Energy Storage News

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.

A handful of European states have moved to bankroll various World Bank clean energy initiatives, with £200 million (US$250 million) of UK money to back energy storage in middle-income and developing countries. The funding comes as part of the Climate Investment Funds’ Global Energy Storage Program, which runs in collaboration with the World Bank’s Energy Storage Partnership. The program has an aim of financing 17.5GWh of battery storage by 2025, over triple the 4-5GWh installed across all developing countries, the World Bank said.

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The world has watched on as some of its leading regional markets, China, South Korea, Australia, Japan, parts of the US, the UK, and many parts of Europe have raced ahead in deploying energy storage in the last five years. Record-breaking figures have been reported in the US and other territories such as the UK, year-on-year. In those leading regions, the rapid rise is happening both in front of and behind the meter, with economic cases that are finally starting to make sense and often – but not always – with specific policy support.

California is embracing energy storage as a reliability solution for an electrical grid that’s adopting more renewable, intermittent generation. Public agencies such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power have set ambitious energy storage targets while companies across the state are developing cutting edge storage technologies such as zinc-air batteries and renewable hydrogen. The goal is to ensure a dependable energy supply for the state as it races toward its target of 100% carbon-free energy by 2045.

The Energy Storage Association and US Solar Energy Industries Asssociation joined forces to promote a ‘Day of Action’ in calling for an Investment Tax Credit to be applied to standalone energy storage technologies. Figures out today in research company Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables' quarterly Energy Storage Monitor, produced in partnership with the ESA, forecast that the ITC could add an extra 0.3GW of annual deployments by 2024: from 4.8GW in its base case scenario to 5.1GW with the tax incentive. ESA is also encouraging Twitter users to use the hashtag #storageITC in supportive tweets.

GlidePath Power Solutions has acquired eight wind projects in North Texas with a total capacity of 149MW. The portfolio, purchased from Exelon Generation, will be optimised by GlidePath while it plans how best to add energy storage on-site at each project. The projects are all north of Amarillo and sell into the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). According to GlidePath, they will be the first battery storage projects in the SPP.

A report out today on the causes of the UK’s recent blackout, where electricity supply to 5% of National Grid’s customers was cut off “to protect the other 95%”, highlighted that 475MW of batteries were used to help bring the network back online.

The US Energy Storage Association has expressed “deep concern” that additional tariffs slapped on Chinese goods will adversely affect the domestic energy storage industry. The increase in prices in a price sensitive industry “could stymie projects already underway or cancel others altogether”, which could threaten livelihoods. The decision will “have an immediate and adverse economic effect on grid energy storage deployments in the United States,” a statement from the association said.

Battery storage assets were called into action last week after the UK suffered country-wide power outages following a transmission system stress event. On August 9th, two large generators were disconnected from the UK’s power system almost simultaneously, effectively taking 2GW worth of electricity generation within minutes of each other. That collapse in generation sent the country’s transmission grid frequency to dip, so National Grid, the country’s electricity system operator, called on reserve and flexible generation capacity to respond, with many operators dispatching battery storage capacity to meet National Grid ESO’s calls.

Wholesale power provider Southern Power is to develop up to four utility-scale energy storage projects totalling 86MW / 345MWh. Of the four projects, all in California, one has already closed financing. Southern Power is working with developer esVolta on the portfolio.

Australian authorities have rallied behind what is arguably the largest solar-plus-storage project to be conceived in the world’s history: a scheme mixing 10GW of solar with 20-30GWh of energy storage. The developer intends to set up a 3,800 km high-voltage direct current submarine cable to transfer most of the installation’s output to Singapore, where it could cover 20% of power needs, while various reports also link it to the potential ASEAN grid. The plan, however, is to also link the mega-installation to Australia’s own electricity grid so that it can supply Northern Territory capital Darwin and others.

Canadian company Hydrostor has just received approval to build the first grid-scale compressed air energy storage system in Australia. Hydrostor will deploy a 5MW / 10MWh system at a former zinc mine near Strathalbyn, South Australia. The advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) project, expected to cost AU$30 million (US$21.09 million) in total, received development approval and has been welcomed in statements by local politicians

Lithium-ion batteries are far more widely recycled than many people think, while China and South Korea are already leaders of the emerging circular economy of lithium, a report commissioned by the Swedish Energy Agency has found. The report has been republished in English after a launch in Spring in Swedish. The author stated that many misconceptions and poor observations are made and repeated around lithium recycling and that more than 70% of lithium-ion batteries recycled today are processed in China and South Korea, with “high” recovery rates of materials.