Two announcements landed on Tuesday, March 31 that capture where the battery industry is heading from two very different directions: a small Australian chemistry startup hit a milestone that puts it one step closer to replacing the cobalt and nickel in today's lithium-ion batteries with cheap, abundant sulfur, while Canadian Solar's storage arm signed the largest UK grid storage deal of the year so far. Neither is a finished product. Both are exactly the kind of progress the industry needs. Gelion and TDK Hit 750 Cycles With Sulfur Cathodes on Standard Graphite Anodes Gelion, a UK-listed company that grew out of research at the University of Sydney, disclosed on March 31 that testing with Japanese electronics giant TDK Corporation has produced results strong enough to expand their collaboration into commercially relevant cell formats. The headline figure: over 750 cycles at a 1C charge/discharge rate with 100% depth of discharge, using graphitic anodes, which are the same carbon-based negative electrodes found in virtually every lithium-ion battery made today. That last detail matters more than it might seem. Lithium-sulfur batteries have been a promising chemistry for decades, but they have historically required lithium-metal anodes to function well. Lithium metal is tricky to handle at scale, prone to growing needle-like dendrites that can short-circuit a cell, and not compatible with the existing gigafactory infrastructure that the battery industry has spent billions building out. Gelion's approach sidesteps the problem: its Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur (NES) cathode technology is designed to serve as the sole reservoir of lithium in a full cell, letting a standard graphite anode do what it already does in a conventional lithium-ion pack. Gelion's NES cathode cells are now being tested in standard pouch cell formats at TDK's Nagano, Japan facility. The partnership between Gelion and TDK started in April 2025 as a materials testing agreement. By October 2025, the results were good enough that TDK agreed to a multi-year full collaboration, with production qualification targeted within 12 months of that signing. The March 31 update expands the scope again, adding silicon-dominant anodes to the testing roadmap alongside graphite, and confirming that Gelion has developed working protocols to lithiate the NES cathode at scale. Lithiation, the process of loading lithium into the sulfur cathode before assembly, has historically been one of the trickiest process steps for lithium-sulfur cells aiming at industrial production. Why Sulfur Could Be a Supply Chain Game-Changer In a lithium-sulfur cell, sulfur serves as the cathode active material, replacing the cobalt, nickel, and manganese used in NMC and NCA chemistries. Battery cathode chemistry is the part of the supply chain that keeps energy security officials up at night. NMC cells require nickel, manganese, and cobalt. NCA cells require nickel and cobalt. Cobalt in particular comes overwhelmingly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a source with well-documented human rights concerns and geopolitical risk. Even LFP, which has no cobalt, relies on lithium phosphate processing concentrated in China. Sulfur is an entirely different situation. It is one of the most abundant elements in Earth's crust, and a byproduct of oil refining and natural gas processing in industrial quantities. In some scenarios, sulfur cathodes could draw on material that would otherwise be disposed of as waste. Gelion's NES platform also carries no strategic mineral supply chain dependencies beyond lithium itself, which it manages by incorporating all the needed lithium into the cathode rather than requiring a dedicated lithium-metal anode. The potential energy density advantage is real too. Theoretical lithium-sulfur energy densities can exceed 500 Wh/kg, compared to roughly 250-280 Wh/kg for today's best NMC cells. Gelion is not claiming those theoretical numbers in its current cells, but the 750-cycle stability at 100% depth of discharge with a graphite anode represents a serious step toward cells that could be practical outside of specialized applications. Prior Li-S cells often saw sharp capacity fade within the first 100-200 cycles, limiting their commercial appeal to weight-sensitive niches like drones and high-altitude balloons. What TDK Brings to the Table TDK is not a household name in the EV battery space, but it is a serious player in the cell and materials business. The company operates battery manufacturing at its Nagano facility and has decades of experience in thin-film and ceramic capacitors, electronic components, and energy devices. For Gelion, securing a Tier 1 partner with actual cell manufacturing infrastructure is the difference between a promising lab material and a product that can eventually quote supply terms to an automaker or drone manufacturer. The March 31 expansion specifically adds commercially applied anode types to their joint work, meaning TDK's engineers will be running cells with the same anode materials that go into Li-ion products today. If those cells hit cycle life and capacity targets, the path to insertion into existing supply chains becomes much shorter than it would be if the technology required a complete factory redesign. Gelion's chief backer outside of TDK is the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which increased its funding to Gelion in early 2026 specifically for commercialization efforts. The Max Planck Institute has been involved in developing the underlying NES material, adding a layer of academic validation to the chemistry. Canadian Solar's e-STORAGE Wins 420 MWh Drax Contract in England and Scotland The Neilston project in Scotland will be the larger of the two systems, at 150 MW / 300 MWh AC, with installations beginning in early 2027. On the same day, Canadian Solar's energy storage subsidiary e-STORAGE announced it will supply a combined 420 MWh of battery energy storage systems to Drax Group, one of the UK's largest renewable energy companies. The contract covers two projects developed by Apatura, a UK infrastructure firm, and acquired by Drax for its FlexGen portfolio. The first project is a 60 MW / 120 MWh AC facility in Marfleet, East Yorkshire. The second is a 150 MW / 300 MWh AC installation in Neilston, Scotland. Installations at Marfleet are scheduled to begin in Q3 2026, with Neilston following in early 2027. e-STORAGE will supply its SolBank 3.0 system for both sites and operate them under a long-term service agreement covering monitoring, preventative maintenance, and performance analytics. The SolBank 3.0 is a 20-foot containerized unit rated at 5 MWh nominal capacity per unit, using 314 Ah LFP cells and built with IP67-rated battery packs, active thermal management, and active balancing in the battery management system. Drax's chief operations officer Lee Dawes described it as the company's first investment in short-duration storage, noting that the systems "will help keep the lights on when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining." The 120 MWh Marfleet site in East Yorkshire is set to begin battery installations in Q3 2026. e-STORAGE's Growing UK Footprint e-STORAGE has shipped more than 18 GWh of battery storage globally as of the end of 2025, with a .6 billion project backlog as of mid-March 2026. The company operates 15 GWh of annual BESS manufacturing capacity and 3 GWh of cell capacity. The Drax contract is its highest-profile UK engagement to date and signals the growing appetite among established energy utilities to enter short-duration grid storage for the first time, rather than ceding that market to pure-play storage developers. Drax itself has historically been focused on biomass power generation at its Yorkshire station, which is one of the UK's largest power plants. The FlexGen portfolio represents a strategic diversification into flexible grid assets, and the decision to start with two battery storage projects in England and Sc