It's Monday. The biggest battery news of the week came not from a new chemistry or a record install, but from a spreadsheet of guaranteed revenues. Britain just did the unglamorous thing that actually gets long-duration storage built: it promised to pay for it.
In today's edition:
🔋 A first-ever cap-and-floor backs 7.6 GW of storage that runs for days, not hours
⚡ Quick Hits: a grid-forming battery in Cambodia, a chip that cuts data-center power, and fusion's materials wall
💰 The Capital Stack: a 4 GWh Arizona complex lines up its debt
🏛️ Policy Watch: a New York town slams the door on a data center
📈 Chart: heat pumps are about to outsell the air conditioner
The Big Story
Britain opens the first long-duration storage cap-and-floor, backing 7.6 GW
UK regulator Ofgem has named 16 projects it intends to support under the world's first long-duration energy storage (LDES) cap-and-floor scheme, a revenue-guarantee mechanism designed to get assets built that the market alone will not finance. The shortlist totals 7,645 MW at durations of 8 to 22 hours, drawn from 77 candidate projects worth 27 GW, and lands at the very top of Ofgem's 2.7 to 7.7 GW target range. Lithium-ion and pumped storage hydro take most of the capacity, with compressed-air, vanadium flow and zinc-hybrid chemistries rounding out the mix. Most of it sits in Northern Scotland, where wind generation runs far ahead of the transmission needed to move it south.
"The UK's LDES Cap and Floor is a global landmark scheme, and we're proud to be part of it. Our 16 to 18 hour duration batteries will be among the longest duration in the world, and represent a significant step forward in solving the challenge of day-to-day shifting of electricity."
The portfolio spans owner-operators Field (five BESS projects, 1.6 GW/26.8 GWh), Frontier Power, Eku Energy and Statera, plus three pumped-hydro schemes from SSE, Gilkes Energy and Statera.
Storelectric's TeesCAES brings compressed-air storage into the mix, alongside vanadium redox flow and zinc-hybrid cathode projects.
Ofgem set capacity at the high end of its range to absorb project attrition, betting the portfolio still clears system need even if some schemes shrink or drop out.
Lithium-ion was not originally eligible and was added after industry pushback, drawing complaints that the scheme could distort the market for short-duration batteries.
Quick Hits
Small bites from across the grid.
Asian Development Bank approved financing support for a 250 MW/500 MWh grid-forming battery in Cambodia, a stability milestone for a fast-growing Southeast Asian grid. Energy-Storage News
IBM detailed a sub-1nm "nanostack" 3D chip at the 0.7 nm node, claiming up to 50% more performance or 70% greater energy efficiency than its 2 nm part, a direct lever on data-center power demand. Fast Company
Amazon signed a 90 MW PPA with Egg Power for Scotland's Chirmorie wind farm, the UK's largest onshore wind offtake and Amazon's 50th UK clean-energy deal. reNEWS
Japan Semiconductor Co. signed a 15-year geothermal virtual PPA with Waita in Japan, a rare long-term corporate geothermal commitment in the region. Data Center Dynamics
DOE's Office of Fusion published a science-and-technology roadmap that openly flags a materials wall, setting a 2030s deadline to close the engineering gaps standing between pilot plants and commercial reactors. TechTimes
The Capital Stack
A 1.2 GW Arizona solar-and-storage complex reaches a $2.6B financial close
Enlight Renewable Energy's US subsidiary Clēnera has reached financial close on its largest project to date, securing $2.6 billion in debt financing from a consortium of seven banks for the CO Bar Complex in Arizona. The five-project complex pairs roughly 1.2 GW of solar with 4 GWh of storage, is fully subscribed under 20-year offtake agreements with Salt River Project and Arizona Public Service, and is slated to come online in phases from late 2027 into 2028.
Source: Power Technology
Also in the capital stack:
Crypto miner Z Squared acquired an Arkansas site for a 150 MW immersion-cooled AI/HPC campus powered by behind-the-meter natural gas, the latest miner-to-AI capital pivot leaning on on-site generation. Data Center Dynamics
Policy Watch
East Fishkill, New York, unanimously passed a data-center moratorium through July 2029, freezing a proposed 1.16-million-square-foot Treetop campus that would have been roughly 10 times the state's largest, as Governor Hochul weighs a statewide one-year freeze. WAMC
Washington State's last coal plant was ordered onto standby by the Trump administration, and its owner now wants utilities to recover the idle plant's costs from ratepayers, a test of who pays when federal reliability orders override a scheduled retirement. Canary Media
Chart of the Day
Heat pumps are about to outsell the air conditioner
A decade ago, Americans bought two conventional air conditioners for every heat pump. In 2025, the two were basically tied, and heat pumps outsold ACs outright in September for the first time. Through April this year, heat-pump sales are up about 1% year over year while AC sales are down nearly 8%, putting the efficient two-way technology on track to take the lead.
Source: Canary Media
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