Energy Storage News

If you believe that lithium-ion batteries and pumped hydro are the only viable energy-storage options and that long-duration storage technologies are a long way from commercial reality, think again.

For instance, UK start-up Highview Power, a pioneer in liquid-air energy storage, which has begun construction of two 50MW commercial projects in the US (400MWh) and the UK (250MWh), while German industrial giant Siemens Gamesa has plans to build its first commercial projects of up to 500MWh next year using its hot-rock thermal storage solution.

Iberdrola is to build the UK’s largest battery linked to a wind farm, said the Spanish group’s ScottishPower unit. The 50MW lithium-ion battery will store power from the 539MW Whitelee project in Scotland that is currently Britain’s biggest operating onshore wind facility. The battery is set to be operating by the end of 2020. Adding large-scale storage capability is seen as a key strategy to allowing variable renewable sources such as wind power to respond effectively to demand. The Whitelee battery will be able to offer services such as reactive power and frequency response to the National Grid.

Swedish utility Vattenfall will test a new salt-based energy storage system for storing wind and solar generated electricity, as part of a 10MWh pilot project at its Reuter thermal power plant in Berlin, Germany. The ‘salt battery’ technology, developed by specialist outfit SaltX, has been shown in experiments to have ten-fold the capacity to storage energy than water using nano-coated salt – and can be charged several thousand times with the energy stored “for weeks or months without losses”.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) said its A$92m ($71m) of grant awards across 12 projects would unlock A$1bn of commercial investment and propel the country to a large-scale solar base of 720MW (AC).The project roster – released followed a competitive tendering round – includes major international developers such as France’s Neoen, Thailand's Ratch, Canadian Solar and Goldwind, the Chinese wind group which obtained support for a 20MW plant to be co-located with its 175MW wind farm of the same name in New South Wales.

Mitsubishi becomes the largest shareholder in Nexamp, which specialises in building and operating commercial-scale PV systems in the US northeast, and also claims to be a "recent leader" in the community solar market.

Mitsubishi made the undisclosed investment via its US subsidiary Diamond Generating Corporation (DGC), marking the unit’s first foray into solar and adding to its existing portfolio of wind and thermal plant assets.

“When it comes to centralised storage, to serve the grid, we’re looking with big interest at what California is doing,” Antonio Cammisecra, head of global renewables development at EGP, tells Recharge. California has mandated that the state’s three large investor-owned utilities add 1.3GW of storage to the grid by the end of the decade, setting in motion what is widely viewed as the world’s most exciting storage market. “We’re following the [requests for proposal] and we intend to participate,” Cammisecra says.

China-based Shunfeng Photovoltaic International Ltd said today it had agreed to buy a 30% stake in US energy storage technology firm Powin Energy Corp for USD 25 million (EUR 18.7m). The solar photovoltaic (PV) products maker has signed the deal through fully-owned unit SF Suntech Inc. The subsidiary has also received a two-year option to acquire an additional 30% interest in the US company for a further USD 37.5 million. The initial transaction will give SF Suntech four seats on Powin Energy’s board.

Japan has rapidly become a major energy storage market, partly due to blistering growth in the country’s rooftop PV segment, with system installations set to reach 100MW this year, according to IHS.  A new Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) subsidy for lithium-ion battery equipment — which covers up to two thirds of the costs of household installations, up to ¥1m ($10,000) — could ratchet up growth even more. Businesses can claim up to ¥100m under the ¥10bn programme.

SMA Solar Technology, the world’s largest PV inverter manufacturer, has launched a mass-produced model with a lithium-ion battery in Germany. The wall-mountable device, called Sunny Boy Smart Energy, has an integrated battery that can store about 2kWh of electricity generated from the sun. It is aimed at boosting self-consumption levels in Germany. The world’s solar leader, with more than 35GW, has a small but rapidly rising PV storage market.

Sumitomo this month will start running the world’s first energy storage system made from used electric-vehicle batteries to regulate electricity generated by a 10MW solar plant in Osaka.

Toshiba has teamed up with Spanish utility GasNatural Fenosa (GNF) and Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO)  to regulate transmission of renewable-generated electricity via the Japanese conglomerate’s transportable lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS).

(Panasonic) started offering remote energy-management services in May and launched a battery-storage monitoring business in June. It will combine these businesses with the new PV-monitoring services it plans to launch in February.

In a Beijing industrial park, Chinese manufacturer Goldwind is testing four kinds of batteries that can store the power produced by the 2.5MW turbine and 500kW of solar panels installed on its campus. The micro-grid project is in its early days, but the young engineers in charge say they are already making savings by switching to stored energy during the daytime, when electricity sold by the municipal grid hits peak prices. The results are promising for all of China’s wind companies.

The 3MW / 1.6MWh UltraBattery storage system – which will have the capacity to power the entire island for up to 45 minutes – would smooth supply of renewable energy generated on King Island and maintain stability of its grid.

Renewables group Acciona and partner Saft have successfully bolted a 1.1MW lithium-ion battery onto an existing solar array in Spain, marking the first time such energy-storage technology has been used at a utility-scale PV installation in Europe.

The belief that cheap energy storage will revolutionise the PV industry, allowing it to compete head-on with dispatchable fossil fuels, is increasingly being challenged by experts who say the technologies are developing too slowly.

Renewables developer Infigen Energy is to supply stored PV power for trading on Australia’s wholesale electricity market for the first time.  The company says it will use the facility to test storage technology, and the production and dispatch of power from the PV array and battery system.

“Developing more intelligent ways of operating the storage systems using algorithms which are adaptive to weather inputs will minimise degradation of the storage asset, and in doing so, maximise economic returns from the use of storage,” Ecoult chief executive John Wood says.

The Chinese solar market will grow far faster than anyone expects, as Beijing grasps for ways to support battered domestic PV manufacturers, predicts Paolo Frankl, head of the renewable-energy unit at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

In her traditional speech outlining the government’s forthcoming legislative agenda, Queen Elizabeth II said the ruling coalition “will propose reform of the electricity market to deliver secure, clean and affordable electricity, and ensure prices are fair”.  The Queen also confirmed the government will establish the Green Investment Bank, which will be seeded with an initial £3bn ($4.84bn) of public money.

US renewables projects funded by federal loans may soon need to seek relief from government covenants, giving the Department of Energy (DOE) an opportunity to “proactively protect the taxpayers’ interest”– possibly by taking an equity stake in companies.

A storage system, comprising 2,300 lithium-ion batteries, will be installed to bridge short-term power outages. It will also have reactive power compensation equipment to enhance power quality, control voltage, reduce network losses and smooth the wind output.