Canadian underwater energy storage company Hydrostor is eyeing US$1 billion of contracts to replace decommissioned U.S. peak power plants in the next two or three years, its chief executive said.

So-called “peakers,” electrical generators which are turned on only when demand is highest, are a critical but expensive element of the electricity grid.

Hydrostor and its engineering partner AECOM are targeting dozens of mostly coal-powered facilities of at least 100 megawatt capacity across the U.S. that either shut down in 2016 or will shut this year.

Hydrostor buys off-peak electricity to compress air it stores underwater in balloon-type accumulators. It then reverses the process to generate power and feed it back into the grid when demand is high.

“We are now by far the lowest cost storage solution, we can be built at scale, we’ve got our partnerships in place and we’re going to start marketing it here in the next month or two,” Curtis VanWalleghem, Hydrostor’s chief executive, said.

Hydrostor will compete for the attention of utilities against battery companies and new, more efficient gas-powered facilities.

“Most of the utilities in the U.S. that are starting to get their feet wet with storage are typically going with these battery plays, mostly because they’re a little more flexible,” said Craig Sabine, a strategic advisor for utilities at Navigant, a consultancy.

Utilities may also prove reluctant to turn away from gas given years of record shale production which pushed prices in 2016 to their lowest since 1999.

“The silver bullet has yet to be defined,” said Richard McMahon of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. investor-owned electric companies. “There’s a place for a lot of these technologies and certainly there remains a place for gas peaking when you’ve got those conditions, low gas prices,” he said.

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The Bay State could soon follow the Bay Area as a leading battery boomtown.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) decided, at the close of 2016, that it would set an energy storage target. Now it has six months to figure out what that number should be and how to implement it, following the timeline set by legislation last summer. Once complete, this will be only the third state-level target after California and Oregon.

California’s mandate gave it a decisive lead in attracting storage companies and deploying the technology in homes, businesses and on the grid. Massachusetts currently has very little storage deployed, but it is already home to a cluster of storage startups that spun off from research at MIT. With an effective target, Massachusetts could set itself up as the second hub of the U.S. storage industry, while streamlining the operation of its grid and the integration of new renewable generation.

Finding the right target, though, requires a careful balancing of competing goals.

“DOER should assure the target is large enough that substantial, relevant experience is gained by all, but not so large that it becomes unworkable and a substitute for the fully functioning market,” wrote Phil Giudice, CEO and president of Cambridge-based storage company Ambri, in a letter to DOER Commissioner Judith Judson in December. 

DOER isn’t starting from scratch here. The department had a hand in the State of Charge report from September, which comprehensively analyzed the value of storage for the Massachusetts grid and concluded that up to 1,766 megawatts of storage installed by 2020 would maximize savings for ratepayers. Storage can reduce the state’s system costs like peak capacity, transmission and distribution upgrades, overall energy prices, integration of intermittent renewables, and ancillary grid services that smooth out the momentary differences between supply and demand.

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CALGARY — The rise of renewable power has created a need for energy storage that companies are fulfilling with underwater balloons, multi-tonne flywheels and decades-old designs.

“Where renewables go, storage will follow,” said John Wright, project manager at Northland Power.

The need for energy storage comes from the temporary and sometimes unpredictable nature of renewable energy. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.

Power companies and utilities have been looking to compensate for that with what amount to giant batteries and smooth out delivery, storing energy in times of low demand and distributing it when demand is high.

Northland has been developing a 400-megawatt pumped storage project that takes the form of an old flooded mine, sitting on a plateau just outside of Marmora, Ont.

The roughly $900-million project in eastern Ontario pumps water up into the mine pit when there’s extra energy, and then lets it run out through a turbine when more energy is needed.

Alberta’s plan to replace coal-fired power plants with 5,000 megawatts of new renewable energy — more than all of the renewable energy currently online in Ontario — has prompted TransAlta Corp. to dust off half-century-old plans to expand its Brazeau hydroelectric project.

Similar to Northland’s Marmora project, Brazeau would be a storage operation that would allow the company to pump water back up to the reservoirs of the existing hydro project, which is about 200 kilometres west of Edmonton.

TransAlta currently uses the project’s 355 megawatts of hydro to cover peak demands, while the expansion would add 600 to 900 megawatts of capacity and increase its flexibility.

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Grid modernization investments are creating a construction boom across America — largely driven by the deployment of solar.

According to the Department of Energy’s latest report on jobs in the energy sector, employment in the electric power sector rose 13 percent in 2016 as utilities and developers built new power plants, replaced aging equipment, and invested in new technologies to manage an increasingly complicated distribution grid. 

There are now 860,869 people employed in the electric power sector, an increase of more than 101,000 jobs from 2015. Workers in the construction industry building solar, natural gas and wind power plants accounted for most of the increase, reported DOE. The coming year will likely bring a 7 percent bump in employment across power generation.

Coal has long been the dominant fuel for America’s electric grid, but no longer. Utilities are burning less of it, and miners are digging less of it. Many politicians — including the incoming president — believe the decline of coal is wrecking America’s economy.

But the opposite is happening. Jobs are being created in new areas of the economy.

There were 26,000 megawatts of new power plant capacity installed last year in the U.S. Wind provided 6,800 megawatts of new capacity, natural gas provided 8,000 megawatts, and solar provided 9,500 megawatts, according to the Energy Information Administration.

“The electric generation mix in the United States is changing, driven by the transition of coal-fired power plants to natural gas and the increase in low-carbon sources of energy. This transition has required significant build-out of new power generation facilities and technologies in the United States,” writes the DOE.

In fact, 10 percent of all U.S. construction jobs are now serving the electric power sector. And the majority of those jobs are being created by building out renewable power plants.

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Responding to Ofgem’s call for evidence on A Smart, Flexible Energy System [1], which closed on Thursday, the Solar Trade Association (STA) has called on the Government to remove all barriers to deployment of energy storage [2]. Following substantial recent reductions in costs associated with storage – especially lithium-ion batteries – the industry are ready now to deliver smarter alternatives for a clean energy system that will save money for the consumer.

Research conducted by independent analysts Aurora Energy Research, commissioned by the STA, has shown that batteries work particularly well with variable generation, such as solar [3]. The research, published last year, showed that a high deployment of solar in our future energy system would come with only modest integration costs associated with its variable output. However, the addition of storage removes this cost and in its place delivers a net economic benefit. By enabling the provision of cheap, clean, energy for longer periods of the day there would be downward pressure on prices for the consumer, and reduce the need for other more expensive forms of generation.

Leonie Greene, STA Head of External Affairs, commented:

“Solar power has turned the grid on its head, it provides unique opportunities for energy consumers of all types to take control of their bills and produce their own energy, sitting at the heart of a smart, flexible energy system. Storage has a multiplier effect for renewable energy: whether it’s helping a homeowner get the most efficient use of their solar panels, or a solar farm match its output with demand, storage will benefit the whole system.”

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A document created for the recent investor event at Tesla’s under-construction Gigafactory facility in Nevada recently made its way into our hands here at CleanTechnica, revealing that the company’s planned solar PV infrastructure for the facility will total 70 megawatts (MW) in nameplate capacity once complete.

Also notable is that the rooftop portion of this planned 70 MW rooftop + ground-installation will apparently be ~7 times larger “than the largest rooftop solar system installed today.”

The document reiterates the point that the Gigafactory will be powered entirely without direct consumption of fossil fuels — on-site electricity use will be provided entirely by on-site solar PV systems and waste heat recovery.

A couple of other things worth noting:

• The Gigafactory’s closed-loop water supply system utilizes 6 “different treatment systems to efficiently re-circulate about 1.5 million liters of water, representing an 80% reduction in fresh water usage compared with standard processes.”
• Work has already begun on the site’s recycling facility, which will reprocess “all types of Tesla battery cells, modules, and packs, into various metal products for reuse in new cells.”

To go over a couple of often discussed figures again, once Phase 2 construction is completed (it’s currently underway) annualized battery cell production capacity will total 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh) and annualized battery pack production will total 50 GWh.

The battery cell figures will reportedly allow Tesla to produce around 500,000 all-electric cars, according to the document. The pack production, on the other hand, relates not just to electric vehicles but also to energy storage products — so it sounds like the company is leaving things open to continue relying on third-party cells for its energy storage products if need be (if demand is too high for current production).

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The rise of renewable power has created a need for energy storage that companies are fulfilling with underwater balloons, multi-tonne flywheels and decades-old designs.

“Where renewables go, storage will follow,” said John Wright, project manager at Northland Power.

The need for energy storage comes from the temporary and sometimes unpredictable nature of renewable energy. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.

Power companies and utilities have been looking to compensate for that with what amount to giant batteries and smooth out delivery, storing energy in times of low demand and distributing it when demand is high.

Watch below from November 2015: The Alberta NDP has come out with an update to their plans to transition the province to renewable energy. Global’s Jenna Freeman reports.

Northland has been developing a 400-megawatt pumped storage project that takes the form of an old flooded mine, sitting on a plateau just outside of Marmora, Ont.

The roughly $900-million project in eastern Ontario pumps water up into the mine pit when there’s extra energy, and then lets it run out through a turbine when more energy is needed.

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Tesla and Panasonic’s Gigafactory in the Nevada desert has now started making high performance cylindrical battery cells of the type used in its stationary storage and forthcoming Model 3.

Ahead of the availability of the Model 3, the 200 mile+ charge ‘affordable’ car expected later this year with a claimed 400,000 pre-orders, the factory – which will have the largest footprint of any building anywhere when completed – began producing the cells yesterday. It had already been producing battery packs for Tesla’s Powerwall 2 residential storage and Powerpack 3 commercial and industrial scale storage solutions, but has now also added the capability to mass produce the so-called 2170 cells, which go in the battery packs and which it has been making in a “qualification” phase since December.

Tesla did point out however that while the cells will go straight into Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 systems, they will not be ready for the US$35,000 Model 3 until the second quarter of this year. The company said that by 2018 the Gigafactory will be producing 35GWh of battery packs a year. Future expansions should take the facility up to 50GWh a year by 2020, according to the original plans announced in 2014. This would equate to 500,000 car battery packs. Research firm Baird Equity Research said in a note that it appeared Tesla was therefore also on track to achieve a more than 30% reduction in battery cell production costs as the factory ramps up into 2018, through better design, leveraging consolidation of supply chains and the vertical integration the Gigafactory enabled. 

The 2170 lithium-ion cell has been jointly engineered by Tesla and Japan’s Panasonic, which also makes its own stationary storage products for markets including Australia. Panasonic is thought to be making a US$1.6 billion investment in the Gigfactory, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed could help Tesla rake in US$20 million a year in revenues and US$5 a year profit from Model 3 sales.

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