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/daily ·17 AUG 2026 ·MONDAY ·2 MIN READ ·5 STORIES

Cells Back Online

An idled Ohio cell plant goes back to work on Monday, half-year data puts storage cell shipments past 467 GWh with most of them now landing outside China, and a run of groundbreakings, financings and grants keeps the grid-storage build moving.

01 / The Day

MONDAY 17 AUG 2026, ranked

05

Storage cell shipments nearly doubled in the first half

InfoLink counted 467.84 GWh of energy storage cells shipped in H1 2026, up 94.8% year on year, and raised its full-year forecast to 1,026 GWh. Markets outside China took 53.2% of the total, though Chinese suppliers still dominate the supply side.

  • Shipments topped 200 GWh for a third consecutive quarter
  • Non-China shipments reached 248.73 GWh, about 53.2% of the total
  • Top-10 supplier share fell to a record-low 82.3% as mid-tier makers gained
Why it mattersStorage cell demand is close to doubling year on year, and the growth is increasingly outside China.
01 infolink-group.com↗

GM and LG restart their idled Ohio battery cell plant

Ultium Cells resumes cell production at Warren, Ohio on Monday after a seven-month stoppage, bringing most of the laid-off workforce back to the lines.

  • About 1,400 people will staff the site, rated at over 45 GWh a year
  • Cell output stopped in January as US EV demand fell
  • The plant makes large-format NCMA pouch cells for GM's EVs
Why it mattersIdled US cell capacity is being brought back rather than written off, seven months after the EV slump shut it.
02 insideevs.com↗

Quinbrook funds Supernode stage three with CATL's Tener S

Quinbrook closed A$469 million of debt financing for the third stage of its Supernode storage campus at Brendale, north of Brisbane, with CATL supplying Tener S systems. Stage two has reached commercial operation.

  • The three stages together come to 780 MW / 3,074 MWh
  • Total financing across all three stages is about A$1.2 billion
  • CATL supplied EnerC Plus for stages one and two, Tener S for three
Why it mattersAustralia keeps proving gigawatt-hour storage campuses are financeable, not just plannable.
03 prnewswire.com↗

ARENA backs study of grid-forming battery fault behaviour

UNSW won an A$6.52 million ARENA grant to study how grid-forming batteries interact with grid protection relays when supplying fault current, a gap that limits how far they can replace synchronous machines.

  • The PROFILES project runs three and a half years, to November 2030
  • Led by UNSW electrical engineering and its Real Time Simulations Laboratory
  • Focus is relay operation in low-inertia, inverter-based power systems
Why it mattersBatteries can already hold a grid up; the open question is whether the protection kit still recognises a fault.
04 unsw.edu.au↗

Ember: 2026's batteries could shift a third of new solar

Ember's analysis finds 2026's expected 459 GWh of battery additions could move 34% of new daily solar generation into non-sunny hours, up from 18% in 2025. It calls that a theoretical ceiling rather than a forecast.

  • Battery additions are up roughly 50% year on year to 459 GWh in 2026
  • Bulgaria and Chile led in 2025, shifting 77% and 76% of new daily solar
  • Solar met a record 10% of global electricity in the first half of 2026
Why it mattersSolar's evening problem has become an arithmetic problem, and the arithmetic is mostly batteries.
05 ember-energy.org↗
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Past days

The Daily Archive

/MON 17 AUGCells Back Online/SAT 15 AUGScale, tangibly/FRI 14 AUGThe Quarter the Consumer Took Over/THU 13 AUGScotland gets a big battery, China gets the biggest/WED 12 AUGThe grid doubles, the river runs hot, and Amazon builds America's biggest gas plant/TUE 11 AUGMaking It Here/MON 10 AUGA gigawatt-hour in Rajasthan, a Joby milestone, and the cheddar test/SUN 09 AUG12.8 GWh in China, solar tariff shock, and RWE's billion-dollar exit/FRI 07 AUGUS hits polysilicon; Ørsted stacks 500 MWh in Texas/THU 06 AUGGrid delays, grid storage, and grid-scale bets/WED 05 AUGHome batteries scale up, microreactors raise $1B, and China ends the solar price war/MON 03 AUGFusion gets its billion; perovskite breaks 28%/SUN 02 AUGSurplus signals/SAT 01 AUGThe Heat Is the Story/FRI 31 JULCalifornia hits 51% monthly solar; China sets record targets/THU 30 JULThe Billion-Dollar Build Edition/WED 29 JULWednesday, 29 July — Sodium-ion arrives; Australia breaks records/TUE 28 JULMalaysia orders the grid; Australia scales the cell/MON 27 JULA Solar Farm Becomes a Data Centre, Wisconsin Campaigns Against Solar, and LONGi Breaks the Tandem Efficiency Record/SUN 26 JULThe Build-Out Accelerates/SAT 25 JULUS battery storage breaks Q1 record; China tightens polysilicon