Energy Storage News

An agreement has been signed for a 100MW / 400MWh battery storage project in Queens, New York, by utility company Con Edison and Hanwha Group-affiliated renewable energy developer 174 Power Global. The project will be one of the world’s larger battery storage projects to date and the US state’s largest so far by some distance - currently the only transmission-connected battery project in New York is the 20MW KCE NY 1 project completed by developer Key Capture Energy a while back, although many more multi-megawatt projects are thought to be on the way albeit outside of New York's densely populated urban areas. 

For California to achieve its target of eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its electricity sector by 2045, the state will need to deploy between 45GW and 55GW of long-duration energy storage, a new study has found. Meeting an interim goal of sourcing 60% of California’s electricity from renewables by 2030 will itself require between 2GW to 11GW of long-duration energy storage, consultancy group Strategen said in the study, which was commissioned by the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA).

Energy storage's potential and value needs to be allowed to shine for Canada to achieve its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 - and to avoid being left behind in the international race to modernise global energy systems, writes Justin Wahid Rangooni, executive director of the trade association Energy Storage Canada.

Earlier this month as the US presidential election results finally looked settled, the Energy Storage Association and its CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman welcomed the prospect of working with Joe Biden and his incoming administration.

In an exclusive first interview for international press since the elections, Energy-Storage.news speaks with CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman about the Energy Storage Association’s hopes, ambitions and policy asks as 2021 begins to come into view.

Independent power producer (IPP) Broad Reach Power has made the first of “several planned expansions” into California’s market for energy storage, acquiring the 25MW / 100MWh Cascade Energy Storage project. Houston, Texas-headquartered Broad Reach Power was formed in July 2019 but already owns several gigawatts of utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in Montana, Wyoming and Utah as well Texas and now California in its portfolio.

While European power markets outpace the US and China for renewable energy deployment, the continent’s policymakers are yet to recognise the importance of energy storage for integrating that capacity onto the grid, new research from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables finds.

We have often heard that while batteries and other hardware may be the most visible and talked-about components of an energy storage system, it is often software that defines what that energy storage system can do.

The recent acquisition of Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) saw energy storage technology provider and system integrator Fluence take on a company with “one of the most powerful AI-enabled software engines available in the industry,” according to Fluence CTO Brett Galura.

AES Gener has held a virtual groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on a 112MW / 560MWh battery energy storage system project in Chile, Latin America. Multinational electric power generation and distribution company AES Corporation’s local subsidiary said the system, which can store power from nearby solar and wind facilities for up to five hours, is the biggest battery storage system in Latin America to date as well as being Chile’s first solar-plus-storage project.

Energy storage system integrator and manufacturer Powin Energy has signed a deal to supply its new DC-coupled solutions to developer Amp for projects in the Northeast US. Company senior director of product KJ Plank told Energy-Storage.news that “Powin is ready” for an expected exponential growth in the grid-scale DC-coupled solar-plus-storage segment of the energy industry “in the next few years”.

North America is currently leading the world for utility-scale energy storage deployments, but could be overtaken by the second-largest market, the Asia-Pacific region, as early as 2023, according to forecasting and analysis by Guidehouse Insights. The Asia-Pacific region by 2029 is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate in energy storage installations of 39.4%, with a cumulative 60,747.4MW of new utility-scale capacity expected to be added between this year and then. In 2020, the region will add around 554MW of new large-scale storage.

A community choice energy provider run by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in California has signed contracts for battery storage with EDF Renewables and NextEra Energy totalling 260MWh, to be deployed in combination with solar PV. San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is the provider of water to the City of San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area in California but also provides hydroelectric and solar energy in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of the famous Yosemite National Park - as well as providing power to San Francisco homes and businesses through its community choice programme, CleanPowerSF.

Legislation to help the US economy invest in clean energy jobs and support innovation and industry passed the House of Representatives this week - and Energy Storage Association (ESA) CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman applauded the prominent inclusion of energy storage in the bill.

Next stop for the Clean Economy Jobs and Innovation Act will be the upper house of US Congress, the Senate. The bill includes wide-ranging measures on: energy efficiency, renewable energy, carbon pollution reduction technologies, nuclear energy, the electric grid and cybersecurity, transportation, research and innovation, technology transfer, industrial innovation and competitiveness, critical materials and environmental justice.

The US state of Tennessee is set to join the advanced energy storage age with the deployment of a 40MWh stationary grid-connected battery storage plant.

Tennessee Valley Authority said yesterday that it is going to own and operate the system, which will be built at an industrial complex near the city of Knoxville.

Jason Burwen, VP of policy at the national Energy Storage Association told Energy-Storage.news earlier this year that New York’s energy storage target and policies around it that “tied it to a statutory requirement” were instrumental in driving forward development and progress is reviewed annually by state regulatory apparatus. A few weeks ago utility NYPA inaugurated the first publicly-owned standalone storage system in the state.

Renewable energy trade bodies have welcomed the order and its potential for building a more resilient grid. Energy Storage Association CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman said Order 2222 represents the next step forward for energy storage and other distributed energy resources. “Enabling these flexible resources to participate together as ‘virtual power plants’ in wholesale markets is a victory for enhancing grid reliability, enabling a more resilient grid and lowering costs for consumers.”

Clean Power Alliance, one of California’s community choice aggregator (CCA) groups has signed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with developer 8minute Solar Energy for the output of a massive solar-plus-storage plant.

CCAs give residents in selected parts of the US the opportunity to choose where their power is sourced and how it is generated. Clean Power Alliance procures electricity generation from low carbon sources and utilises the electricity network infrastructure of Southern California Edison, one of the state’s three main investor-owned utility (IOU) groups, to deliver it.

Microgrid projects on three different continents that include multiple megawatts of battery storage alongside renewable energy have been announced in the past few days from well-known industry players. Fluence is building a project in the Azores, Rolls-Royce Power Systems is building a project in the Cook Islands, and Duke Energy and Ameresco are partnering for an Army project at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Reports into the performance of two large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the Australian state of Victoria have been published, showing that both performed as expected, or better, in 12 months of operation. The Gannawarra Energy Storage System (25MW/50MWh), saw a 50MWac solar farm retrofitted with a battery storage system, while the Ballarat Battery Energy Storage System (30MW/30MWh) was the first standalone battery-based energy storage system to be connected directly to the transmission network in front-of-the-meter (FTM).

The US industry deployed 168MW / 288MWh of energy storage in the second quarter of this year, the second highest quarterly figures on record, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. The market research and analysis firm has just issued its latest quarterly US Energy Storage Monitor, produced in cooperation with the national Energy Storage Association industry group. 

Guidelines for what should happen to lithium-ion battery storage systems at the end of their lifetime have been launched in the US by the national Energy Storage Association. Part of the association’s Corporate Responsibility Initiative (CRI), a taskforce made up of energy storage company representatives issued the guidelines just before the end of August. The document encourages the consideration of the costs and options for recycling and end-of-life management at the very beginning of project development.

Agreements to deploy 1GWh of novel aqueous zinc battery energy storage in Texas and 500MWh in California have been struck by technology provider Eos Energy Storage, marking a massive scale-up in expected installations for the systems. Eos Energy Storage said in a press release yesterday that its long duration zinc hybrid cathode batteries, which are best suited for 4-6 hour discharge but have the flexibility to go to higher power and longer run-times through de-rating power, have been ordered by ‘technology agnostic' power producer International Electric Power for 1GWh of projects to be connected to the grid run by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

The largest battery storage system online so far in the US state of Texas has been proven an “all round success” by an independent auditor, a year and a half after it went into commercial operation. The Upton County battery storage project, a 10MW / 42MWh system installed and commissioned by system integrator FlexGen is at the site of the 180MW Upton 2 solar farm owned by Vistra Energy's developer subsidiary Luminant.

The US national Energy Storage Association (ESA) has adopted a goal for the deployment of 100GW of new energy storage using a range of technologies by 2030, updating a previously set 35GW by 2025 target.

The trade group, which has nearly 200 industry stakeholder members, launched a ‘vision paper’ called ‘100 x 30: Enabling the clean power transformation’, yesterday to coincide with the first day of its week-long annual conference, which this year takes place online.