Hydrogels offer promise in batteries as an electrolyte, including lithium and sodium chemistries, due to being inherently more safe.

From ESS News

Battery research in industry and acadaemia continues to advance ideas in electrodes and electrolytes, covering materials, designs, safety, efficacy, and green credentials. In most cases for lithium-ion batteries used in stationary storage, the use of potentially flammable organic electrolytes has been a persistent safety liability and one the industry is constantly countering through often complex mitigation efforts, and expensive and destructive testing.

A new review paper taking a systematic review of hydrogel research from 2008 to 2025, including 186 published studies over 17 years, makes the case that conductive hydrogels are a credible electrolyte candidate. The paper notes this is the case particularly for flexible and wearable applications, however, stationary storage and lithium and sodium are potential winners. The paper was published this week in the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry by researchers at the University of Limpopo in South Africa.

The safety argument is perhaps the most straightforward, hydrogel electrolytes are water-based, which removes the thermal runaway contribution of conventional organic electrolytes, and their structure means they also do not leak and can self-repair.

While at this stage the commercial aspects are not clear, the performance picture is promising though it varies significantly by chemistry. For lithium-ion, a silicon nanoparticle-polyaniline composite electrode using an in-situ polymerised hydrogel achieved 1,600 mAh/g over 1,000 deep cycles, with 99.8% average coulombic efficiency from the second cycle onward. First-cycle efficiency sat around 70%, a known issue for silicon anodes.

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Hybrid power purchase agreements (PPAs) combining solar and storage are proving harder to close with industrial offtakers than standard solar deals, despite growing market interest.

From ESS News

BBDF 2026 held a panel on hybrid PPAs, with panellists all familiar with the comparatively easy days of solar PPAs. As projects are increasingly co-located, and the wish for banks and financiers is to have some BESS revenues locked down in tolling contracts and not 100% merchant operated, the context for the conversation is to look at how industrial offtakers are stepping up.

Also added to the mix is that standalone solar projects backed by standard long-term offtake agreements are losing their bankability case. Adding a battery is increasingly not optional.

The panel brought together Christoph Strassner, CEO of MaxSolar; Alexander Straube, director of flexibility and structured transactions at EnBW; Julius Kies of DAL Deutsche Anlagen-Leasing; and Pieter van der Meulen, senior account manager at LevelTen Energy.

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54% of respondents cited “energy availability and redundancy” as the single greatest obstacle to successful data center development between now and 2030.

From ESS News

aw firm Foley & Lardner LLP released today its 2026 Data Center Development Report, focusing on the growth and challenges in the data center boom that aims to sustain the growth in AI and LLM usage.

A major focus was on energy, with 54% of respondents citing “energy availability and redundancy” as the single greatest obstacle to successful data center development between now and 2030.

In terms of the right energy mix for data centers, 55% of respondents agreeing that the ideal energy mix to meet the growing power demand of data centers is largely renewables (41%), followed by natural gas (17%), nuclear (16%), and BESS (14%).

Nearly half (48%) of industry participants named advances in energy efficiency (which often includes storage optimization) as the greatest opportunity for development through the end of the decade, and nearly three in four respondents (74%) said advanced energy storage systems like batteries, hybrid solutions, and microgrids are the best way to ensure energy resilience.

Only 14% of developers are actually pursuing modular and small modular nuclear reactors as a viable energy opportunity.

Intriguingly, 63% anticipate a “strategic correction” in the market by 2030, driven by the intense competition for power, with one unnamed banking executive in the report saying, “Once power runs out in 2027 or 2028, that’s where we think deal flow will start to slow down.”

105 U.S.-based respondents were qualified to participate in the survey, including those who had direct experience in data center development, energy procurement, technology delivery, or operations within the past 24 months.

Energy analyst firm Wood Mackenzie identified data centers as one of the five trends to look for in 2026 for global energy storage, and within the past week, a battery storage project decided to give up a grid-connection to a data center and re-tool the batteries, earning revenue without being connected.

What they said:

Daniel Farris, partner and co-lead of Foley’s data center and digital infrastructure team: “There is a Gold Rush mentality right now around securing power. That’s a big part of why people feel there’s a bubble,” said “There’s going to a period in the next two to three years where power at necessary levels is going to be really hard to come by.”

Rachel Conrad, senior counsel and co-lead of Foley’s data center and digital infrastructure team: “Over the next five to 10 years, power providers will need to either grow capacity or increase efficiency to meet the demand fueled by data centers.”

Tesla and Chint Power rank first and second in a new long-duration energy storage leaderboard from Sightline Climate, while mechanical storage providers such as Italy’s Energy Dome feature prominently as post–final investment decision projects begin to reshape the competitive landscape.

From ESS News

An analysis of the long-duration energy storage (LDES) scene, focusing on technologies with at least eight-hour durations, shows the top two providers today globally are lithium-ion battery makers Tesla and Chint Power.

The new leaderboard by Sightline Climate, being developed over the past 15 months, according to the firm, gives a snapshot right now of leaders in LDES across factors including technology performance, financial profile, deployment track record, and economics and cost.

Lukas Karapin-Springorum, a research analyst at Sightline who introduced the LDES leaderboard to ESS News, said efforts to accurately rank players have been focusing on the core factors that matter to find the names that stakeholders like utilities, banks, and investors need to know right now.

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