It's Tuesday. Most battery factories obsess over cells. This one builds giant domes to hold carbon dioxide, and it plans to triple output.
In today's edition:
🏭 Big Story: CO2 battery domes go into production
⚡ Quick Hits: FPL's storm test, Engie's Chilean battery, a 204 m wind tower, data center fires, India's BESS duty
💰 Capital: DOE's AI twins for fusion and geothermal, green banks
📋 Policy Watch: FERC trims PJM's large-load plan, California's gas-line swap
Build energy apps with AI without exposing critical data.
Turn your operational data (SCADA, OMS, PI, etc.) into validated, audit-ready apps. Analysts ship in weeks without complicated IT workflows.
100% CIP and cybersecurity safe.
The Big Story
Energy Dome opens a factory to build its CO2 battery domes
Italian long-duration storage company Energy Dome has opened a manufacturing plant in Piacenza, Italy, to make key components for its CO2 Battery, including the large domes that hold the carbon dioxide, pv magazine reported. The company has invested about €2 million ($2.2 million) at the site over the past year, plans total investment of about €6.5 million over the next two years and aims to triple production capacity. Energy Dome said the first dome made entirely in-house has already shipped to its 20 MW/160 MWh project with NTPC in Kudgi, India.
The plant is producing components for Alliant Energy's 20 MW/200 MWh Columbia Energy Storage Project in Wisconsin, with the next unit headed to a 23 MW/200 MWh project in Ireland.
Energy Dome reports more than 2 GWh of projects operational or under contract, over 3 GWh authorized and a pipeline above 30 GWh, with customers including Google, Engie and SRP.
The Piacenza workforce is set to grow from 30 to 80 to 90 employees by 2028.
pv magazine points to grid operator Terna's stated need for 50 GWh of storage in Italy by 2030 and the new MACSE procurement mechanism as demand drivers.
Source: pv magazine
Reach 3,000+ energy professionals. Partner with Grid Innovation Hub.
No filler audience. Every subscriber opted in for the latest in grid innovation.
To talk placements, dates, and pricing, contact Lucas Cheney at [email protected].
Quick Hits
Technology milestones from across the grid
Five items, from a hurricane stress test to a 204-meter tower.
FPL, which logged 435,000 customer outages from Hurricane Isaias, says smart grid technology avoided more than 130,000 outages and that, according to initial forensics, its underground lines performed more than eight times better than overhead lines. Utility Dive
Engie started commercial operation of the 142 MW/802 MWh Lile standalone battery in Antofagasta, Chile, a $174 million project on a former thermal plant site and its fifth Chilean project to come online this year. Energy-Storage.news
China Huadian connected a demonstration wind turbine with a 204 m hub height on a steel-concrete tower, which China's National Energy Administration and Huadian claim as a world record; it is projected to generate about 6% more a year than a 160 m turbine. RenewEconomy
The Energy Incident Register logged 8 data center fires or power failures in 2024, 20 in 2025 and 19 so far in 2026, with UPS and battery rooms the most common failure point, Data Center Dynamics reported. DCD
India's Finance Ministry confirmed that stationary, grid-scale and industrial lithium-ion battery storage systems qualify for the concessional 10% basic customs duty, settling a classification question for BESS importers. Mercom India
The Capital Stack
DOE backs AI digital twins for fusion and geothermal
The Department of Energy awarded $159 million to 12 Phase II projects under its Genesis Mission AI-for-science program, including a Commonwealth Fusion Systems AI digital twin for its SPARC tokamak and UC Irvine's MAESTRO geothermal reservoir platform, Data Center Dynamics reported. Cloud providers are adding in-kind support: AWS pledged up to $50 million in credits over three years, Crusoe $50 million in AI compute credits, Microsoft $40 million in credits plus $20 million in services, and Google $40 million in cloud credits.
Source: DCD
Also in the capital stack:
Green banks enabled $12.4 billion of clean energy and climate projects, more than 40,000 in all, in 2024 and 2025, including about $1.4 billion of their own capital, according to the U.S. Green Bank 50 impact report, while the frozen $20 billion GGRF remains unreleased despite an August ruling that the freeze was unlawful. Canary Media
Policy Watch
FERC approved PJM's large-load definition and registry but rejected its Interim Resource Adequacy Service and "bring your own new capacity" rules, saying they appear to intrude on state retail jurisdiction; Jefferies analysts said the order could lead to higher capacity prices for longer in PJM. Utility Dive
California's AB 2313 requires utilities to offer households facing a gas service-line replacement an incentive to electrify instead; PG&E replacements typically cost $20,000 to $30,000, and each utility's program is capped at 1% of its customers, with programs due for approval by Jan. 1, 2028. Canary Media
Like our newsletter?
Or forward this link: {{rp_refer_url}}
You currently have {{rp_num_referrals}} referrals. We're building out rewards for our most active subscribers, including merch and exclusive content!
Who We Follow
And you should too!
Loved it? Forward it.
And reply back with some news and stories we should include tomorrow!