Energy Storage News

The US Army is going to be marching a whole new generation of electronic gear into the field over the next 5 to 10 years, and it will take a whole new generation of high performance, lightweight energy storage devices to keep them powered up. That’s good news for clean energy fans, as new military technology has a way of seeping over to the civilian sphere. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a new $7.2 million battery research program just launched by the Army Research Laboratory.

The energy storage facilities of the sparkling green future will run the gamut from massive infrastructure projects to Game Boy-sized hand held devices. Two examples just popped up on the radar this week, and they demonstrate how the technology itself can range from the simple law of gravity to, well, something a little more complicated.

California utilities are ahead of much of the world in the transition to clean technology. They have a lot more rooftop solar power on the grid than many places, and they’re led by progressive voters and politicians. There is no waffling on battery energy storage for these big dogs at this point. They’re all in.

The recent Wood Mackenzie Q4 2019 US Energy Storage Monitor report contains a number of insights about energy storage trends that many people may enjoy reading about. Energy storage in the United States has been growing steadily over the last 5-10 years. In this interview, Dan Finn-Foley, head of energy storage research at Wood Mackenzie, discusses how the industry is growing.

Oak Ridge researcher Michael Starke has been leading a project supported by the Office of Electricity’s Energy Storage Program to create and enhance controls for second-use battery energy storage, including testing of a 15 kilowatt system at a Habitat for Humanity home site in North Carolina. Testing is also taking place at an Oak Ridge research house in a neighborhood near the lab.

A proposed 400 megawatt pumped hydro storage project near Martinsdale, Montana is a big step closer to reality. Its promoter, Absaroka Energy, announced this week it had secured $1 billion in financing from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners in Denmark. The closed loop Gordon Butte Pumped Storage Hydro project has already received all the necessary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and could begin construction as early as next year.

If approved, Los Angeles will enter into a 25-year power purchase agreement for 400 MW AC/530 MW DC of solar electricity at a price of 1.997 cents per kWh — the lowest price yet for solar power in the US. Adding a 100 MW/200 MWh battery will cost an additional 1.3 cents per kWh. The project includes the option to add 50 MW/200 MWh of energy storage for 0.665 cents per kWh more. The project will be built in two 200 MW AC phases. In the second phase, the size of the battery storage component may double.

Leading developer of US renewables Lincoln Clean Energy, a subsidiary of Danish offshore wind giant Ørsted, announced it had acquired the development business of Coronal Energy, a US-based developer focused on utility-scale solar and energy storage projects. The acquisition will see Lincoln Clean Energy take on the company’s development team of experienced solar and storage personnel, as well as a significant pipeline of solar and storage projects in the United States, including several projects that have already been awarded long-term Power Purchase Agreements with credit-worthy utility counterparts.

Planners in Fremont, CA, appear to be the first to complete a solar microgrid system with battery backup for a fire station in the United States, seeking to be more hardened against wildfire, utility blackouts, hurricanes, or other threatening events.

A recent study suggests that the Earth holds 530,000 potential sites for pumped hydro energy storage. If that sounds too good to be true, well, maybe. The devil is in the details. On the other hand, the number-crunching does indicate that a massive amount of energy storage capacity is already close at hand, even without new technology breakthroughs.

The Danish minister of education and research attended the official inauguration of a giant pilot facility that will use 600 degree hot stones to store energy. High-temperature thermal energy storage uses cheap, non-degradable, and environmentally friendly storage materials combined with known charging and discharging technology to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of energy storage.

A project to build a solar+storage community microgrid within the Montecito, CA, fire district is being developed as a national model for other communities across the country, according to the Clean Coalition and the World Business Academy. The two organizations are boot-strapping the project and have raised some funding for the estimated 1 megawatt microgrid, within the unincorporated community of about 10,000 in Santa Barbara County.

Global oil companies are plowing billions of dollars per year into solar and into energy storage, as more nations seek to switch their energy sources away from fossil fuels. For battery storage investments, 6 acquisition deals were reported during the past two years; during the same time period, 7 funding deals were done, involving nearly $133 million, according to an analysis by Mercom Capital Group.

WattTime is a nonprofit organization dedicated to giving everyone everywhere the power to choose clean energy. Founded by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017, it is now a subsidiary of Rocky Mountain Institute. Its Automated Emissions Reduction algorithms permit utilities and electricity consumers, including EV drivers, to reduce emissions from electrical generation by shifting the timing of flexible electricity usage to avoid periods when the grid is relying on high emissions sources.

Caribbean island Bonaire is adding a 6 megawatt energy storage system to help balance its solar and wind assets with backup diesel generators, opening up the potential for greater renewable penetration. Additional solar will expand on the 2015 pilot project that included close to 800 solar panels. Wärtsilä won the contract for the engineering, procurement, and construction of the hybrid energy project, which includes batteries and inverters, as well as GEMS, the energy management software from its Greensmith Energy subsidiary. ContourGlobal Bonaire, a subsidiary of London based ContourGlobal, is acquiring the system for its Water and Energy Company Bonaire subsidiary.

S&P Global reports the cost of solar with battery backup dropped precipitously in 2018. Several tenders for solar plus storage came in at under $30 per megawatt-hour last year. Stand alone prices for installed battery storage — based on a 20 megawatt-hour system with 4 hours of storage — dropped 40% from the previous year to $357 per kilowatt-hour and are expected to keep falling. Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects a further 52% reduction by 2030. Such tumbling prices have led Wood Mackenzie to forecast that as the market for solar plus storage matures, it could put more than 6,400 MW of new natural gas-fired peaking capacity in the US at risk by 2027.

China is poised to add a significant amount of battery storage to its utility grid next year. And it’s backing two horses in the energy storage race — both lithium-ion and flow batteries are part of the plan. China’s renewable energy portfolio now stands at 706 gigawatts according to Bloomberg but too much of that is wasted, or curtailed as they say in the utility industry. 7.7% of the electricity generated by wind turbines is curtailed as is 2.9% of electricity from solar panels.

How many cars sold in America today can take full advantage of all the power available from a 350 kW ultra fast charger? If you said “none,” go to the head of the class. But that doesn’t mean such vehicles won’t be on the road soon. The Porsche Taycan will be arriving shortly. At the San Francisco Premium Outlets electric car drivers will now find 2 ultra-fast 350 kW chargers and 8 super-fast chargers (150 kW). They have been installed by Electrify America as part of the agreement it signed with the state of California to settle claims arising from its diesel cheating scandal.

EVgo has flipped the switch on a new bank of fast, super-fast, and ultra-fast EV chargers that help plug-in vehicle drivers conveniently make the run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The new installation brings two 50 kW fast chargers, new 150 kW and 175 kW super-fast chargers, and a 350 kW ultra-fast charger to the popular gas-and-go town of Baker, California. The chargers include a bank of second-life batteries to store up cheap power and push it out to charging vehicles in order to mitigate the steep demand charges from the utility that typically eat into the cost of delivering power to vehicles charging at high rates of speed.

Things are changing fast in the world of electricity generation and distribution. As always, changes are to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. The sharp drop in the cost of renewable energy in the past few years is the primary engine driving the changes. The next revolution is bulk energy storage, the piece of the puzzle that will turn traditional ideas of how an electrical grid should operate completely upside down. Here’s a look at what is happening right now and what the utility grid of the future may look like.

BYD has started up its first grid-scale energy storage project in Poland with the official opening of its new 1.26MW/2.52MWh energy storage facility. The system, which was shipped into Poland in May, came online just a few months later in September, highlighting just how quickly large-scale stationary storage deployments can be brought online. The installation is the first in the Polish market and will be operated in partnership with ML System S.A.

Tucked away in the Micronesia region of the Pacific Ocean is the small Republic of Palau, boasting a population of just over 20,000. The country will nevertheless soon be home to what is believed to be the world’s largest microgrid consisting of solar, diesel, and energy storage, representing at least 45% of the island nation’s total demand. While the microgrid has been in development for some time, the Republic of Palau this week announced the signing of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with ENGIE EPS, a worldwide microgrid and energy storage pioneer which will complete the project.

The Hawaiian Electric Company and its subsidiaries are in contract negotiations with developers to add a potential 260 megawatts (MW) worth of solar and over 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of storage in what would be the largest infusion of renewable energy capacity in Hawai’i’s history.

Recent developments in this energy and storage sectors are bringing new light to emerging technologies. We’re looking at a few of the most interesting energy storage technology developments below.