The California Senate passed a bill that would give consumers more access to clean energy and provide the next critical piece for California to achieve its aggressive greenhouse gas and renewable energy goals. SB 700, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would increase availability of local, customer-sited energy storage for schools, farms, businesses, and homes.

“In California, we are pushing aggressive renewable energy goals because we know that fighting climate change means taking action now,” said Senator Wiener. “This bill will push us down the path to 100% renewable energy. To meet our goals, we need solar, storage, and other renewable energy resources in every city and neighborhood in California, not just those that can afford it.”

Wiener added: “This bill will transform energy storage so that all can reap the benefits of clean, renewable energy.”

SB 700 would create a 10-year rebate program designed to grow the California local storage market and make storage more affordable for consumers.  The rebates would step down as more storage systems are installed and economies of scale are achieved, thereby driving down the installed cost of the systems. Local energy storage enables the integration of large amounts of renewable energy, creates value for consumers by helping them save money on energy bills, and increases grid reliability.

“Thanks to the leadership of Sen. Scott Wiener, Californians are one step closer to taking control of their clean energy future,” said Laura Gray, energy storage policy advisor with the California Solar Energy Industries Association. “This bill would allow homes, businesses, schools and public buildings to use solar and renewable energy at all hours of the day and night.”

“Energy storage is an essential tool to enable Californians to participate in achieving the Golden State’s critical renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals and to curb our reliance on natural gas peaker plants,” said Michelle Kinman, clean energy advocate with Environment California, the sponsor of SB 700. “With uncertainty on climate action at the federal level, it is even more important that California is now one step closer to demonstrating its clean energy leadership by transforming the energy storage market.”

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The installations, which are slated to begin this summer, are tasked with demonstrating a non-wires alternative to defer the need for a third undersea cable to Nantucket at a cost of between $75 million and $100 million.

The storage systems, which would cost about $3 million, would replace standard residential air conditioning units.

Ice Energy’s Ice Bear technology fits on traditional air conditioners and freezes water into ice at night when demand for power is low. During the day, the stored ice is used to provide air conditioning at peak hours, drawing down customer power demand. 

The Nantucket contract is the latest in a string of projects for the thermal storage company. In 2014, Ice Energy made headlines with a 26.5 MW contract with Southern California Edison and more recently signed a 1 MW contract with the Southern California Public Power Authority.

“Local participants will enjoy increased comfort as well as savings on their energy bills … and defer the need for traditional contingency support, such as back-up diesel generation and a costly third undersea cable,” Lauren Sinatra, energy project and outreach coordinator for Nantucket, said in a statement.

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RES was awarded the project through a competitive RFP process and will be providing a full turnkey energy storage system powered by RES’ proprietary Energy Management System (EMS).  RES’ agreement provides engineering, procurement, and construction services, along with asset management and performance guarantees. Construction will begin this summer with an expected commercial operation date in the first quarter of 2018.

“RES is excited to be providing a tailored RESolve ESS solution to meet our IPP partner’s specific needs” said RES’ Director of Energy Storage, Matthew Krivos. “This marks RES’ second large-scale energy storage project contracted in the California energy storage market this year and third globally totalling 90MW/190MWh. The RESolve ESS provides safe, reliable, robust, and economic solutions for both IPP and utility customers.”

Currently, RES’ contracted energy storage portfolio exceeds 240MW and 275MWh. The company has been providing development, engineering, construction, and operations services to the utility-scale wind, solar, transmission, and energy storage markets across the Americas since 1977. It employs more than 500 full-time professionals and has over 9,000 MW of utility-scale renewable energy and energy storage projects. It has also constructed more than 1,000 miles of transmission lines throughout the US and Canada.

Globally, RES has developed and/or built over 12 GW of renewable energy capacity, has an asset management portfolio exceeding 2 GW, and is active in a range of renewable technologies including wind, solar, energy storage, and transmission.

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Jamaican utility company Jamaica Public Service (JPS) announced Monday that its board of directors has approved a hybrid energy storage solution which — pending approval from the Office of Utilities — will be the first of its kind in the Caribbean.

The energy storage solution will have power readily available, which will be utilised in case solar and wind renewable systems suddenly lose power due to cloud cover, reduced wind or other issues.

If approved, the 24.5MW project will be developed at the Hunts Bay Power Plant substation and will feature both high speed and low speed flywheels and containerised lithium-Ion batteries. Once approved for construction, it would become operational by the third quarter of 2018.

The proposed project will allow JPS to provide a faster response when the output from renewables is suddenly reduced — as well as mitigate stability and power quality issues that cause outages to customers.

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India is expected to add more than 1GWh of lithium-ion battery assembly capacity this year, with a host of companies getting in on the act, according to the head of the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA).

The South Asian country has already surpassed 1GWh of distributed lithium-ion battery deployment for applications such as telecom towers and bank ATM machines, but to reach this stage companies had been importing complete battery packs from outside India.

However, Rahul Walawalkar, IESA executive director, told Energy-Storage.News that strong demand for batteries in such applications has continued. Therefore, since the end of last year, many firms have started setting up assembly capacity in India and only buying cells from the likes of China, Japan and Korea.

Walawalkar added: “There are multiple companies who are putting in 100MWh or more pack assembly capacity right now.”

Major companies including Acme, Delta, Exicom, to name a few, are all working on such facilities of various capacities. At least five companies have already completed plants, while several other projects are expected to be completed in the next two or three months, once equipment has been delivered. This week, Indian business newspaper Economic Times also reported that Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation’s biggest fuel supplier, is developing batteries and other technology for energy storage applications. According to Economic Times, while IOC is mainly focusing on lead-acid, it is also working on lithium-ion battery chemistries.

Walawalkar also noted: “There are at least four or five additional companies who are right now at earlier stages; they have identified the land; they are finalising partnerships for procuring cells.”

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For more than a hundred years, electrical grids have been built with the assumption that electricity has to be generated, transmitted, distributed, and used in real time because energy storage was not economically feasible . This is now beginning to change. Battery storage at grid scale is on the verge of commercial viability. This is good news, not only because of the over one billion people worldwide who continue to live without access to electricity, but also because of the enormous contribution energy storage can make to greater supply and use of clean energy.

As clean energy generation becomes more mainstream around the world, its variability and supply fluctuation begin to impact the electricity systems for which energy storage is a key factor. Storage can help even out spikes and dips in solar and wind resource availability and enable energy distribution to be shifted from the time of generation to the time of peak demand. There is no well-defined threshold level of renewable energy supply needed to ensure nonstop supply but in most cases grid systems operators begin to invest in storage when 10% of their overall supply comes through renewable sources of wind and solar.

Over more than a decade, energy storage system vendors and battery manufacturers have been perfecting large-scale battery technology by extending its life cycle, toughening it to harsh environments, evolving management systems and, most importantly, continually driving down the cost. The industry has now reached a pivotal moment, with large storage systems becoming more competitive with other grid assets from a business perspective.

The technology has been proven in the markets of North America and Europe with several vendors offering competing technologies and solutions. What’s more, the capacity for installation and operation already exists. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show more and more cases of clean energy becoming viable in an ever increasing number of markets. We can see that stationary storage has clearly begun its evolution from a niche solution to a mainstream grid asset. Nonetheless, as with solar, there is a time lag between achieving viability and mainstreaming storage with commercial partners.

According to a recent study commissioned by IFC, the World Bank’s ESMAP and the US Department of Energy, energy storage deployment in emerging markets is expected to grow 40% a year over the next decade, up from 2GW currently installed in emerging markets, resulting in about 80GW of new storage capacity. This will open up new markets and offer tremendous opportunities.

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The biggest obstacle for renewable energy has always been taming the infrequent surges of the resource.

But energy storage options could help harness those bursts to send power in a controlled manner.

There are various types of storage components but lithium ion batteries are still the primary player. However, this technology has been around for awhile. In fact, the electronics heavyweight Sony was the first company to manufacture and sell lithium ion batteries more than 25 years ago.

The popularity of lithium ion may partly be attributed to Tesla and Panasonic, as the pair – along with other strategic partners – are working to create what the electric car maker calls its Gigafactory. The production facility is slated to ramp up production next year, pushing out 35 gigawatts her hour of lithium ion batteries – or more than the total amount of the product manufactured worldwide in 2013. And with the increase in production, there has been a decrease in prices.

Logan Goldie, the head of energy storage analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), said lithium ion battery pack prices have dropped by 72 per cent to US$273 per kilowatt hour last year from $1,000 per kWh in 2010. “At the lower end of the range, you have packs being sold for less than $200 per kWh today,” he said.

There are a number of alternative technologies that can help to store power, but lithium ion is versatile, with rapidly falling prices and improving performance. Mr Goldie said most of this is driven by the investments in electric vehicles (EVs) – such as the move from Tesla and Panasonic to hugely increase roll out of lithium ion batteries for EVs. “The growing interest in EVs is thus spurring investment in the technology, that is in turn benefiting stationary storage developers,” he said. “Other technologies don’t have this overlap and so have much smaller current addressable markets, which impacts their ability to scale, pricing and operational experience.”

Traditionally energy storage projects have been stand-alone rather than being tied to a scheme such as solar photovoltaic (PV), but there is a new movement combining both solar PV and batteries particularly where there are local grid constraints. The United States is leading the charge – last month a utility in Arizona signed a PV plus storage agreement for about 4.5 cents per kWh, although removing tax subsidies puts it at about 6 cents.

However, the longest storage time Mr Goldie has so far seen for this technology is six hours, although there are other longer-term, but more costly, solutions such as sodium sulphur batteries or flow batteries.

“Focusing on lithium ion, the limiting factor has really been cost – four years ago, most people were only talking about lithium ion as being suitable for applications up to an hour and this has gradually extended since then.”

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Energy Recap. This week, we wanted to highlight an interesting article that we came across recently titled “The Race to Build a Better Battery for Storing Power.” The article notes that one of the major downsides of renewable energy – such as solar and wind power – is that it can be “unreliable as the primary source for power grids.” If this energy could be stored in giant batteries until it was needed, that would be a major step forward in this arena.

So, what’s your take on the idea of creating batteries for this purpose? Do you think it’s even feasible? Please let us know by leaving your thoughts in the comments section.

On a separate note, last week we asked readers to provide any suggestions they might have as to what topics the recap should cover going forward, whether related to renewable energy or any other energy-focused topic. We’d love to hear from more of you, so please comment below with your ideas.

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The market for commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage has experienced rapid growth as a result of numerous market developments in the past several years. Across the entire energy storage industry, decreasing prices for batteries and other system components have helped make energy storage systems an economical solution for more customers, including building owners and managers. These systems have a unique ability to provide value for both host customers and grid operators.

Traditional benefits

An important factor supporting the C&I energy storage market is that storage fits seamlessly into building energy management and energy efficiency/service contracts that many companies already have in place. It provides a non-disruptive way to reduce electricity expenses by enabling participation in demand response programs by simply switching on the storage device, as opposed to traditional demand response that requires shutting down a load in the building. Storage also can provide several hours or more of backup power for customers’ critical loads — and microgrid functionality if tied to distributed generation resources. Energy storage provides a non-disruptive way to achieve several other benefits, as listed in the table below.

But what happens when a single storage system is not enough? As C&I building needs evolve and operations become increasingly specialized, having the correct technology that can serve a range of applications will be critical to realizing total system benefits. 

In recent years, battery technology innovations have been focused on software management to maximize round-trip efficiency. While this will continue to be important, behind-the-meter customers could see greater benefits from hybrid energy storage systems. These systems can add advantages on top of what conventional battery technologies offer for C&I customers.

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