Energy Storage News

Transmission system operators in the US have begun making their moves to accommodate energy storage into their wholesale markets, with New England ISO and Southwest Power Pool both making filings in the past month. In February the US’ main regulator the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), issued FERC Order 841, instructing the US’ six regional electricity transmission organisations to reconfigure their wholesale markets to allow energy storage to participate. The ISOs and RTOs have about a year to respond in full.

Scotland’s first utility-scale battery storage facility has been officially opened today, having begun delivering sub-second balancing services to National Grid at the end of June under a bespoke agreement secured before the hotly contested Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) auction of 2016. The 20MW Broxburn Energy Storage facility was built by RES, which had sold the project to The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) in August last year for £20 million. It was the first project to have been acquired by TRIG and RES’ fourth in the UK, with the company now managing the site.

“The innovation of California within the energy sector is welcomed by the storage industry as we stand on the precipice of realizing our own goal of 35 GW of new storage deployed by 2025,” said Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association in the US. “As an enabling technology with a multitude of applications, the added flexibility that storage provides to the electric grid will prove crucial to achieving the goals of SB100 in a cost-effective manner while maintaining grid reliability. Storage resources can be deployed to optimize existing renewable energy resources and to integrate additional ones, serving as a multiplier of the greenhouse gas reductions made possible by ambitious clean energy policies like California’s,” she said.

Following news of SB100, legislation that would set California on a path to 100% renewables by 2045, the state is also on the brink of setting up a rebate programme for energy storage equipment sales. Senate Bill 700 (SB700), authored by Senator Scott Wiener, would extend the state’s feted SGIP (Self-generation incentive programme) policy to 2024 and make more provisions to include energy storage. SGIP supports the deployment of solar, wind turbines, microturbines, fuel cells, energy storage and other distributed energy technologies by utility customers.

A household just outside Berlin has become the recipient of the 100,000th grid-connected residential battery energy storage system in Germany. Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Thomas Bareiß attended an official event to mark the system’s commissioning in Eichwalde. Bareiß hailed the event as an “important milestone” that Germany has reached in its energy transition – referred to domestically as the Energiewende.

Following news yesterday of the first grid-scale solar-plus-storage system on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, two more modestly-sized projects show the potential diversity of applications for energy storage in the US state. Energy-Storage.news just reported that the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission had approved a 22-year power purchase agreement (PPA) deal for the project on the island of Molokai, which would pair 4.88MW of solar with a 3MW / 15MWh lithium battery system.

Elon Musk has confirmed that he wants to take Tesla private. In classic Musk form, he had earlier tweeted that an offer of US$420 per share was in the works. It would be more conventional for such an announcement to be published through an official filing. He confirmed the offer later in the day in a company statement.

Minnesota electric cooperative Connexus Energy has confirmed recent press reports that it is building 15MW / 30MWh of battery energy storage, while another not-for-profit, Vermont Electric Cooperative, will build a 1.9MW / 5.3MWh system in its service area. Connexus is part of Great River Energy, an electric transmission and generation cooperative and the second largest utility in Minnesota. Connexus serves about 130,000 residential and commercial properties in its service area. It issued a statement yesterday stating that the “innovative” solar-plus-storage project is now under construction.

In response to Massachusetts Legislature passing a bill raising the state’s renewable energy standard and another encouraging clean energy and energy storage use during peak hours, solar and energy storage trade groups SEIA and ESA offered contrasting views.

India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST), a single tax applicable across the whole of the country, will be lowered for lithium-ion batteries by 10% in a move which has been welcomed by the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA). All goods and services are taxable under the law, which was introduced in 2017. Along with a wide range of other changes, the GST rates on lithium-ion batteries has dropped from 28% to just 18%. In related news, fuel cell vehicles will see their GST reduced from 28% to 12%.

Lithium and sodium sulfur batteries will be used for the first time in new territories, after NEC ES and NGK inked deals to deliver projects to an island archipelago in Brazil and in Dubai respectively. Integrated electricity company Neoenergia, active in distribution, generation and other parts of the supply chain in Brazil, was requested by ANEEL (National Electric Energy Agency) in 2017 to help find sustainable ways to wean Fernando de Noronha, 350km off the country’s north-eastern coast, from a heavy dependence on expensive and polluting diesel generators.

Australia’s energy and environment minister has hailed the country’s accelerating residential energy storage sales as a report has emerged from Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel which says the “financial equation is straightforward” for adding batteries to home PV systems. Finkel’s office produced reports during 2017 which advised the government on the power market, opportunities and challenges for renewables and decarbonisation and the role of clean energy technologies in boosting the resiliency of energy networks across Australia. At the tail end of the year, he also published a report on the “transformative role” of energy storage.

Hawaii’s KIUC, the top-ranked US utility in 2017 for energy storage deployment per customer by SEPA (Smart Electric Power Alliance), will pay less than US$0.11 per kWh for power from a new solar-plus-storage facility.

EDF has completed one of the UK’s largest battery storage projects, bringing online the 49MW West Burton B project to provide Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) services for transmission operator National Grid. Only one project remains incomplete of the eight to have won contracts with the transmission system operator back in August 2016, with Foresight’s 35MW project at the Port of Tyne expected to begin operation in August.

Irish state utility ESB has confirmed its entry into the UK grid-scale energy storage market with the purchase of a 7MWh facility from developer Anesco. ESB (Electricity Supply Board) has acquired the Mill Farm battery storage project, based near Grantham in Lincolnshire, east central England, for an undisclosed sum, the two companies confirmed this morning.

Advisory and certification house DNV GL is supporting Turkish plans to source 30% of total electricity generated in the country from renewable sources, carrying out a feasibility study for combinations of solar PV and energy storage. The national Ministry of Energy has appointed the Dutch-headquartered group to conduct the study, which will be delivered for the Renewable Energy General Directorate at the Ministry. DNV GL aims to inform the directorate of best practice solutions for including energy storage in forthcoming large-scale solar project tenders.

A community microgrid in Chicago will be supplied with lithium-ion battery storage from aerospace and defence giant Lockheed Martin, allowing it to be ‘islanded’ from the local grid network. Bronzeville, in the South Side of Chicago, is hosting a community microgrid built by utility Commonwealth Edison (ComEd). It is being developed with the help of a US$5 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and is acting as a demonstration of the technology and its uses.

French utility Engie and German energy storage firm sonnen have signed a strategtic partnership to offer a package of solar and energy storage to households in France. The ‘My Power’ package is already available and Engie has identified 3 million customers in France living in detached houses that are conducive to using the solar-storage combination. Moreover, customers in southern France could power close to 100% (up to 95%) of their electricity needs through the package in the summer months between May and September, with northern customers able to generate around two thirds of their power demand. Sonnen spokesman Mathias Bloch emailed Energy-Storage.News this week to confirm reports of the deal which had appeared in various news outlets.

New Jersey is the latest US state to set itself targets for the deployment of energy storage, with newly passed legislation calling for 600MW of the technology within three years. A bill, S2314/A3723, passed last week as one of three sustainability and low carbon measures for the state going forward, calls on the New Jersey Public Utilities Board to analyse the costs and potential benefits of energy storage as well as making revisions for community solar, energy efficiency, peak demand reduction and solar renewable energy certificate programmes.

California’s recent droughts and ongoing need to economise water use have inspired more commercial energy storage at a local water board, with ENGIE Storage delivering a project for the San Diego Water Authority. The new battery energy storage project is expected to save the Authority (SDWA) US$100,000 per year on its energy costs. The batteries will be used to store low-cost solar energy for use during peak times and times of low solar generation. SDWA and ENGIE Storage, which was formerly known as Green Charge prior to its acquisition by the European utility, struck up a deal for the project in May 2017.

Advanced battery solutions company Saft has just announced details of a project the company executed in Spain, installing battery energy storage systems to streamline energy costs and efficiency at a refrigeration company. Spain’s stalled solar market has shown some recent signs of returning to life, while a small handful of energy storage projects, including a 20MW system from France’s Electro Power Systems (recently acquired by ENGIE), have got underway.

US utility Florida Light & Power (FPL) has followed up the US’ first DC-coupled grid-scale battery system with the announcement of a solar-plus-storage project pairing 10MW / 40MWh of energy storage with an existing 74.5MW PV plant. The output of FPL’s Babcock Ranch Solar Center in Charlotte County, installed in 2016, will be made dispatchable with the addition of the battery, storing power when the sun is shining and then outputting it when cloud cover or other factors cause dips or drops in generation. The solar-plus-storage plant will also be used to mitigate peaks in network demand, like early evenings when solar production has tailed off but households return from their days work and switch on their domestic appliances. In Florida, the need for air conditioning can especially drive peak demand.

2018 promises to be an exciting year for energy storage in New York State. The year began with a major announcement by Governor Andrew Cuomo who, in his annual State of the State address, announced a new energy storage initiative and set an unprecedented 1.5GW target for energy storage deployment in the state by 2025. Governor Cuomo also announced the investment of more than US$260 million in funding to accelerate the growth of the industry. The initiative is intended to spur the widespread deployment of energy storage systems in the state and grow 30,000 jobs in the state’s energy storage industry.