Energy Storage News

Last week, one of the largest solar and battery projects in the world just got one step closer to approval. On Friday the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for the colossal Gemini Solar Project, a behemoth planned for 11 square miles of the Nevada desert northeast of Las Vegas. The paperwork shows few exact details of the project, however it notes that there has been an upgrade to the scale of the battery storage component, with a mammoth 531 MW / 2125 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery planned accompany the 690 MWac of solar that will be deployed.

The New York State Energy Research & Development Agency (NYSERDA) and the New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) have put forth $280 million worth of incentives for energy storage in two programs: one for “retail” systems smaller than 5 MW, and a Bulk Storage program for larger systems.

U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (D-Pennsylvania) has introduced a bill that would extend the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) to energy storage installations, anywhere from the home to grid level. The bill would move beyond current provisions that enable the ITC only for solar-paired battery systems.

Arizona Public Service (APS) announced today a request for proposals (RFP) to bring hundreds of MW in capacity of energy storage to both new and existing solar facilities. APS’s Chino Valley (19 MW) and Red Rock (40 MW) solar projects will be getting batteries. In the same RFP, the utility is soliciting 500 MW of new solar + storage projects and stand-alone battery storage by 2025.

Hawaii regulators have approved six of eight proposed large solar plus storage projects, with all coming at or under 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. The Hawaiian Public Utilities Commission has approved contracts between the subsidiary utilities of Hawaiian Electric Industries and the developers of six projects, representing a combined capacity of 247 MW of solar, and 998 megawatt-hours of energy storage – meaning that the entire capacity of all six projects will be fully backed by four-hour batteries.

A new analysis suggests that 9.2 GW of the California Independent System Operator’s required 47.5 GW of “Resource Adequacy” could be met by customer-sited solar+storage. In total, it would require approximately 48 GWdc of rooftop solar power, and 21 GW / 42 GWh of battery storage, to meet the requirement. The study looked at individual rooftops within the state, in essence building a grid from the rooftop up.

In an interview with pv magazine USA 8minutenergy President & CEO Tom Buttenbach talked of the USA solar market, a 14 GW pipeline and energy storage being a fundamental – not an add-on – feature. Tom’s opening words to pv magazine USA included that energy storage is no longer a cool feature, but something that our grid will increasingly depend upon as renewable penetration continues to increase.

Battery storage is entering the electricity scene at an extraordinary pace. It seems the entire energy industry is looking closely at the technologies, economics, and financing hurdles to stand-alone storage options and renewable energy pairing opportunities. There are four “S” factors critical to battery profitability: Siting, Sizing, Stacking, and (Bid) Strategy. In this piece, Ascend Analytics breaks down those four elements and offers the development and investment community a starting point for due diligence analysis.

Sunrun has won a bid for 20 MW to participate in ISO New England’s 2022-2023 Forward Capacity Market. The bid means that Sunrun will be required to offer to the broader power grid 20 MW of power, 24 hours a day for the single year period. The company will be paid $3.80/kW/month, or $76,000 for the year. Sunrun notes that the capacity will be made possible by its Brightbox energy storage product line. Currently, this product is an LG Chem RESU. LG’s 48-volt battery comes with 3.3, 6.5 and 9.8 kilowatt-hour (kWh) ratings, and its 400-volt batteries offer 7.0 and 9.8 kWh ratings. Both AC- and DC-coupled versions are available. Sunrun noted they would need about 5,000 New England customers to meet the requirement.

Only one day after the Energy Information Administration projected that coal’s decline will slow, gas will dominate the future energy mix and that wind will peter out after the PTC ends, one of the nation’s largest and arguably its most successful power companies has a very different forecast for the future. In NextEra Energy’s fourth quarter results call, CEO Jim Robo dropped another bombshell, with his statement that solar and wind plus storage will be cheaper than coal, oil or nuclear, that this will be “massively disruptive to the conventional fleet” and that it will provide opportunities for developers well through the next decade.

Providing a stable supply of electricity is a core part of the mission of all utilities, and is demanded by the regulators who oversee them. And yet the security of U.S. electricity supply appears to be getting worse. Not only can solar and batteries supply backup power in the event of an outage, but distributed generation has the advantage of being closer to demand, and can improve the reliability of the grid. Microgrids further enhance this advantage, and are being actively investigated as a means to protect critical infrastructure during disasters.

In this interview pv magazine talks with the chief research officer at the United States’ foremost clean energy laboratory about the work that NREL has been doing, and what to expect for the future of electricity and transportation.

Eyeing the success of the recently-passed California solar mandate, Milwaukee Common Council Member Tony Zielinski has proposed legislation that would require all new residential units in the city to include solar arrays, starting in 2019. Zielinski told Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) that the idea for his proposal came while he was reading about California’s rooftop solar mandate. “I think this is just one step in a series of steps that we need to undertake to help improve our environment and gradually reduce our reliance on fuels,” Zielinski said while appearing on WPR. ” There’s a whole myriad of other initiatives… I think we need to add more. I just think that this is one step and there’ll be additional steps down the road as well.”

AES, one of the world’s largest power companies, has released a report detailing the company’s moves to reduce carbon emissions 70% by 2030, but, more importantly, their plans to incorporate increasing amounts of renewable generation and energy storage projects to compliment this new generation. In the report, AES outlines three scenarios of optimization between carbon reduction and minimizing the stress of a new energy transition, known as the Business as Usual Scenario, the Greener Scenario and 1.5-2°C Scenario, the same one outlined in the Paris Agreement.

In continued pursuit of his state’s 50% renewable by 2030 and 1,500 MW of energy storage by 2025, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo (D) has announced that $40 million will be made available to solar projects that integrate energy storage. Like CPS Energy earlier this week, New York is recognizing the necessity of expansive energy storage coverage to shift solar energy’s availability to times of peak demand, outlining in a release that the storage will be used for that goal. This reasoning is likely also behind Gov. Cuomo’s unique battery storage goal, first unveiled in his 2018 State of the State address this past January.

We know energy storage is coming. The question is: How much and how fast? Tesla showed us that they’d rather build cars versus energy storage installations, and that makes sense since more than 90% of their revenue is from cars. And Bloomberg recently reminded us that the whole of the industry is in a situation of greater demand than supply. Nonetheless, the potential is there and the manufacturing capacity is growing immensely.

Stem, Inc. has announced new collaborations with Urban Energy Solutions, LLC and SunGreen Systems to use Stem’s artificial intelligence (AI), Athena, in intelligent solar + storage solutions in Arizona and California. These projects represent Stem’s entry into a sixth U.S. state and the continued high growth of solar + storage momentum across the country.

A utility survey shows battery storage capacity growing sharply, including solar + storage installations in several states. Looking ahead, FERC Order 841 could spark extensive new storage for grid services, helping more utilities become familiar with storage and its benefits.

Wood Mackenzie projects that the U.S. energy storage market will reach well over $500 million in sales this year, following on 61.8 MW / 156.5 MWh of installations during the second quarter. Residential storage has grown at 61% per quarter since Q1 2017.

Today solar and energy storage advocates had their second win in less than 24 hours. Following on the dramatic and narrow passage of a bill to mandate 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045, another bill which may contain one of the keys to making that happen has passed the Assembly. SB 700 will extend the state’s Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) through 2026, which by the estimates of the California Solar and Storage Association (CALSSA) will support the installation of nearly 3 GW of behind-the-meter storage.

 Enphase Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:ENPH), a global energy technology company and the world’s leading supplier of solar microinverters, today announced that Momentum Solar, a top U.S. residential solar contractor and Inc. 500 fastest-growing private company, has chosen Enphase to be its exclusive inverter supplier. Momentum Solar is one of the fastest growing home solar service providers in the U.S. with operations in New Jersey, New York, California, Florida, Texas, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

The Empire State is singing the renewable energy tune these days. If it isn’t a gigawatt battery factory, then it is a batch of large solar projects, or its massive offshore wind farms, and 1.5 GW of energy storage by 2025. With these announcements the state is predicting a doubling of its 2017 installed solar power capacity in 2018, and forecasts falling electricity demand decades out due to more behind-the-meter solar.

Nowhere in the United States has embraced rooftop solar like Hawaii. Very high retail electricity prices made net-metered rooftop solar a bargain in the island state well before the mainland, with the result that 16-20% of all homes on individual islands hosted PV systems by the end of 2017. As this is a much higher rate of distributed solar than anywhere in the Continental United States, this and the island’s isolated grid also meant that the state’s utilities hit technical challenges associated with deploying this solar sooner.

While power sector holdouts such as FirstEnergy get headlines by pushing for disingenuous regulatory changes in a vain attempt to make the future look like the past, many U.S. power companies are seeing the light in the low and predictable costs of large-scale wind and solar. One of the leaders in this regard is Florida power company NextEra Energy. The company’s Q1 2018 results show NextEra building not only large amounts of solar both through generation arm NextEra Energy Resources and utility Florida Power and Light, but also beginning to deploy large-scale energy storage through both companies.