Energy Storage News

FERC is opening up for stakeholder and public comments on the topics raised as well as general input on hybrid resources and colocation. The issue will certainly grow and grow. While California is still the leading state on solar-plus-storage for instance, Jason Burwen, the Energy Storage Association’s policy director, pointed out that in Texas’ ERCOT market, around 20% of storage in interconnection queues as of the end of 2019 would be paired with generation as hybrids. Those projects would be planned to come online this year. Then, for projects planned to come online in 2021, some 2/3 are hybrids. But for projects with planned online dates in 2022, nearly 80% of new storage would be hybrid resources paired with generation.

“Obviously not all would come online but it’s a good indication of interest,” Jason Burwen of ESA said. “Organised markets are working to keep up and we are glad to see there are proactive efforts for policy to catch up with technology.”

The value of energy storage increases with growing shares of renewable energy on the grid, but the availability and cost of storage will determine how successful decarbonisation with renewables can be. That’s one of the key takeaways of a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment (ACEE), supported by General Electric (GE). 

US utility firm PacifiCorp has launched its largest request for proposals for energy projects yet, seeking bids for more than 1.8GW of new solar and 600MW of battery energy storage. The firm, which owns utilities Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power, issued the RFP as part of its latest Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) which outlines its intent to massively scale up its renewable energy capacity.

In the previous edition of PV Tech Power, we spoke to four leading developers of solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage projects about what it takes to get projects over the line, their experiences in the field – and what sort of technologies are making their efforts possible. This time around, we’ve spoken in depth with two of the system integrator/ manufacturers that supply that segment of the energy storage market. Danny Lu, vice president at Powin Energy and Dr Zhuang Cai, R&D director at Sungrow, share their insights on what it means to build lithium-ion battery storage systems at scale.

More than 500 residential energy storage batteries will be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) by US utility Portland General Electric (PGE), with some participating households offered US$5,000 rebates on battery system purchases as well as money off their monthly electricity bills.

Seven states in the US have now put some kind of public policy in place that recognizes the role that energy storage will play in their future, lower carbon energy system. The US national Energy Storage Association’s policy director, Jason Burwen, spoke with Andy Colthorpe about the seven early adopter states and whether this is likely to be a spreading pattern across the country.

South Korean lithium-ion battery manufacturer SK Innovation will begin construction on the second of two manufacturing plants in the US state of Georgia this summer, with the first already under construction.

A study produced by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), found that the US already has 4.6GW of utility-scale hybrid resource capacity online, with a further 14.7GW in the “immediate development pipeline.” Furthermore, in total a massive 69GW in total sit in the interconnection queues of various Regional Transmission Organisations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs), the bulk transmission operators in the US tasked with ensuring reliability and affordability of electricity supply around the country.

"Energy storage is certainly there to integrate intermittent resources like solar and wind and help enable our grid to get cleaner, but it’s also there for grid operators to improve the efficiency of the grid, to improve resilience. We are there for an efficient, affordable and sustainable grid." - Kelly Speakes-Backman

As the global energy market, piece by piece, slowly but surely, moves towards a renewables-centered paradigm, dispatchable solar and uncurtailed wind, along with other forms of clean energy, are requiring longer and longer durations of storage to integrate them to the grid. While there’ll be a place for lithium-ion for many years yet, the technology really excels at applications of up to around four hours. For everything else, there’s a growing list of contenders, with diverse technologies and at different stages of commercialization. Here’s a handy guide to some of those technologies and their providers, electrochemical and otherwise, that promise anything from five hours to even days or weeks of storage.

While expressing disappointment that end-of-year tax announcements in the US did not include a standalone energy storage investment tax credit (ITC), the policy could still have a big impact if introduced, the CEO of the national Energy Storage Association has said.

Ranked among the leading solar PV module suppliers by our sister site PV Tech, GCL System Integration (GCL SI) has created a joint venture, branded as G-Powin Energy Solution, to expand its energy storage business in the Asia-Pacific region, notably Australia with US-Based energy storage technology provider Powin Energy.

As US states work to address and enable the swift growth of distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar and energy storage, the issues surrounding their interconnection to the electric grid require close attention.  Not only to maintain safety and reliability as new technologies connect to the grid, but also to provide a clear, transparent and efficient process for customers, developers and utilities alike. Interconnection procedures are the rules of the road for the grid. Without common rules and predictable processes, gridlock and costly projects can result. 

French utility EDF has acquired UK battery storage firm Pivot Power, cementing its mulit-gigawatt bid to become a market leader in Europe’s energy storage market. EDF confirmed the transaction this morning, with Pivot becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of EDF’s renewables arm. Pivot will immediately play a central role in EDF’s bid to deploy as much as 10GW of additional energy storage by 2035, bringing with it a 2GW+ pipeline of energy storage assets in the UK that are at various stages of planning.

Communities most likely to be affected by both the effects of and the response to devastating wildfires which have wreaked havoc on California will be given extra incentive to install solar-plus-storage at their properties through the state’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP).

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Energy-Storage.news spoke with Kelly Speakes-Backman, head of ESA, for a wide-ranging feature interview. Speakes-Backman said that energy storage right now is enjoying “extremely strong, bipartisan support, from Congress, from our Department of Energy and other administrations such as the Department of Commerce and Environment Protection Agency.” One of the reasons why storage is enjoying cross-party support in what appear to be divided times, is that there is growing recognition of the role batteries and other storage can play in creating an efficient, affordable and sustainable grid.

Supporting New York’s state goals of reaching 3,000MW of energy storage by 2030 - equivalent to 40% of today’s electric demand - codes for the safe installation of energy storage systems will go into effect on a permanent basis after 1 November. The issue of fire safety in relation to the deployment of stationary energy storage systems in New York, particularly in the US state’s densely populated urban areas, has been considered to have held back what has otherwise been a hugely fertile state for clean energy.

As the costs of solar PV modules continue to reduce, and those of batteries follow a similar downward trajectory, solar-plus-storage is in growing demand among utilities and solar developers. To further push down the levelized cost of energy of solar-plus-storage and maximize the amount of MWh of solar-generated electricity that can be fed into the grid, energy suppliers and developers are turning to direct current (DC) coupling these installations. Compared with alternating current (AC) coupling, DC coupling the PV array and the battery storage system in front-of-meter installations, such as utility-scale plants, is a much newer, less standardised approach.

Engie has been hired by Guam’s state electricity utility to build two solar-plus-storage plants with a combined capacity of 50MWp/300MWh on the Pacific island. The firm scooped up the project duo in the third round of Guam’s competitive renewable tender program after submitting the lowest bid. The plants will deliver more than 85GWh annually and are scheduled to be operational by 2022, according to Engie.

The recent flurry of energy storage project announcements from Massachusetts have been driven in part by a “common sense” approach to tackling the dirtiest impacts of fossil fuel generation. Massachusetts was identified by research firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables as one of the leading US states to have “laid the groundwork for supportive storage policies” in recent years, along with New York. Both states, Wood Mackenzie expect, will witness project developments that will contribute to ”substantial growth” US-wide in the early 2020s.

A battery storage project using second-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries is set to be built in Germany, with an aim of developing an installed capacity of 20MW. The project is being billed as the largest stationary electricity storage system using EV batteries in Germany, following on from an initial 45MW project in France. The stationary storage system is to be built using EV batteries compiled in containers, using both second-life batteries and new batteries stored for future use in standard replacement during after-sales operations.

A legislative package for energy storage research and development (R&D) has been welcomed by the US Energy Storage Association, after receiving approval from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. An amended version of the Better Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Act was last week approved by the committee after having been introduced in May alongside the Promoting Grid Storage Act of 2019.

Engie North America has bought a four-project pipeline in Massachusetts that comprises 25MW of solar and 22MWh of energy storage. It is one of a “number” of solar-plus-storage portfolios that will be deployed by Engie under the state’s solar incentive program, the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART). The new projects are expected to be operational by the second half of 2020 and run for 20 years. The energy storage systems will use Engie’s GridSynergy software platform and operate in the ISO New England wholesale markets.

Bolivia will try and capitalize on its large lithium reserves to set up an industrial ecosystem around batteries and other storage technologies, according to a top government official. The country’s vice president Alvaro García Linera described the government’s plans for a “lithium industrialization” drive as he attended the opening of a PV project in Oruro, in Bolivia’s west. “Oruro won’t just produce mineral and power but also lithium, lithium hydroxide, cathodes and lithium batteries,” García said as he toured the 50MW first batch of a 100MW PV complex.