33% higher energy density than the best-performing lithium iron phosphate cells at an equivalent cost, according to World Today Journal.

National Grid, owner of England and Wales's high-voltage electricity network, sits at the centre of a policy discussion about opening transmission to competition, according to Kalkine Media.

The proposed reforms would introduce independent transmission owners that mirror the distribution model, breaking regional monopolies, Kalkine Media reported. Competitively appointed transmission owners would see project-specific licences tendered by the system operator. The reforms would also allow developers, especially data centres, to build their own high-voltage links.

Replus Engitech and Indus Towers Ltd. have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on battery energy storage system (BESS) solutions for telecom infrastructure in India, according to ESS News.

Under the agreement, Replus intends to make 1.5 GWh of dedicated BESS production capacity available over a two-year period to support the energy requirements of telecom infrastructure, ESS News reported.

Vattenfall has signed long-term marketing agreements for four battery energy storage systems in Germany with a combined power capacity of 285 MW, according to ESS News. Three of the four projects are already under construction.

All four systems have reached financial close, ESS News reported. Commercial operation of the first system is scheduled to begin in January 2027, with the agreements running through 2036.

The batteries will trade in wholesale electricity and balancing markets depending on market conditions, according to ESS News.

EnergyPathways will put its Irish Sea compressed air energy storage (CAES) project into the second round of the UK's long-duration energy storage (LDES) support scheme, CEO Ben Clube told pv magazine. Clube said the bid enters that round in a more developed form.

The opening phase of the MESH project in England is designed as a 300 MW/55.2 GWh CAES plant that can hold full output for more than seven days, according to pv magazine.

pv magazine reported that MESH ranks as the largest CAES project currently under development in the United Kingdom.

EnergyPathways is aiming for a final investment decision in 2028 and for operations to begin by the end of 2031, subject to consents and Ofgem cap-and-floor support, according to pv magazine.

Hoymiles, a Chinese microinverter manufacturer, is expanding sales of commercial and industrial (C&I) and utility-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) into European markets, ESS News reported.

Storage products supplied 78.3% of what the company took in during the first half of 2026, according to ESS News.

Over the same period the firm reported a net loss of CNY 164 million, or USD 24.5 million. Executives tied part of that shortfall to a shift in the company's product mix.

India's expanding battery energy storage system (BESS) market is opening manufacturing opportunities beyond the cell, according to ESS News. The growth is creating a parallel opening in battery management systems, power electronics, sensing, controls, testing and system integration.

ESS News reported that the country's localization effort should reach further than cells and battery-pack assembly. It should increasingly cover printed circuit board assemblies, BMS electronics, power-management systems, control boards, communication modules, testing equipment and complete electronic assemblies.

Fox ESS has introduced Power Beast, a modular commercial and industrial battery whose capacity on a single inverter runs from 28 kWh up to nearly 1,000 kWh, pv magazine reported.

The system made its debut at a Fox ESS event in Wenzhou, China. Its design pairs the company's 125 kW H3 Plus hybrid inverter with CQ series high-voltage batteries, according to pv magazine.

Stacking the units extends that range far higher. On-grid, Fox ESS rates a maximum of 100 units in parallel at 96 MWh, while the off-grid ceiling is 30 units at 28.8 MWh, pv magazine reported.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) awarded more than USD 40 million to 36 energy projects across the state, according to Solar Builder.

The funding came through the DOER's Advancing Massachusetts Power Energy Storage Grant Program and aims to strengthen the state grid through distributed energy resources, Solar Builder reported. The awards went to 36 projects, Solar Builder said.

Each of the funded projects targets one or more of three focus areas: community resilience, safety and education, and long-duration energy storage, according to Solar Builder.

Together, the projects will add about 10 MW and 44 MWh of storage across Massachusetts, Solar Builder reported.

Sodium-ion battery chemistry functions but remains unproven at scale, according to ESS News. The technology works in principle, but its performance across large deployments has yet to be demonstrated.

ESS News reported that sodium-ion has no field-validated degradation curve at scale. Every cycle-life claim on a sodium-ion spec sheet currently rests on laboratory data and manufacturer projections rather than operating history.

Warranty structures, state-of-health protocols and cycle-life guarantees all lack independent third-party verification at the scale lenders and offtakers require, according to ESS News.

The outlet framed sodium-ion as a potential long-term response to flattening lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cost curves and tight supply chains. But its lack of field-validated performance data transfers technology and bankability risks directly onto developer balance sheets, ESS News reported.

CATL has signed an agreement with Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners to supply a 313 MW, 1,639.45 MWh battery energy storage system for the La Alegria Solar project in the Mexican state of Campeche, according to ESS News. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is developing the project.

CATL says La Alegria will be Mexico's first battery energy storage system exceeding 1 GWh and the country's largest battery storage system to date.

The 1,639.45 MWh capacity now announced is approximately 5.2 times the 314.98 MWh included in the project's approved environmental documentation, according to ESS News.

India is replacing roughly 250 million conventional electricity meters with connected smart meters under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), according to TimesTech.

As the rollout accelerates, attention is moving past meter installation toward the connectivity, interoperability, cybersecurity, grid resilience and AI capabilities needed to support modern energy infrastructure, TimesTech reported.

The country's next energy economy will be defined less by individual technologies and more by how effectively the different parts of the system work together, according to The Economic Times.

India needs to plan generation, transmission and demand as an integrated system, said Dr Sai Baba D., Additional Secretary at the Ministry of Power, in his National Policy Keynote as reported by The Economic Times.

NTT Anode Energy, JERA Cross and NTT Docomo start a demonstration on October 1 that pairs solar plants with a grid-connected battery and several Docomo telecom buildings in western Japan, according to Telecompaper.

At the heart of the trial is a timing question: whether batteries filled by surplus daytime solar can cover the buildings when solar output drops off, including overnight, and lift their hourly carbon-free supply rate, according to IBTimes.

The partners characterize the demonstration as Japan's first to run hourly matching with grid-scale batteries under the EnergyTag Standard, according to IBTimes.

Historical operating data will feed the analysis, drawn from western Japan solar plants owned or procured by NTT Anode Energy, one grid-scale battery storage site and several Docomo telecom buildings in the region, according to IBTimes.