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ENERGY STORAGE MARKET UPDATE storage.solarenergyevents.com 28 FEBRUARY - 01 MARCH 2017 Victoria Park Plaza, London, UK
ENERGY STORAGE MARKET UPDATE
storage.solarenergyevents.com
28 FEBRUARY - 01 MARCH 2017Victoria Park Plaza, London, UK
Swiss investor enters PJM frequency regulation market with Leclanché
London council ‘proves commercial scale energy storage works in the UK’
100MW Welsh pumped hydro stor-age facility moves a step closer
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CONTENTS
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Low carbon transport group Cenex launches V2G trials in three European cities 3
Sunamp to transport waste heat by barge in project with UK city council 3
NEC Energy launches distributed energy storage platform for C&I segment 4
Sonnen partners with Ideal Power on commercial energy storage product 5
E.On and UK flow battery start-up in commercial demonstrator of solar-plus-storage 6
BUSINESS
Tesla/SolarCity merger gets go ahead 7
Third-party project financing found for 12MW of Ontario projects 8
Ecotricity acquires major stake in rival supplier Good Energy 9
GLC to invest US$24.3 million in 500MWh China-based battery factory 10
London council ‘proves commercial scale energy storage works in the UK’ 11
POLICY
‘Exciting future’ - UK Electricity Storage Network ‘rejoicing’ as government seeks answers 12
UK government’s ‘call for evidence’ on power system welcomed by trade body 14
BEIS appears to rule out consultation on embedded benefits 15
Sonnen calls for storage tax breaks not subsidies 16
Moixa eyes national tenders for storage sharing platform 16
100MW Welsh pumped hydro storage facility moves a step closer 17
Battery storage dominates National Grid EFR tender results 18
PROJECTS
Steag inaugurates US$100 million largest-of-its-kind energy storage system 19
Swiss investor enters PJM frequency regulation market with Leclanché 20
RES’ first UK large-scale battery project completed at PV plant 21
Younicos and WEMAG expanding Europe’s ‘first commercial battery storage’ system 21
Siemens teams up with Italian utility Enel on island battery storage 22
SCE gives Tesla green light for largest lithium-ion storage facility in world 23
Nissan and Eaton provide storage system for Webaxys data centre 24
‘Unprecedented’ UK scheme could put 22,000 Sonnen and Leclanché systems 24 into community housing
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Low carbon transport group Cenex launches V2G trials in three European citiesLow carbon transport body Cenex has launched a technology demonstration trial of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems in three major European cities. The Smart Mobile Energy project, led by Cenex and supported by Climate KIC, will see V2G installed in Birmingham, Berlin and Valencia to support the cities’ existing energy infrastructure.
Cenex and Climate KIC will partner with various education institutions in the three cities to work with local authorities, grid and energy companies, large building owners and operators of electric vehicles fleets. They will conduct technical assess-ments of the systems and develop busi-ness cases for wider deployment of the technology in districts and entire cities. Sean Lockie, director of urban transitions
at Climate KIC, said that the programme offered a “unique opportunity” for its participants to test the benefits of V2G systems.
Cenex said the work would be important to ensure the “timely uptake” of V2G in the UK and across Europe. “Cenex is delighted to explore the practical and economic implications of using V2G at a city and district scale. This is a critical next step toward accelerating Europe’s move to clean energy,” Robert Evans, chief executive at Cenex, said.
V2G systems are centred on the concept of using EV batteries to offer grid services whilst they are connected through their charging ports. Businesses could, in theory, use the aggregated capacity of
various EVs charging at their site to help power their own operations during peak pricing periods or participate in grid services tenders.
Nissan earlier this month confirmed that it had installed a number of V2G charg-ing systems at an R&D facility in the UK as part of an ongoing trial of the system it has produced alongside energy company Enel.
Nov 23, 2016
Sunamp to transport waste heat by barge in project with UK city councilSunamp is preparing a landmark project with the UK’s Bristol City Council that will see the company take excess heat from waste treatment facilities by barge to be used in the city’s district heating scheme.
Speaking to Clean Energy Today at SEUK|CEL 2016, Andrew Trewin, prod-uct sales specialist for Sunamp, said the company has been in discussions with the local authority for months and is currently in the process of applying for funding
from Innovate UK.
If successful, the scheme will see Sunamp extract heat from waste processes in Avonmouth and ‘containerise’ it in up to 16 shipping container-sized units, each carting 2MWh of heat storage in its phase change technology.
Trewin explained that the company would then transport up to 32 containers car-rying 64MWh of stored heat by barge
to the city’s district heat scheme, which is currently under construction to move away from gas.
The project is currently working through the first stage of applying for funding, with Sunamp having all but completed the feasibility requirements of the scheme. Once funding is secured, the company will carry out an intensive three month trial before the project is taken forward.
Oct 06, 2016
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NEC Energy launches distributed energy storage platform for C&I segmentNEC Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of IT and network integration firm NEC Corporation, has unveiled a new distributed energy storage product for commercial and industrial (C&I) custom-ers.
The technology comes with lithium-ion battery storage and power conversion along with controls software, all available in a range of scales for both in-front-of or behind-the-meter applications.
Roger Lin, marketing director at NEC Energy Solutions, told Energy Storage News that the product for sub-1MWh applications will help companies expand their portfolio through energy storage at the edge of grid, but removing the tech-nology risk by providing guarantees and 10-year warranties backed by a global Fortune 500 company. The solution also aims to simplify the deployment of energy storage-based services.
The firm is already working with custom-ers in North America, with plans to have the product commercially available in the region by April next year.
Lin added: “We are looking at demand charge reduction in the US where de-mand charges can be 50% or more of the C&I customers utility bill.”
A global roll out will follow by the end of 2017 with certifications already in the works for the Asia Pacific region. A partic-ular focus will be on countries with some level of reliance on energy storage for remote, off-grid or weak-grid locations.
NEC is also working with UK-based renewables firm Open Energi to provide demand side response to enable more solar PV and wind generation to partici-pate in the market.
Lin said a major benefit is the architecture of the solution, which is configurable to the need of the customer, whether it be for demand charge reduction or renew-able energy integration. The DSS plat-form is scalable from 85kWh to 510kWh of energy storage capacity, and from 30kW up to 650kW of power.
Lin said: “We are enabling these com-panies to create their own advanced energy services; new business models. We are taking the technology risk out of energy storage for those folks so they can be confident that whatever they offer in terms of energy storage-based service they are backed and warrantied by a large company.
“We will be going out with a fairly com-petitive price on the unit so we feel that we will enable a lot more of the business models to close than other companies have been able to in the past.”
The solution includes NEC’s AEROS con-trols software package, which allows the platform to switch from cost savings by demand charge management to revenue earning by providing system services.
Bud Collins, chief executive of NEC Energy Solutions, said: “We have long understood the value of energy storage at the edge of the grid. Our new DSS
platform enables our customers to easily offer a host of new energy management services to their C&I enterprises in the sub-megawatt scale. The platform takes away the complexity of energy storage system design while offering safety and reliability, allowing our customers to focus on creating new energy management business models.”
The DSS platform will be sold and sup-ported by a global partner network with expertise in renewable energy, energy management, power quality, microgrids and energy development.
NEC has already provided energy storage at utility-scale in a number of locations.
Sep 05, 2016
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The firm is already working with customers in North America, with plans to have the product commercial-ly available in the region by April next year. Twitter: NEC Energy Solutions
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Sonnen partners with Ideal Power on commercial energy storage productGerman energy storage hardware and services provider sonnen has launched a new product for the commercial energy storage market using power conversion systems from Ideal Power.
The sonnenBatterie pro is a smart en-ergy management solution, which uses self-learning software to reduce electric-ity costs by shaving peak demand and responding to time-of-use electricity rates. Aimed at small businesses using solar power, the pro product also helps optimize self-consumption of solar energy as well as enabling participation in utility demand response programmes. The sonnenBatterie pro system includes an in-verter from Ideal Power, battery modules with a 10,000 cycle lifetime, and the smart
energy management platform. It also in-cludes Ideal Power’s 30kW power conver-sion system. The modular system scales from 18kW/24kWh up to 90kW/240kWh. It will be available for shipping in late Q4 2016.
Boris von Bormann, chief executive of sonnen, said: “Businesses are a key market for sonnen given the increasing amount of commercial solar installations and the growing cost of electricity. With the pro we are providing them with a reliable tool for understanding and better managing their facility’s energy usage both today and in the future.” Last week sonnen released a new residential solar battery system, the sonnenBatterie eco compact, including self-learning software
and grid-tied functions at up to 40% of the cost of its other storage offerings.
Jul 12, 2016
The sonnenBatterie pro is a smart energy manage-ment solution, which uses self-learning software to reduce electricity costs for small businesses.
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E.On and UK flow battery start-up in commercial demonstrator of solar-plus-storageUtility E.ON and battery storage en-gineers redT have partnered to install a demonstration solar-plus-storage system at the HQ of warehousing and logistics firm JB Wheaton in Somerset, England.
The system, designed specifically for commercial and industrial (C&I) applica-tions, will pair a redT Vanadium Redox Flow Battery with JB Wheaton’s 3.5MW solar system. The 5kW, 40kWh demon-stration battery will be used to “smooth out” peaks and trough of the company’s energy demand, ultimately allowing it to make best use of the electricity generated by the solar system.
E.ON is managing the trial in order to better understand ways to improve the payback for commercial solar installs and maximise on-site generation. JB Whea-ton is aiming to minimise the amount of electricity it imports during peak times and also use more of its on-site genera-tion to charge its fleet of electric vehicles overnight.
The announcement comes just a day after automotive giant Nissan announced it is to trial a UK vehicle-to-grid connectiv-ity scheme which could pave the way for owners of its electric vehicles to connect and sell surplus energy back to the grid. The utility is to analyse the results of the trial and examine the system’s potential to also provide ancillary support services
to the national grid. Meanwhile redT will use the results of the system to refine its vanadium redox flow technology which comprises the modular energy storage product it is bringing to market.
System host ‘excited to take advantage of savings and efficiencies’The flow technology batteries redT is developing promise to offer long-duration storage without degradation and the company’s chief executive Scott McGregor, speaking to Energy-Storage.News, said that the ability to provide “stacked benefits” – using the same battery to fulfil multiple services – would increase their value proposition.
Eliano Russo, head of energy storage so-lutions at E.ON, said that storage prom-ised to not only help its customers spend less, but to also improve their security of supply. “A key issue in using renewable energy sources is that the times of peak generation don’t always match the pe-riods of high demand… Battery storage allows businesses to play a greater role in the energy system; adding an income stream as well as avoiding higher unit costs,” he said.
Russo also revealed that the company is lining up further C&I storage trials in the UK, and wants to discuss the opportuni-ties with further interested parties. Mark Wheaton, director at JB Wheaton, said: “Considering the cheap supply of day-
time solar power from our photovoltaic cells and the need for overnight charging of our electric vehicles, we’re excited to take advantage of, and better under-stand, the potential savings and efficien-cies of installing a redT energy storage system.
“Provision of services by utilities, in the face of global environmental concerns, is rapidly evolving so we, as both a con-sumer and green electricity supplier, want to evaluate the market opportunities that E.ON is actively anticipating,” he added. E.On’s other tentative, early moves into the stationary storage market have included a partnership with solar storage system maker Solarwatt to produce resi-dential products. Also, last week the com-pany’s North America arm was awarded the right to build a 10MW storage project in Tucson, Arizona.
May 12, 2016
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RedT’s flow battery.
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Tesla/SolarCity merger gets go aheadThe merger between Tesla and SolarCity has been approved by shareholders. According to Tesla, 85% of the voting shares backed the plan. The US$2.6 billion deal has received mixed reviews from analysts since it was first announced in July.
The combined Tesla and SolarCity will deliver Elon Musk’s vision for a world-first opportunity to “generate, store and con-sume energy sustainably, through a suite of integrated products that add aesthetics and function while reducing cost,” according to a company blog. “By leveraging SolarCity’s installation network and Tesla’s global retail
footprint, we can do this in a way that is seamless for our customers and that we expect will create significant value for our shareholders,” it continued.
The deal could “substantially” increase SolarCity’s sales, reckons industry veteran Jigar Shah, clean energy entrepreneur and the founder of SunEdison told Energy-Storage.News sister site PV Tech in August. “SolarCity’s total sales of solar systems were around 100,000 last year; Tesla is sitting on around 300,000 pre-orders for the Model 3. So there is a real opportunity for SolarCity to substantially increase sales by selling into the Tesla base. It works the other way too
– a lot of people buying SolarCity systems could go out and buy Tesla cars,” said Shah.
Julian Jansen, analyst and energy storage research manager at Delta Energy & Envi-ronment (Delta EE), told Energy-Storage.News the deal would create an “Uber” of energy. “As such they would truly be an integrated sustainable energy company, which does not own any centralised genera-tion assets – i.e. connecting distributed generation with local consumption and energy storage. Thus in a sense being the intermediary, like an Uber or AirBnB – who do not own assets – in the energy sector,” he said.
Nov 18, 2016
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Third-party project financing found for 12MW of Ontario projectsUS-Canadian energy storage project developer Convergent Energy and Power has secured third-party project financing for 12MW of energy storage projects in Canada that will provide grid services.
Swiss investment advisory SUSI Partners, through its SUSI Energy Storage Fund I and capital investment group CJF Capital have financed the projects, which consist of a 5MW flywheel project and 7MW lithium-ion battery installation. The systems will provide fast-responding grid services in frequency regulation and volt-age control.
The projects are in the Canadian prov-ince of Ontario and were awarded in a solicitation by the Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), which aimed to provide around 50MW of energy storage for grid resiliency and flexibility. This was awarded in a lot of 33.5MW in 2014, including the Convergent Energy and Power projects, followed by a further award of 16.75MW in late 2015.
Earlier this year, Rob Harvey, chair of the Energy Storage Ontario (since rebranded as Energy Storage Canada) trade group, told Energy-Storage.News that under a remit of providing “clean, affordable and reliable” energy to its citizens, coupled with long-term planning, the province has seen renewables and energy storage begin to replace fossil fuels and nuclear capacity.
Advisor Apricum talks up future potential of sectorFlorian Mayr, director of cleantech advi-sory firm Apricum, which acted as an ad-visor and brought SUSI on board for the Convergent Energy and Power project financing deal, said Canada has started assessing the role of energy storage on the grid for five years. This began with the creation of the CAD50 million (US$37
million) Ontario Smart Grid Fund in 2011, followed up by the IESO’s awards.
Mayr said that the projects awarded in 2014 provide ancillary grid services, while the 16.75MW of 2015 projects will store energy when it is cheap and demand is low and put it back into the grid when demand is high.
“I think that these first programmes will help the stakeholders of the Canadian electricity market to realise the advan-tages of energy storage, with more opportunities emerging in the near future through tenders or bilateral contracts,” Mayr said.
SUSI’s involvement in the projects comes just after another Swiss com-pany, SGEM, announced it will invest in a 20MW/10MWh frequency regulation storage project in the US. Florian Mayr said SUSI has set up a EUR250 million (US$278 million) fund for microgrid, ancil-lary services and load levelling purposes in OECD countries, making it an obvious fit for the 12MW Convergent Energy and Power projects.
“SUSI Partners has clearly realized the high potential of the energy storage market for its institutional investors seek-ing attractive risk-adjusted returns in a rapidly growing infrastructure asset class that also contributes to the mitigation of climate change,” Mayr said.
Convergent Energy and Power, which claims to have 55MW/200MWh of energy storage projects operating, under con-struction or contracted to be built, point-ed out in a press release that the 12MW Ontario flywheel and battery projects are being built under a non-recourse, third-party project financing structure, rather than coming from balance sheet financ-ing, which Apricum also said was unusual in the energy storage sector to date.
Apricum’s Florian Mayr said however that he believed such investments could become more commonplace.
“Project opportunities are increasingly arising via public tenders or by proac-tively approaching potential customers. Typically, investments in energy storage imply a longer timeframe and contractual guarantees allowing for relatively safe future revenue streams, as is the case for most infrastructure projects. Since major international players such as Siemens and GE are already active in the industry, technological risks may be covered to a large extent by warranty agreements with reliable and financially strong partners.”
Mayr added that due to the complexity of the propositions involved and the rela-tively early stage of the energy storage industry’s maturity, there are opportuni-ties to be had by “players with a deep understanding” of the technologies and their uses. He said that even compared to renewable energy projects, energy storage can create “significantly more attractive risk/reward ratios”.
Nov 02, 2016
Apricum partner Florian Mayr believes more third-party non-recourse project financing deals for energy storage could be coming in future.
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Ecotricity acquires major stake in rival supplier Good EnergyEcotricity, the green energy supplier founded by Dale Vince, has sparked rumours of a possible takeover bid for rival supplier Good Energy after acquir-ing a significant stake in the company.
A statement to the market issued late Wednesday afternoon by Good confirmed that Ecotricity Group had purchased an additional 3.1 million shares in the company, taking its share from 5.58% to 24.85%.
Speaking to sister publication Clean Energy News, Ecotricity confirmed that it received an approach from Good Energy’s largest shareholder on Monday afternoon to purchase its entire holding.
“This holding represented just under 20% of the shares in Good Energy and, having taken this opportunity, Ecotricity’s holding now stands at just under 25%.”
Good Energy’s share price at the time stood at around 266.5p, equating Ecotricity’s investment to around £8.5 million.
Ecotricity would not be drawn into speculation linking it with a full takeover approach when contacted by CEN, but should it acquire 30% or more of Good Energy’s total voting rights it would be obliged to make a mandatory offer for its outstanding shares, prompting a takeover approach.
Good Energy’s shareholders could resist the bid unless Ecotricity managed to take its holding beyond the 90% mark after which offers for the remaining voting
rights at current share value must be accepted.
Should the two merge, Ecotricity and Good Energy would represent a strong presence in the UK solar market with interests across the spectrum of solar developments.
The two companies both have existing operational assets in the UK, although Good Energy has developed significantly more solar to date. Both Good and Ecotricity have plans to develop further assets in the near future as they plan to bolster their general portfolios prior to the 1.2 ROC closure next April.
However the more interesting proposition could be in the future of domestic solar. Good Energy remains one of the largest
feed-in tariff administrators and last month confirmed that its FiT customer meter points had grown by a third to 124,000.
While Good expects future growth to be “lower than historical levels”, Ecotricity could add to its growth by adding business generated by its acquisition of SunEdison’s UK solar rooftop business, which it completed in April this year.
Speaking to Solar Power Portal at the time, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince labelled the SunEdison business as the “missing piece” in his company’s jigsaw and said he hoped to relaunch SunEdison’s domestic offering in the future, possibly combining it with a storage solution the company is in the process of developing.
Oct 28, 2016
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Ecotricity founder Dale Vince (pictured) acquired SunEdison’s UK solar rooftop business earlier this year.
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GLC to invest US$24.3 million in 500MWh China-based battery factoryChina-based GCL Systems Integration (GCL) will invest 161.54 million yuan (US$24.3 million) in development of a 500MWh energy storage battery fac-tory in Suzhou, in the Jiangsu province in East China.
Energy Storage News understands GCL Integrated Energy Storage Technology, a GCL subsidiary, has agreed a lease on a plant in the High Tech Zone within Su-zhou’s New District, a technological and industrial development area to the west of the city.
The site, covering a construction area of 18,043 square metres, will be used for the construction of lithium batteries. It will feature test rooms, storage and shipping centres, and office space, alongside as-
sembly lines for residential, commercial and industrial batteries. It is understood 400MWh of annual production capacity will go to home storage products, and 100MWh will go to business energy stor-age products. The Suzhou Science and Technology City Development Company is leasing the site to GCL.
It is unclear when the plant will open. En-ergy Storage News is awaiting comment from GCL. GCL is a member of PV Tech’s exclusive Silicon Module Super League for 2016, managed by Clean Energy News’ sister title, PV Tech. It is one of six break-away companies for supply of PV modules globally, according to PV Tech. The company claimed in February it was the world’s seventh largest PV module manufacturer, with sales volume slated
to jump five-fold in 2015, compared with 2014.
Finlay Colville, Head of Solar Intelligence at Solar Media, said of GLC last month: “The company is simply the most impor-tant in the PV industry today.”
Aug 04, 2016
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GCL, which has made its name in supply of solar pan-els, is about to launch a new lithium battery factory.
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London council ‘proves commercial scale energy storage works in the UK’A local authority in London has pro-cured a solar-plus-storage installation which the supplier claims will demon-strate that the technology can work at commercial scale in the UK.
The London Borough of Hounslow has installed what it claims to be the largest PV array of any local authority in the UK at 1.73MW capacity, alongside four 60kWh lithium ion batteries from Germany-based commercial battery system provider Tesvolt. The system will provide the site of Western International Market (WIM), west London’s largest wholesale mar-ket for fresh produce and flowers, with around half of its 3.5MWh yearly energy requirements. Christian Went, interna-tional account manager, Tesvolt, told Energy-Storage.News that the installation is a “big milestone” for the whole energy infrastructure of the UK and demonstrates a profitable application of storage at commercial-scale.
Went said: “So far, for the commercial scale [projects], there simply haven’t been the technical requirements available, such as being able to run high currents on the existing energy storage systems. “With a Tesvolt solution, commercial and industrial customers can now cover these requirements and have the possibilities to increase their self-sufficiency rate of renewables, implement an emergency supply function, or simply do frequency balancing and/or peak-shaving.”
LG Electronics, Imtech, Sunstruck Energy, SolarEdge, Tesvolt, and Revolution En-ergy Services were all involved in the proj-ect. LG Solar provided more than 6,000 panels and SolarEdge was responsible for the inverter. The system, which required £2 million (US$2.9 million) investment to install, is expected to save the borough costs of £148,000 and provide a further £107,000 from generation and export tariffs each year.
The economics of controlling electricityThe system, which required £2 million (US$2.9 million) investment to install, is expected to save the borough costs of £148,000 and provide a further £107,000 from generation and export tariffs each year. Went said that in order to lower the export of electricity to the national grid, control is achieved via an energy meter within each of the substations, which is sensitive to flow directions. Whenever the energy meter measures less electricity demand from the consumers than elec-tricity generation from the rooftop, the PV energy is charged to Tesvolt´s 240kWh of energy storage capacity.
Control of electricity flow is important because a large part of the electrical de-mand at the market comes from recharg-ing fork lift trucks, after working with them for eight hours at a time. Meanwhile, the batteries help to reduce stress on the UK’s whole grid infrastructure by using the solar-generated power mainly in peak demand hours, said Went.
He added: “Being the largest energy stor-age system in London now and incorpo-rating Tesvolt´s groundbreaking bi-direc-
tional management of lithium cells, the project will work as an example for other councils to push a widespread adoption of integrated solar energy with battery storage.” Charles Pipe, energy manager at London Borough of Hounslow, said: “From the very beginning, this project has been about reducing our carbon footprint and making an investment for the future. But we have achieved so much more than that. Not only can we expect to see immediate savings on our electricity bills, but we are expecting to see a return on this investment in about five years.”
That payback period of five years would place the install significantly ahead of traditional installations, which have seen returns capped at around 5% under the government’s new feed-in tariff regime. Earlier this month, utility E.ON and bat-tery storage engineers redT partnered to install a demonstration solar-plus-storage system at the HQ of warehousing and logistics firm JB Wheaton in Somerset, England. The system, designed specifi-cally for commercial and industrial (C&I) applications, will pair a redT Vanadium Redox Flow Battery with JB Wheaton’s 3.5MW solar system.
May 24, 2016
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‘Exciting future’ - UK Electricity Storage Network ‘rejoicing’ as government seeks answersThe UK’s government department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) and its regulator, Ofgem, have jointly launched a Call for Evidence on System Flexibility for the country’s power networks, putting storage at the forefront. Stakeholders have been given until mid-January to respond to the document, which is expected to inform policy on everything from time-of-use electricity pricing to EV chargers on the network. The UK Electricity Stor-age Network has for several years been loudly calling for acceleration in storage deployment, advocating for 2,000MW by 2020 for Britain. The trade group’s head, Anthony Price welcomed the publication of the much-delayed call for evidence and spoke to Andy Colthorpe about it.
ESN was advocating for a license as a pathway to electricity storage being defined as an asset class. Will that be something your members will ask for from the government?We stuck our neck out three years ago and said given all the mess there is in the power industry, what are the things holding storage back? One of those things was lack of clarity in the regulation and definition so we said let’s have a new license for storage because storage isn’t covered by any of the existing license categories. That’s been picked up, they’re [BEIS and Ofgem are] asking for evidence for and against licensing and furthermore that they’ve used our license proposal or our definition as basis for the changes to legislation and regulation.
Anything would be better than the current lack of clarity that we have at the mo-ment. But if you just have an asset class, it doesn’t solve all the problems, all it does is make sure there is a clear definition that’s available. If you look at the challenge of
putting storage on the system, and you look at the implications of defining storage and where storage sits throughout the whole of the industry, I’m of the opinion that only a license will do, and I think many of our members also see that. Storage crops up in so many different activities, in so many different parts of the energy sector, so you’ve got to look at it in terms of planning, in terms of business rates, in terms of operation, connection agree-ments and that’s just a few [aspects].
System vs networkIs there enough recognition of storage to benefit the network versus storage to benefit individual users? Should the call for evidence be able to capture that?That’s one of the things we need to bring out, because primarily storage should be a system asset and if you don’t have a plan for storage and you don’t have a strategy
and a means of implementing that strat-egy, you are going to end up with unin-tended consequences, you could end up with a lot of stranded assets, with things that are not doing what was intended and could have nasty implications for the system and these things will happen very, very quickly.
If you look at the support given to put PV on peoples’ roofs, it’s great that we’ve got the market going, the unintended con-sequence is that we have clusters where there’s a surfeit of generation at peak times during the day. If we had real-time pricing we’d be seeing real negative prices at around lunchtime with difficulties of controlling the network at huge additional cost to local network operators. If you pre-vent the network operator from putting in storage, who’s going to put in the storage to take advantage of the local genera-
Nov 23, 2016
The industry has long called for better regulatory definition of energy storage and the development of an asset class.
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tion peak? Because it won’t be solved necessarily by plants that are providing enhanced frequency response (EFR). So we need different types of storage to do different things.
Currently UK distribution network opera-tors (DNOs) aren’t allowed to own stor-age assets, why is that and what’s your position?The argument against the network operat-ing storage is that they would then be involved in buying and selling electric-ity, which seems to be counter to their distribution license, but this of course is just to my mind a little bit of a red her-ring because everything that a network operator does concerns the movement of electricity…The network operator is trying to operate their network at the lowest cost because that’s a condition of their license and they need to offer best value to their customers and if by putting storage in they can lower the whole cost of operating the
network, that’s something they should do. There seems to be an argument that says, the network operator shouldn’t be allowed to do that because he’s got access to low cost capital, he’s got preferential planning rights, he can do things which a private developer couldn’t do, well my answer to that is, why hasn’t a private developer already done it?
I am not saying that DNOs only should be allowed to put in storage, I’m not saying DNOs will put in the majority of storage but we are saying DNOs should be able to put in storage because it’s a network tool which they need to have in their portfolio. To write it out now, we will live to regret it in 10 or 20 years’ time when we go through the next iteration of market rules.
‘Everything is getting lined up to make it a good exciting future for electricity storage’Let’s hope with document having taken
so long to come out that it’s not going to be a really long process to take all these views on board and act on them.Take some comfort, it’s a call for evi-dence which means the process to col-lect information is much faster, having got the evidence they can then decide what it is they need to do and go straight through to the next step. So although it’s taken a long time for the baby to be de-livered, the baby’s going to grow up very quickly. That’s my hope and our message to the teams at BEIS and Ofgem is that we are here to help them through on this transition. Let’s again rejoice – three years ago we didn’t have a storage team at DECC (predecessor office to BEIS, disbanded this year) or Ofgem. Those teams are now in place because we asked for them and ministers and senior civil servants recognised the need for them. Everything is getting lined up to make it a good exciting future for elec-tricity storage.
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UK government’s ‘call for evidence’ on power system welcomed by trade bodyA ‘call for evidence’ from the UK gov-ernment on how to reform the energy sector, calling for information and com-mentary by industry and other stake-holders, has been welcomed by the country’s Electricity Storage Network trade association.
The 104 page consultation document was published last week. It includes an emphasis on energy storage and recog-nises the flexibility storage can add to the network, discusses the current state of power networks and asks dozens of ques-tions on topics from smart tariffs to low emissions vehicles from regulatory and technical standpoints. In a blog published for Energy-Storage.News just before the document was released, we pinpointed barriers to energy storage as a key issue for the call for evidence, jointly published by the national regulator Ofgem and gov-ernment department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to tackle.
Speaking to the website today, Anthony Price, director of the Electricity Storage Network, said the call had been a long time coming, having been trailed by min-isters since January and originally widely expected to emerge by May this year, before a pre-Brexit referendum morato-rium put the brakes on all government
announcements. “We are very pleased it has come out. We are disappointed it has taken so long but very pleased that actually it is going to address a number of important issues to do with flexibility and specifically puts storage right up front,” Price said.
Regulatory definition to add clarityOne of those key issues is the definition of storage within the system. There are a plethora of further regulatory barriers, such as the prohibition of distribution network operators (DNOs) from owning generation assets, but an important – and inexpensive – first step would be to coin a regulatory definition of storage. The Ofgem/BEIS document asks stakeholders to share their views on what that should constitute. Going further, the Electricity Storage Network also advocates for the creation of a network licence for storage.
“Anything would be better than the current lack of clarity that we have at the moment,” Price said. “[One of the things holding storage back previously] was lack of clarity in the regulation and definition so we said let’s have a new licence for storage because storage isn’t covered by any of the existing licence catego-ries. That’s been picked up [by Ofgem/BEIS], they’re asking for evidence for and
against licensing and furthermore that they’ve used our licence proposal or our definition as basis for the changes to legislation and regulation.”
Price said that rather than just ironing out kinks in the existing system, the energy system and corresponding market structures in Britain need to be over-hauled entirely. “There does need to be a massive overhaul of the whole sector. We are still dealing with issues or precedents that have been set a long time ago on the basis of old technology, and old methods and just don’t reflect the current changes in commercial activities and the change in technologies.”
Nov 16, 2016
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Then-energy minister addressed an annual meeting of the Electricity Storage Network in early 2015. The call for evidence was first announced at the follow-ing year’s meeting.
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The secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) Greg Clark appears to have ruled out a consultation on the proposals expected to come from Ofgem following the completion of its review of embedded benefits.
Taking questions from ministers yesterday morning in the House of Commons, Clark was asked by Labour MP Kate Green if he would consult with concerned businesses on the changes likely to be implemented by Ofgem.
“When it comes to energy it’s very impor-tant that we have regard to the costs that are incurred by consumers whether they are residential consumers or indeed busi-nesses and that is why these decisions have to be taken to contain the cost that would be on the bill,” he replied. Ofgem’s review was ordered by BEIS’ predecessor, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), to assess the possible distortions in the energy market caused by the benefits to decentralised genera-tors using the distribution grid.
These amount to charges applied to transmission-connected generators that can be avoided by small scale genera-tors, including system use and balancing charges as well as Triad payments.
In an open letter published earlier this year, Ofgem said its proposed changes to the existing regime would focus on the Transmission Network Use of System Charge (TNUoS). However in a worrying development for existing solar and wind generators, Ofgem also said it might not grandfather in current charging arrange-
ments, leaving them open to change.According to Green, the ramifications of Ofgem’s review have caused businesses in her North East constituency of Stret-ford and Urmston to express concern over Ofgem’s announcement that local generators will no longer receive embed-ded benefits. Clark’s response will do little to calm these fears, with the end result of the review never thought to be in doubt after DECC compelled Ofgem to under-take it, despite National Grid running four of its own in recent years.
Unlike the system operator, Ofgem has determined that changes are needed to the current regime in order to affect the change intended by the government; to stop these generators from interfering with the competitiveness of new CCGT plants in the Capacity Market. Ofgem has said solar generators are unlikely to be affected by these changes as they are usually unable to generate at times of peak net demand as these triad periods fall outside daylight hours. However, KPMG said back in June that the review found that less renewable energy would be generated as a result of any changes to embedded benefits.
In addition to potentially impacting renewable generators, many of the embedded benefits are often built into the business case for new storage installations which are likely to suffer under any changes to the present regulatory framework. This issue was raised by Peter Aldous, MP for Waveney, who expressed concerns on behalf of the UK energy storage industry. He said this would suffer from the “unintended consequences” of the review and asked
if the government would look at this problem.
Jesse Norman, parliamentary under-sec-retary at BEIS, failed to provide any clarity on in his response, merely saying “yes” without any explanatory detail. Since publishing its open letter earlier this year, Ofgem has been collecting responses to its present approach in preparation for bringing forward its proposals.
In a statement released to Clean Energy News this morning, a spokesperson for the regulator said: “We’ve received a large number of responses to our open letter and we are currently considering them. This is an industry-led process. We expect to receive the final report from these proposals later this month. “We will be required to make a decision, based on the merits of the proposals, and in accordance with relevant code objectives and our statutory duties.”
BEIS would not provide a clarification of the secretary’s comments, or elaborate on the government’s plans for Ofgem’s proposals.
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BEIS appears to rule out consultation on embedded benefits
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BEIS secretary Greg Clark claimed "decisions have to be taken" in response to a question over whether or not a consultation would take place on Ofgem's upcoming proposals for embedded benefits.
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Sonnen calls for storage tax breaks not subsidiesTax breaks and greater efforts by industry to engage consumers should be used to grow the storage market in place of government subsidy, according to sonnen’s UK director.
Martin Allman said alternative methods should be employed. “The bottom line is that if the subsidy was there then it would help the industry to grow, without a doubt. I don’t think there will be a subsidy though so I think what would be great for
the government would be to get behind it and enable the industry to grow.”
Speaking at Clean Energy Live UK, Allman said: “Things like tax breaks are more realistic to be achieved or looking at industry bodies to get engaged and drive forward energy storage and make it easy and accessible for consumers to use and to understand. Reduced VAT would be useful for those people who have already got PV installed and the next step is to
increase their self-consumption,” he sug-gested.
The UK has emerged as one of the Ger-man company’s core markets in Europe, with sonnen planning to ramp up the sales of its domestic eco 8 energy storage devices to 100 per month. This solution, on show at sonnen’s stand, has been the key UK focus for the company since it began installing the devices here at the end of July.
Oct 05, 2016
Moixa eyes national tenders for storage sharing platformManufacturer Moixa is aiming to increase the amount of aggregated energy storage capacity through its GridShare platform to take on future national tenders, with the help of a new partnership with UK distributor PV Kits Direct and a combined solar stor-age offer.
The company has launched a new pack-age to UK households offering a 2kWh storage unit with a 2kW solar installation for under £5,000, including installation. The system was displayed at the Clean Energy Live exhibition in Birmingham, UK.In addition to the attractive price point, the system allows homeowners to claim £50 cashback annually for the first three years if they make their battery available to Moixa Gridshare services.
The bundle is being brought to market with Moixa’s new distribution partner PV
Kits Direct. Speaking alongside PV Kits director Laura Gooden, Moixa managing director, Dudley Moor-Radford said: “We think the offer is a good deal because PV prices are at an all-time low and the our batteries are at the lower end of the price point in the market. So when you add the customer benefit of the Gridshare cash-back, the payback is under ten years.
“PV Kits Direct is best placed to get the offer out into the market because all of their installers are established and experienced in the solar market.” Due to the combination of easy installation, affordable cost and Gridshare cashback, Gooden said that the system brought an attractive new offer to market.
“This is the most exciting product we’ve come across. It’s got more unique selling points and the technology is more ad-vanced,” she said. The pair are targeting
existing homeowners as well as new build and social housing markets with the offer and with Moixa expecting battery prices to fall by 20% in the next 12 months, Rad-ford is hoping the company can reach “a critical mass” where it can take part in di-rect grid competitions such as the recent EFR tender, rather than via aggregators. Moixa recently secured £20 million of new investment to fund expansion into other parts of Europe.
Oct 05, 2016
The Moixa system on display at the PV Kits Direct stand at Clean Energy Live.
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100MW Welsh pumped hydro storage facility moves a step closerThe Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) will rule in March on a £160 million project by UK energy storage developer Quarry Bat-tery Company (QBC) to build a 99.9MW pumped hydro facility at the site of two disused slate quarries at Glyn Rhonwy, in North Wales.
The UK Planning Inspectorate completed its review of the QBC application last week, and will pass its recommendation to BEIS by early December. BEIS will issue its final decision on whether the scheme goes ahead by March 8.
If the project gets the green light, it will be the first pumped hydro facility to be commissioned in the UK since the Dinorwig power station in 1974, located opposite the proposed QBC site at Glyn Rhonwy. QBC expects construction to take four years, and the plant to provide over 700MWh of power to the district power network in the Gwynedd region, operated by SP Manweb, as well as ad-ditional resource to the National Grid.
QBC has also submitted a planning application to Gwynedd Council for an underground connection to the grid from the Glyn Rhonwy site; a decision is expected on the application by the end of September.
QBC had originally planned a 49.9MW pumped hydro facility at Glyn Rhonwy, and even gained planning consent from the local authority in February 2014. It increased the output to 99.9MW on the back of the “changing political land-scape”, as energy storage was accepted
as critical to the UK energy market, and has since been required to gain BEIS ap-proval.
“It has been protracted because the scale of the project and the planning threshold have changed,” said a spokesperson. “At the same time, apart from the size of the turbines and the associated control gear, we haven’t actually changed any of the elements of the scheme – the upper and lower lagoons are as they were, for instance. It just means we’ve been around the houses.”
QBC hopes the long-planned project will accelerate its other pumped hydro projects, which include the use of drinking water reservoirs and the sea for energy storage, as well as ‘low-head’ sites like Glyn Rhonwy, with a minimal drop be-tween upper and lower reservoirs.
“We have a pipeline of potential projects, and this is the first,” said the spokesperson. “All of these share certain characteristics – in that they might be considered to be in unusual, or leftfield, sites. We hope we are better positioned now for these other projects.”
QBC has so far funded the development with support from “very far sighted, deep pocketed and patient” angel investors. The £160 million figure for the project covers overall development cost, including the development process to this point and construction following BEIS approval.
If BEIS passes the project in March, QBC said it will require a “funding big brother” to see it through. We are talk-ing with a number of parties,” said the spokesperson.
Sep 20, 2016
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Battery storage dominates National Grid EFR tender resultsBattery storage has dominated the outcome of the National Grid’s 200MW Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) tender, with the technology to be used for balancing services at grid scale for the first time in the UK.
National Grid received bids from 37 providers which were whittled down to just eight tender winners. The majority of the bids were for battery assets and of the 64 unique sites taking part, 61 are for this technology, while just two are for demand reduction and one from thermal genera-tion.
The winning tenders have been awarded to:
• EDF Energy Renewables (40MW)• Vattenfall (22MW)• Low Carbon - two projects (10MW &
40MW)• E.ON UK (10MW)• Element Power (25MW)• RES (35MW)• Belectric (10MW)
Contracts have been awarded on a four year term which National Grid says will give providers the certainty that they need to develop the technology.
Cordi O’Hara, director of UK System Operator, National Grid said: “We are constantly looking to the future to un-derstand how we can make the most of
the energy available to us. This project is at the very core of our Power Responsive work, to balance the Grid by the most efficient means possible, saving money and energy.
“These awards show that we can work with industry to bring forward new tech-nology and I believe storage has much to contribute to the flexible energy system of tomorrow. This is the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the industry.”
The EFR tender was developed to bring forward new technologies to provide sub-second response solutions to system
volatility, improving on the previous fast-est frequency response which could be delivered in under ten seconds.
This enhanced ability to control varia-tions in frequency almost immediately is expected to result in reduced costs of approximately £200 million and stream-line services to make them as efficient as possible, meaning reduced costs for the end consumer. The speed of response is also critical to counteracting the loss of system inertia, which relates to how well the grid resists changes and is affected by increased levels of renewables on the grid.
Aug 26, 2016
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Steag inaugurates US$100 million largest-of-its-kind energy storage systemMajor German utility Steag and auto-mation company Nidec ASI, formerly known as Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali, have inaugurated a 90MW energy stor-age system in Germany, in what is the largest installation of its kind.
The project consists of six 15MW Nidec ASI storage systems that aid Steag in the stabilisation of the country’s grid via fre-quency regulation and voltage control.
Germany’s largest battery system was cel-ebrated in an inauguration ceremony held in Duisburg-Walsum, attended by North-Rhine Westphalia minister of Economic Affairs Garrelt Duin and Saarland’s Minister President Annegret-Kramp-Karrenbauer. During the ceremony, the select systems were officially put into operation at the Weiher power plant.
This monumental project has been a long time in the making, with Steag commis-sioning Nidec in November 2015 to supply
and install the systems that use Korea’s LG Chem batteries. The project, that reportedly cost around US$100 million, broke ground last May and subsequently installed six energy storage systems at different sites including Weiher, Bexbach and Fenne. Six lithium-ion battery-based systems were deployed in North-Rhine Westphalia, in the northwest of the country and in Saarland, in the south, three in each region.
“The battery storage system makes an important contribution to the energy turn-
around,” said Duin at the ceremony. “On the one hand, it stabilizes the power grid and increases supply security; on the other hand, emissions are reduced by saving fossil fuels. In the current energy environ-ment with a high dynamics of change, we welcome the investments made by STEAG, especially in view of the fact that the project is implemented without subsidies. It shows that good ideas can be developed to market quickly with decisive action “.
“The grid stability and security of supply inherent are currently the most important criteria for the success of the energy transi-tion,” commented Joachim Rumstadt, CEO of Steag. “Due to the ever-increasing share of volatile electricity from renewable energies, the electricity network is becom-ing increasingly stressed. I am proud that the large battery system is not only a tech-nological pioneer, but that our investment has also been fully implemented on the market, without public funding.“
Nov 18, 2016
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Swiss investor enters PJM frequency regulation market with LeclanchéSwiss Green Electricity Management Group (SGEM), an investor in energy storage projects, has announced a 20MW / 10MWh battery storage sys-tem for PJM Interconnection’s frequen-cy regulation market, to be supplied and built by Leclanché.
The first project in Lausanne-headquar-tered SGEM’s portfolio will be con-structed in Marengo, Illinois. Leclanché will act as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner as well as sup-plying the battery storage system for the project, while Glidepath Power, which has participated in other PJM region projects including Renewable Energy Systems’ (REC’s) twin Jake and Elwood systems, acted as developer.
PJM Interconnection’s transmission network spans several US states and has rigorously implemented a “pay-for-performance” market design that rewards battery storage’s ability to respond to grid signals quickly and ac-curately. As much as 263MW / 148MWh of battery storage was installed in the regional transmission operator’s (RTO’s) service area by the beginning of 2016. The latest project will be connected to the local Commonwealth Edison Com-pany (ComEd) grid, providing PJM with real-time frequency regulation, which helps boost reliability of supply and keeps costs low for consumers, especially as variable renewable energy rises as a proportion of the energy mix.
100MWh portfolio target with ‘triple-bottom line’In a statement this morning, SGEM said it was seeking to offer investors “triple-bottom line profits: economical, social and environmental”. SGEM invests in a build-own-operate model, providing eq-uity capital, leading project financing and supervising construction and operation of storage assets.
“As a private investor we are driven by energy storage as an enabler to stabilise ageing transmission & distribution elec-tricity infrastructure, to grow distributed energy generation (DEG) and to reduce emission generating assets in energy mix,” the statement said.
SGEM is targeting a portfolio of 100MWh of energy storage, for grid ancillary services such as the Marengo project, for renewable energy integration and for microgrids, although the company did not offer a timeframe by which it intends to invest in these assets or the likely geo-graphical spread.
Leclanché and SGEM signed a “preferred partnership” agreement in August this year, and the Marengo project is the first to arise from the deal. This partnership gives SGEM right of first offer for Leclanché projects, which in 2017 will
represent over 85MWh.
“This will be our first participation in the well-structured and dynamic PJM energy storage market, and the Marengo Project offers SGEM investors the opportunity to provide a long-term commitment to this fast-growing infrastructure asset class,” said SGEM chairman Antoine Spillmann, who is also CEO and executive partner at another Swiss company, Bruellan Wealth Management.
“The formation of SGEM and its acquisi-tion of projects sends a strong signal that international investors are recognizing the tremendous potential of this exciting new infrastructure asset class.
The pipeline of similar projects will con-tinue to generate a high-growth demand in North America,” Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava said.
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Leclanché batteries at a Younicos project on the Portugese island of Graciosa.
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RES’ first UK large-scale battery project completed at PV plantRenewable Energy Systems (RES) has completed work on its first utility-scale battery-based energy storage system in the UK, at a solar farm owned by British Solar Renewables (BSR).
The project will demonstrate various ways in which energy storage can benefit the local electricity distribution network operator (DNO), Western Power Distribution, which commissioned RES to build the system under a “fully-wrapped” engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal in January. Connected to the 11kV network of the DNO, the battery energy storage sys-tem (BESS) is located at a 1.5MW solar farm near Glastonbury, Somerset. It will be used to ‘time-shift’ the solar power output of the farm to sell at the most attractive prices, as well as providing grid services. The 310kVA/668kWh battery storage system uses RES’ own RESolve control platform and software for operation. Energy-Storage.News interviewed RES’ UK energy stor-age manager John Prendergast on the full scope of the project before it got underway.
UK-headquartered RES had 77MW/47MWh of energy storage projects operational or in construction at the beginning of this year, with a significant portion in the US frequency regulation market and others in Canada. The company now claims its total contracted portfolio is at 143.6MW/92MWh, as well as a further 200MW in development.
Government panel discusses energy storageAs the news was announced this morning, the UK’s governmental cross-party Energy and Climate Change Committee held a meeting with stakeholders in the energy system including Renewable Energy As-sociation chief Dr Nina Skorupska and the Electricity Storage Network’s Dr Jill Cainey on the subject of “Energy revolution”. The panellists were asked how best to develop a competitive and innovative storage market including the use of a target, or an overall strategy as a means to deploy more. All appeared to be in agreement that a good first step would be to define storage as an asset class.
Cainey said it was “difficult to see how we can make it all work. What scale do we want our storage and how do we want to bring it onto the market?” Skorupska said that “even conventional forms of generation will benefit from electricity storage”.
“Slowly, slowly isn’t going to do it because we’ve been waiting for more than a year just for this damn consultation,” she added. Finally, Barry Hatten, director of asset man-agement at UK Power Networks, another distribution network operator, said it would be beneficial to change rules to allow DNOs to own storage on their networks.
Oct 11, 2016
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RES' 'Jake and Ellwood' storage systems in Chicago.
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Younicos and WEMAG expanding Europe’s ‘first commercial battery storage’ systemBerlin-based energy storage software firm Younicos and German utility WEMAG have started work on expanding the stor-age capacity of a battery park in Schwer-in, Germany, from 5MW to 10MW power output and 5MWh to 14.5MWh capacity.
Younicos is providing software for plant control as well technical expertise during the implementation phase. It will also integrate more power electronics into the project. WEMAG aims to complete the building in March next year and commission the
second power plant block in June 2017. The Schwerin battery park, which acts on the region’s frequency regulation market, was commissioned in 2014 as the first com-mercial battery storage resource in Europe, claims Younicos.
Alexander Schönfeldt, Younicos vice presi-dent of sales for EMEA, said: “The fact that WEMAG is now investing €5 million in order to increase the available power and energy for system service is a strong testament to the commercial success and performance of
battery storage in Europe.” Christian Pegel, minister for energy, infrastructure and land development of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, said: “Especially with regard to the expan-sion of renewable energies and the future shutdown of old power plants, it is neces-sary to invest in technologies to ensure the quality of supply and grid stability. The battery park in Schwerin was a pioneer of this development and has impressively shown that new technologies are more than capable of providing system services in the future.”
Oct 05, 2016
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Siemens teams up with Italian utility Enel on island battery storageSiemens has installed a battery storage system on behalf of Italian energy utility Enel on the Mediterranean island of Ventotene. The new lithium-ion battery-based storage system provides 500kW of output, and capacity of 600kWh.
Ventotene is located around 100 kilome-tres south of Rome, and is disconnected from the Italian national power grid. With an area of just 153 hectares, the island’s power supply has until now been provid-ed by four diesel generators and distrib-uted residential solar power plants.
The new Siemens battery storage system, branded Siestorage, has been integrated into the island’s existing supply network. It uses integrated converters to stabilise frequency and voltage fluctuations, and balance the island network.
An intelligent control unit, developed with Enel, manages supply and demand within the system, and allows the diesel
generators to be used more efficiently as short-term peak loads are covered by power from the storage system.
The diesel generators can be switched off completely during periods of low demand, said Siemens, saving on fuel, reducing emissions, and limiting main-tenance, said Siemens. It also saves on related emissions, as diesel fuel has to be specially transported to the island from the mainland, it said.
The storage systems prepares the Vento-tene power network to support applica-tions such as charging stations for electric vehicles, as well to increase its capacity so it can absorb fluctuating energy from renewable sources more effectively. It also helps with maintenance, as the diesel generators can now be temporarily dis-connected from the network for work, and start-up in the event of power black-outs.
Siemens is among a number of major
German manufacturing brands to sup-port a €30 millionn industrial-scale pilot production plant for “automotive-grade” lithium-ion cells by Germany’s Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg.
It is working with Korean conglomerate LG on industrial battery storage systems, including work on its Siestorage solution for grid integration of renewable energy.
Sep 26, 2016
Siestorage – underpinning back-up supply and grid regulation on Italian island of Ventotene
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SCE gives Tesla green light for largest lithium-ion storage facility in worldTesla Motors has won a contract to sup-ply a 20MW energy storage system at Southern California Edison’s substation in Mira Loma, California. Upon comple-tion, the system will be the largest lithium-ion battery storage project in the world, the US automotive and energy storage firm said.
Tesla will provide its Powerpack storage solution to the plant. Fully charged, it will deliver 80MWh of energy, enough to power 2,500 households for a day, or charge 1,000 electric vehicles, the com-pany said. Tesla will manufacture the sys-tem at its Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada; including shipping and installation, with the process set to last three months.
Tesla was the only bidder in the South-ern California Edison (SCE) tender to be awarded a utility-owned storage project.
“In order to achieve a sustainable energy future, one which has high penetration of solar and electric vehicles, the world needs a two-way, flexible electric grid. The electric power industry is the last great industry that has not seen the revo-lutionary effects of storage,” a Tesla blog post read.
“Working in close collaboration with SCE, the Tesla Powerpack system will be a landmark project that truly heralds the new age of storage on the electric grid.”
The system will charge using electricity from the grid in off-peak hours and will deliver electricity to the grid during peak hours, reducing reliance on natural gas, and enhancing equilibrium within the grid itself. SCE serves 15 million residents in the region.
The new resource is designed to provide renewed stability of energy supply to the Los Angeles region. Last October, a massive rupture at SCE’s Aliso Canyon natural gas reservoir outside Los Angeles, the second largest facility of its type, saw 1.6 million pounds of methane released into the atmosphere, and more than 8,000 local residents displaced.
The gas leak is considered the worst in US history in terms of its environmental im-pact, with a carbon footprint larger than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Tesla said the Los Angeles basin is at heightened risk of rolling blackouts be-cause of uncharacteristically high winter demand, and the absence of a solution that ensures reliability during peak hours following the Aliso Canyon leak.
The California Public Utilities Commis-sion (CPUC) mandated an accelerated procurement for energy storage in May. Utilities including SCE were directed to solicit a utility-scale storage solution that could be operational by December.
SCE has already selected energy storage manufacturer and developer Powin En-ergy, a subsidiary of Powin Corporation, to build a 2MW / 8MWh storage system for grid support and capacity services as a result of the CPUC’s emergency procure-ment call.
Industry commentators and analysts said the Aliso Canyon disaster, and the subse-quent CPUC procurement programme, provides energy storage developers in California with a unique opportunity to prove the benefits of energy storage technologies versus fossil fuels.
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The Tesla storage system will make up the shortfall in energy supply, storage and grid balancing in California that has followed the Aliso Canyo disaster (above), the worst environmental disaster in US history.
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Nissan and Eaton provide storage system for Webaxys data centre
‘Unprecedented’ UK scheme could put 22,000 Sonnen and Leclanché systems into community housing
Automotive giant Nissan and power electronics and engineering group Eaton have installed an energy stor-age system at a data centre run by IT and cloud computing firm Webaxys’ in Normandy, France.
Data centres currently account for 1.5-2% of worldwide electricity consumption and this is growing fast. The nature of data centres means that they cannot afford to have power outages, which makes the use of intermittent renewable energy to power them a particular problem. How-ever the new storage solution overcomes this issue by providing power on demand.
The storage solution, which uses second-hand Nissan electric vehicle batteries, will help to integrate local renewable energy generation at the Saint-Romain de Colbosc Eco Park and allow for surplus energy to be sold back to the grid. Mean-
while, Eaton’s power supply capabilities will help to manage the data centre.
Webaxys now plans to open a series of regional data centres that use the same technology.
Gareth Dunsmore, director of electric vehicles, Nissan Europe, said: “This instal-lation at Webaxys marks an important historical moment for data centres in their quest to become energy autonomous in the near future. By combining Nissan’s ex-pertise in vehicle design and reliable bat-tery technology with Eaton’s leadership in power quality and electronics, we hope to demonstrate that data centre energy management can be stable, sustainable and cost efficient in the near future.”
Eaton and Nissan announced their part-nership at the COP21 climate Summit last year aiming to combine electronics and
ordering software with renewable energy production and storage in one system. Nissan’s used electric vehicle batteries can also be reused in these systems.
Nissan is piloting another innovative use of electric vehicle-based energy gen-eration by enabling owners to sell spare electricity in their vehicle’s battery back to the national grid.
Storage system manufacturers Sonnen and Leclanché are in early talks to help deliver an “unprecedented” scheme in England which will see their batteries rolled out as part of a potentially huge project.
Solar Media’s UK PV industry site Solar Power Portal reported yesterday that a lo-cal government authority in County Dur-ham, north-east England, has committed to a large scale scheme which could see a package of solar panels, battery storage
units and LED lighting delivered to up to 22,000 homes. Community meetings are underway to see which of the town’s 35,000 residents want to take up to offer, which will be carried out at no upfront cost to households.
UK developer, North Star Solar has been contracted to deliver the project for Stanley Town Council. North Star’s regular supplier Leclanché has supplied a series of solutions to North Star for testing as part of the selection process, which could
see the Swiss firm taking part in one of its biggest residential schemes to date.
Jacques Boppe, vice-president of busi-ness development at Leclanché, told Solar Power Portal that the project could see his company’s systems deployed in around 6,000 to 10,000 homes.
Meanwhile, Sonnen’s UK and Ireland director Martin Allman said the potential size of the scheme – which is still to be determined based on feedback from
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surveys of the town’s residents – could “blow out of the water” previous schemes elsewhere. Allman said that if the scheme was as large as it could be, it would sig-nificantly boost Sonnen’s global deploy-ment figures. The company just a couple of weeks ago having announced that engineering giant GE was investing in its future growth through a VC arm.
“The size of this scheme is fairly unprec-edented really as far as residential energy storage schemes go. Sonnen is a market leader for residential energy storage and it’s installed about 11,000 systems globally and most of those are in Germany,” All-man said.
“This kind of scheme blows that out of the water in some respects in terms of the volumes we’re talking about. So to put it in to context, having a large volume scheme like this is really exciting.”
US$198 million scheme claimed to be feasibleIf all homes in the area are positive about the offer, North Star Solar estimates the project will cost around £140 million (US$198 million) to deliver – an average of £6,363 per home. One of the company’s directors told Solar Power Portal that he was unable to reveal the source of the finance being used for the project. How-ever, he added that he was completely confident that funding could be secured.
“The background of Stuart Dodd [also managing director] and myself is finance. Stuart used to be at Goldmans (Goldman Sachs) for ten years and then did internet banking for Nomura globally. My back-ground is pretty much financial services all the way through...so getting the institu-tional funding and construction finance is not a problem for us,” Sermol explained.
While Sermol was able to estimate when the project will be completed, the project is certainly set to go ahead, with sup-pliers, local delivery teams and finance already prepared to deliver a project for the people of Stanley.
The cost of energy was found to be a
major issue for the area after a survey conducted on around 31,000 local resi-dents found an appetite for measures to reduce energy bills.
North Star Solar is targeting an initial saving of 20% for Stanley households from the solar panels and LED lighting, with additional savings resulting from the battery storage systems moving demand away from peak prices.
Fuel povertyThe scheme has been designed to ad-dress the levels of fuel poverty in the area, with several outlying villages within the parish suffering from high energy bills. As well as the potential for large scale deployment, Allman added that Sonnen was attracted to the project for its social value. “Of course it’s a commercial propo-sition but as a company we come from the stance of having decentralised energy available for everyone, that’s what we’re about,” he explained.
“The schemes that we’ve done before or that we’ve got going and are all about that movement to make energy available to everyone, not just those that can afford to buy solar panels or batteries.
“It’s a great scheme, really innovative and
the clever financing solution that they’ve got opens this up for everyone to benefit from.”
The project remains in its early stages, with the number of homes to be fitted with new systems yet to be determined. However, both Leclanché and Sonnen are seeking to continue to break into the UK residential storage with large scale proj-ects like those being planned by North Star Solar, which is currently in talks with up to six other local authorities for similar projects.
A similar, smaller scheme has already been started further north in Scotland, deploying several hundred heat batteries, each capable of storing 2.5kWh of ther-mal energy and suitable for pairing with PV, made by local manufacturer Sunamp. That trial will assess the impact of the systems on fuel poverty in social housing buildings.
Other notable early projects in Britain that come even anywhere near close to the latest scheme in County Durham include a government-funded trial in the south of England to deploy and aggregate 250 storage systems with a combined capac-ity of around 0.5MWh, made by another domestic manufacturer, Moixa.
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This report was created with articles from the following Solar Media journalists
Andy ColthorpeDanielle OlaDavid Pratt
John ParnellLiam Stoker
Tom Kenning
AND James Blackman
storage.solarenergyevents.com
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