It's Thursday. The standard way to judge whether a grid battery cell is healthy has been to read its voltage and guess. A chip company thinks that is an odd way to underwrite a pension fund.
In today's edition:
🎟️ Event: Global Capital in Energy Tech, October 1 in San Francisco
🔬 Big Story: TI puts cell chemistry on the chip
⚡ Quick Hits: sodium-ion validation, solar-site robots, Helsinki's waste heat
💰 Capital Stack: Gridsight raises $26 million
📋 Policy Watch: California's wildfire cap fails
But first…
🗓️ Upcoming In-Person Event: Global Capital in Energy Tech
Grid Innovation Hub, presented with Cathay Innovation
Thursday, October 1, 4:00 to 8:00 PM PT · Cathay Innovation, 101 Mission St, San Francisco
Grid Innovation Hub and Climate Capital Strategist MJ Willmore are putting 100 investors, founders, and operators in one room with Cathay Innovation, a global fund backing energy tech from the US to China. A fireside chat with Cathay partner Matthieu Soulé on where cross-border capital is moving, then panels on software and AI, and on infrastructure and data centers.
This is an invite-only gathering and registration is approval-based, so space is limited, but Grid Innovation Hub subscribers are highly encouraged to register.
The Big Story
Texas Instruments moves battery cell diagnostics onto the chip.
Texas Instruments introduced the BQ79826Z-Q1, a battery monitor that integrates electrochemical impedance spectroscopy onto the silicon, letting designers measure a cell's internal impedance instead of inferring health from voltage. Lithium iron phosphate, the dominant stationary chemistry, has a famously flat voltage curve mid-charge, which is why standard battery management systems fall back on cycle-counting. The chip monitors 26 cells in series, eight more than competing parts, so four cover the 104-cell modules the industry is adopting. TI said it is sampling pre-production silicon, with volume production expected by end of 2026 and first commercial systems potentially shipping in 2027.
These large systems are funded by pension and infrastructure funds looking for secure returns. Providing reliable thermal runaway and aging data directly improves project bankability.
EIS injects an AC perturbation and measures impedance across frequencies, which Mannesson said separates state of charge from permanent degradation such as lithium plating.
Moving the EIS engine onto the monitor removes the add-on hardware impedance testing has required, so developers can run their own algorithms on raw data rather than license third-party software.
Impedance curves are noise-sensitive, so TI supplies reference designs and evaluation modules for clean data before degradation testing.
Source: pv magazine USA
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Quick Hits
Small bites from across the grid.
Four from across the stack, from sodium-ion validation to solar-site robots.
BloombergNEF expects the August 26 order barring foreign-made bulk-power equipment to delay or cancel US battery projects, since China supplies roughly 80% of global lithium-ion cells and 40% of US inverters. Utility Dive
Canadian Solar shipped 3.7 GWh of batteries in Q2, up 73%, and said it is validating a sodium-ion product rated above 15,000 cycles. Energy-Storage.news
Burns & McDonnell will evaluate and deploy Gritt's AI construction robotics on utility-scale solar projects, aiming at the labor constraint driving schedule risk. pv magazine USA
OnZero and Helen will pipe waste heat from a Helsinki AI data center into the city's district heating network, up to 525,000 MWh a year. Data Center Dynamics
The Capital Stack
Gridsight raises $26 million to find capacity utilities already own.
Gridsight closed a $26 million Series B led by Insight Partners, with Galvanize joining backers Airtree, Energy Transition Ventures, and Aera VC, taking total funding to about $33.5 million. The Sydney-founded company sells utilities software that estimates headroom on a distribution network and manages it dynamically, cheaper than rebuilding the feeder. Named US customers include Xcel Energy and United Illuminating, and Australia's Endeavour Energy used it to double household solar export limits to 10 kW, which the company says unlocks 600 MW of solar.
Source: ESG Today
Also in the capital stack:
BW ESS began construction on a 515 MWh battery in Italy and bought 675 MWh of Spanish projects, almost 1.2 GWh due in 2027 and 2028. Energy-Storage.news
Policy Watch
California's legislature passed bills on data center cost allocation, distributed-resource adequacy, and balcony solar but declined to cap utility wildfire liability, and Utility Dive reported PG&E and Edison shares fell 20% to 23%. The question carries into next session, leaving the state's largest grid operators funding hardening under unresolved liability. Utility Dive
A federal judge blocked New York's Climate Superfund Act, halting its attempt to collect $75 billion from fossil fuel producers, RTO Insider reported. The ruling removes a funding source earmarked for resilience work and marks the limit on states charging past emissions. RTO Insider
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