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.

To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.

Switzerland startup Evolium Technologies’ subscription-based business model offers residential battery owners a lifetime guarantee on second life batteries. The startup tests and remotely monitors each battery cell so it can alert customers when a cell is under-performing.

From ESS News

Established in 2024 and backed by the Swiss Innovation Association, Evolium Technologies is a Swiss second-life battery startup with its own unique approach to battery recycling. It’s a modular approach, as Evolium’s founder and CEO, Alexandre Staub, told ESS News.

Evolium runs a subscription-based module exchange program, whereby (mostly) residential customers can exchange used and old modules for fully functional second-life modules. All cells used in its batteries are tested in-house by the company, which Staub claimed is another USP as cell testing is an area where a lot of second-life battery providers tend to struggle, he said.

“Most of our team are robotic experts, and they develop robots more than they develop batteries,” he said, explaining that the team develops robots to test the cells at scale. “The robots are fairly cheap, and they are able to execute this task of testing the cells and assessing which cell can go into a second life and which cell cannot.”

Evolium mostly works with INR18650 cylindrical cells and once these cells have been approved by testing, they can be reassembled into second-life batteries.

To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.

 

You’ve finally got the full trifecta – a rooftop solar panel system feeding a home backup battery that charges your EV. Heck, you’ve even got a bidirectional EV that can send power back to the house when you need it. Now the real question: are you actually saving any money?

more…

Eora Energy has officially launched in Australia and is positioning itself as a challenger in the vanadium redox flow battery market.

EnerVenue, the US company commercialising technology adapted from nickel-hydrogen batteries, has closed a US$300 million extension of its Series B preferred stock financing round.

The Michigan Public Service Commission has approved six battery energy storage system (BESS) projects totalling 1,332MW of capacity in the US state.

In this news roundup, Unigrid, Inlyte Energy, CIUDEN, and Sunamp are advancing non-lithium energy storage technologies worldwide.

Iberdrola has added its 360MWh Broadsound battery energy storage system (BESS) to AEMO's Market Management System (MMS).

Transgrid has shortlisted nine utility-scale battery storage projects, totalling up to 2GW, to provide critical system strength services.

AU$2bn deal secures Boyne smelter to 2040+ with 600MW+ battery storage firming renewables for Rio Tinto's aluminium production in Queensland.

Thimo Mueller, general manager of commercial at ASL, has urged that a ‘culture of collaboration’ will be key to New South Wales (NSW) achieving its energy storage targets.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) has selected developer and IPP Elevate Renewables’ 600MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) for development in Ridgefield, New Jersey, US.

Enefit, the electricity business of state-owned Estonian utility and power generator Eesti Energia AS, will build three new battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Lithuania, with a combined capacity of 46MW/184MWh.

Eku Energy and Valent Energy have recorded separate milestones in their respective expansions of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Australia.

Australian utility AGL has started commissioning its 500MW/1,000MWh Liddell battery energy storage system (BESS) in New South Wales.

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.”

Pekat Group Bhd, through its subsidiary Pentas RE Sdn Bhd, has signed a 21-year Power Purchase Agreement for a solar and battery storage project in Kuantan, Pahang. The 25MWac solar facility combined with a 40MWh battery highlights Pekat's commitment to renewable energy, offering economic and environmental benefits while supporting Malaysia's energy transition.

The post Pekat Group Secures 21-Year PPA For 25 MW Solar And 40 MWh Battery Project In Kuantan appeared first on SolarQuarter.

US sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery technology company Unigrid has begun international shipments of its proprietary sodium cobalt oxide (NCO) cathode cells at commercial volume.

Ahead of the Energy Storage Summit Australia 2026 in March, we take a look at some of the key debates set to take centre stage at the event.  

The Finnish start-up says its sand battery technology is scalable from 20 to 500 MWh with charging power from 1 to 20 MW, depending on industrial needs.

From ESS News

Finnish cleantech startup TheStorage says that its thermal storage technology could reduce industrial energy costs by up to 70% and cut carbon emissions by as much as 90%. The system converts renewable electricity into heat, stores it in sand, and delivers it on-demand for industrial heating.

The concept emerged in Finland in 2023, with engineering work beginning in 2024. In January 2026, TheStorage installed its first industrial-scale pilot at a brewery, putting the technology to the test in a real-world setting. There, it produces fossil-free steam for the brewery’s production lines.

“Producing steam without fossil fuels is a major step toward carbon-neutral production,” says Vesa Peltola, Production Director of the brewery.

TheStorage’s technology captures electricity when it is abundant and inexpensive, converts it into high-temperature heat, and stores it in sand. This stored heat can later be used in industrial processes independently of real-time electricity availability.

To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.