“Volkswagen recently placed an order worth US$14 billion with lithium-ion battery manufacturer Northvolt, taking their existing partnership to new heights and while the obvious focus there is electric vehicle batteries, we’ve heard exclusively from Northvolt’s VP of communications Jesper Wigardt that the deal will also have a significant knock-on impact for the startup’s targeting of the stationary energy storage market. South Africa’s government identified an urgent need for capacity to prevent load shedding on its grid and renewables-plus-storage projects have been among the winners in a tender for 2GW of contracts. Consultants Clean Horizon and Harmattan helped us out with some insights there. In Germany, more than 300,000 residential energy storage systems have now been installed, and while energy storage at larger scales has been somewhat less successful over the past year or so, every segment is expected to grow this year, a new report commissioned by Germany energy storage association BVES has found. New York City’s 6GW of fossil fuel peaker plants could be retired quickly and cost-effectively between now and 2030 using a combination of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and of course, energy storage. There’s also a roundup of some of the latest news stories from the residential energy storage segment around the world, Canadian Solar has big ambitions in solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage for 2021 and just a month after applying for approval for a large solar-plus-storage plant, two Wisconsin utilities have put forward a plan for another. All this and much more on the site. Thanks for reading and subscribing.”