OJAI, California, and WINCHESTER, England, Jun 14, 2017 (PR Newswire Europe via COMTEX) — Company expands into Europe with new distribution partner Streamline Power

OJAI, California, and WINCHESTER, England, June 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — SimpliPhi Power [http://simpliphipower.com/] has continued its global expansion into Europe through a new distribution partnership with Streamline Power Limited [http://www.streamline-power.com/]. The award-winning [http://simpliphipower.com/simpliphi-power-access-honored-2017-energy-industry-innovation-year-stevie-awards/] SimpliPhi Lithium Ferrous Phosphate battery solution has already been installed in a residential project in Winchester, England, the first of many installations underway in the region. The excess energy generated by the Winchester home’s rooftop solar array is stored by two SimpliPhi 3.4 kWh batteries, which are safely installed under the home’s main staircase, a closet similar to the one occupied by a famous boy-wizard.

“We are delighted to expand into the U.K. and beyond with Streamline Power, and that our PHI batteries were chosen by the Winchester family over other Lithium chemistries available in the market. This small installation showcases big implications – by removing the hazardous element cobalt from our battery chemistry, we are able to provide safe storage solutions that do not pose the risk of thermal runaway and fires. Not only does this mean the PHI batteries can be safely installed in small unventilated spaces, such as a closet inside the home, but they create efficient, powerful and long term solutions that de-risk the energy storage proposition overall. People should not have to chose between their own safety and access to power, much less store clean solar energy in toxic and hazardous batteries,” said SimpliPhi CEO Catherine Von Burg.

SimpliPhi Power has a 15-year track record of providing quality, durable and reliable energy storage solutions for the entertainment, military, residential, commercial and utility markets. The company began its international expansion [http://simpliphipower.com/simpliphi-power-and-dpa-solar-bring-cobalt-free-lithium-battery-systems-to-australia-new-zealand/] beyond North America into the budding Australian market in late 2015. Now SimpliPhi continues to expand with Streamline Power, part of Solar PV Partners, a company with demonstrated ability to roll out new battery technologies in residential and commercial applications for off-grid and grid connected customers in the U.K. and Europe.

“We researched the energy storage market to find the highest performing, longest life and safest Lithium battery made today and identified SimpliPhi Power as the ideal solution. SimpliPhi Power has proven its performance in some of the harshest environments and use-cases on earth, will not catch fire, is non-toxic, requires no maintenance and lasts longer than any other battery,” commented Managing Director of Streamline Power Dennis Garrison. “We are very proud to be their partner in the U.K. and have already had very high demand for SimpliPhi energy storage systems in universities and commercial properties, as well as in residential.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

As communities, companies, and even entire Midwestern utility companies move to supply 100% of electricity needs from renewable energy, the question presents itself: is this even possible? The answer, it turns out, is yes—and it’s made possible by the technical capabilities of advanced energy technologies (and especially storage).

This is UCS, so let’s talk about how to get the hard stuff done. To replace conventional generation with renewables, eventually all the services from fossil-fuel power plants have to be supplied by adding wind, solar, smart consumer appliances and electric vehicles, and storage.

As renewable energy is added by businesses and utilities, here are 5 great building blocks for a future that is 100% renewable energy.

1. Solar is capable of so much more than energy

The utility industry has begun to recognize that new technologies available can provide the reliability functions they need. The adoption of digital controls on solar and wind systems, particularly the inverters, make reliability functions available and useful already, without storage.

The fastest changing parts of the power grid and thus the tool box of solutions are coming from solar—which has present deployments averaging over 10,000 MW per year—and the sudden return of interest and capital to utility-scale energy storage.

The California grid operator has taken the challenge posed by UCS to demonstrate that the solar farms being built today are capable of providing a range of “essential services.” See this summary of a field test where a solar farm demonstrated faster and more accurate performance than other generator types. Wind turbines have also demonstrated these capabilities.

2. Storage is becoming part of the power plant

New energy storage deployments demonstrate just how quickly we can overcome the limit that the sunset creates for solar. The trajectory of energy storage substituting for conventional generation can be traced from actual practices. Beyond the early or largest examples of non-battery energy storage recently illustrated in the New York Times, going forward, there is widespread and dramatic potential for the use of battery storage by businesses and hybrid power plants.

Battery storage added at a power plant, both conventional and renewables, can take on duties that were met by old generators. First seen in remote locations, battery storage paired with generation began in isolated grids in places like Hawaii and Chile where ancillary services from very small generator fleets were unavailable or constraining the grid operations. This helped establish the technical and commercial foundation for expansion to larger grids in the United States.

Recent energy storage deployments now demonstrate a turning point. Present state-of-the-art technology adoption includes manufacturer General Electric (GE) adding energy storage to improve the performance of its line of peaking plants.

Click Here to Read Full Article

HINGHAM, MA–(Marketwired – Jun 15, 2017) –  Genbright LLC, a New England-based company specializing in the development and operation of new clean energy technologies, and Ice Energy, a leading provider of distributed thermal energy storage for utilities, have partnered to help reduce Nantucket’s peak energy demand using Ice Energy’s innovative energy storage solution.

The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) awarded Genbright and Ice Energy a contract to provide over 200 residential behind-the-meter energy storage solutions on Nantucket using Ice Energy’s proprietary Ice Bear 20 technology. Genbright will perform real-time dispatch of the Ice Bears to deliver over 1 MW of peak demand reduction, which is equivalent to one year of growth in electricity demand on the island.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to show how Genbright can provide value to ratepayers by deploying and operating new innovative technologies. The Ice Bear 20 is an ideal solution for mitigating Nantucket’s growing peak demand, and saving ratepayers money,” said Joe Crespo, Founder and Partner of Genbright. “By adding the Ice Bear to our portfolio of dispatchable clean energy technologies, Genbright is expanding its capability to help New England manage the increasingly complex needs of our electricity grid.”

Over 200 Ice Bear units will be installed on Nantucket, beginning in summer 2017. The goal of the project is to prove how new energy storage technologies can be deployed as “non-wires alternatives” to defer the need for a third undersea cable to Nantucket, which is expected to cost between $75-100 million. The total value of this project is approximately $3 million. 

Replacing standard residential AC units, the Ice Bear provides a unique solution to the problem of peak electricity demand. An Ice Bear freezes water into ice at night when demand for power is low and electricity is abundant. During the day, the ice is used to provide air conditioning instead of energy-intensive AC compressors. Ice Bear systems also reduce CO2 emissions.

“Partnering with Genbright on projects in New England, such as the Nantucket non-wires alternative, is a perfect example of how Ice Energy can contribute to clean, affordable and reliable energy, a common goal shared with other New England communities,” said Mike Hopkins, CEO of Ice Energy.

“We are proud and excited for Nantucket to be chosen to serve as a demonstration location for this innovative energy storage project, and to be a model for other areas experiencing peak load issues,” said Lauren Sinatra, Energy Project and Outreach Coordinator for Nantucket. “Local participants will enjoy increased comfort as well as savings on their energy bills. They will also be doing their part for the greater good of the island by helping to defer the need for traditional contingency support, such as back-up diesel generation and a costly third undersea cable.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

The rapidly growing U.S. energy storage industry deployed 71 megawatts and 234 megawatt-hours of capacity in the first quarter of 2017.

Now, Canada is showing signs of life with a 12.8-megawatt/52.8-megawatt-hour energy storage project to be built and installed by Powin Energy.

It will be the largest energy storage project in Canada when operational.

Powin has joined with Hecate Energy to build and install the project at two sites in Ontario, using a modular 140-kilowatt element to construct the systems. The project applies energy storage to frequency regulation, voltage control, and reactive power support.

The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is employing these projects as part of its long-term energy plan and expects the systems to be on-line by the end of September 2017. That’s one of the clear advantages of energy storage: fast deployment.

The company building this system has experience in rapid installations; Powin deployed a 2-megawatt/9-megawatt-hour storage system in less than six months to help compensate for the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak in Southern California Edison territory. (Tesla, Greensmith Energy and AES Energy Storage completed even bigger projects for the Aliso leak in six months’ time.)

“When IESO announced 34 megawatts of Phase 1 procurement back in July 2014, it was the largest such procurement of energy storage in North America, of which the Hecate project was the single biggest award. Since then, the project, along with the remainder of Phase 1 projects, haven’t become operational yet. It almost seems like eons ago in storage years,” said Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage research at GTM.

“From Powin’s perspective, the delay couldn’t have worked any better,” Manghani explained. “Back in 2014, Powin was still an early-stage company throwing everything at the dartboard, but since then it has received investment from SFCE (parent company of Suntech), and Powin has slowly but surely started winning contracts in California and the Pacific Northwest — and now this 52-megawatt-hour contract in Canada.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

The solar industry is no longer just talking about pairing energy storage with solar generation.

An increasing number of solar-plus-storage projects have been cropping up around the country, as lithium-ion prices drop lower and customers get more comfortable with storage technology. The AES plant in Kauai set a record-low price in January, only to be beaten by Tucson Electric Power’s sub-4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour PPA announced in May — proving this technology isn’t just for islands and remote microgrids anymore.

For the large developers in particular, storage makes the solar product more appealing to a utility by giving the power plant flexibility and mitigating its effects on grid operations. On the islands of Hawaii, storage has already become necessary for adding major solar capacity; on the mainland, its value increases along with renewable penetration.

To get a handle on just how extensive the interest in storage-backed solar is, I got a list of the 10 largest utility-scale solar developers from my colleagues at GTM Research and tracked down the storage status of each one.

Seven of the top 10 solar developers have incorporated storage into their business strategy, and have either deployed storage alongside PV or are pursuing hybrid installations. The remaining three did not comment on how storage fits into their plans.

“This is well beyond one developer — this is really a trend we’re seeing in the industry,” said Colin Smith, a solar markets analyst at GTM Research. “Solar-plus-storage has become a forced differentiator in the industry.”

First Solar: Bidding on storage

The thin-film solar specialist first invested in energy storage in 2015, when it joined a $50 million investment round in German startup Younicos. At the time, First Solar CTO Raffi Garabedian commented, “As the promise of storage continues to evolve, we are eager to understand how it will broaden our own power plant offerings.”

These days, the No. 1 U.S. solar developer routinely permits new projects in the western U.S. for the possible addition of storage, because so many customers are asking about it, said Scott Rackey, head of PV-plus-storage development at First Solar.

“It’s a small cost to gain the optionality later,” Rackey said.

First Solar has been bidding on solar-plus-storage, including several projects at the scale of 100 megawatts of PV with 100 megawatts of battery capacity. The ideal ratio varies depending on the local grid, Rackey noted: the Southeast tends to have more appetite for PV generation during the day than Arizona, for instance, where oversupply of nondispatchable PV is becoming a challenge.

“It’s really become cost-effective in roughly the last year or year and a half for dispatchable PV,” Rackey said. “We can deliver energy comparable to or less expensively than a new-build fossil fuel plant.”

Expect some storage news from this company, then, in the months to come. First Solar, by the way, prefers the svelter acronym “PVS,” rather than the cumbersome hyphenations of “solar-plus-storage.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

Sharp Electronics Corp.’s Energy Systems and Services Group and CivicSolar, are offering Sharp’s SmartStorage energy storage system through its distribution network of solar PV installers.

Sharp and CivicSolar’s first project will be with technology developer and systems integrator Forecast Energy.

The project features a 120 kW/160 kWh SmartStorage system plus a 313.5 kW solar power system and Forecast Energy’s proprietary forecasting platform that has been installed at Channel Lumber, one of the largest lumber companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Sharp’s energy storage solution paired with solar PV systems can reduce energy usage for commercial properties. Sharp’s SmartStorage system is designed to pull power from the SmartStorage batteries rather than from the utility at the times of highest demand, which are the most expensive rates, and is particularly suited for properties in parts of California where commercial utility customers are paying up to 50 percent of their energy bills toward demand charges. Channel Lumber paid $172,385 in demand charges alone over a one year period.

A detailed analysis of Channel Lumber’s energy usage profile estimates that the solar plus SmartStorage system will bring $160,466 in energy and demand savings annually — an estimated 62 percent reduction in Channel Lumber’s total bill. Forecast Energy selected Sharp’s SmartStorage system and was the integrator and installer for the entire project.

Click Here to Read Full Article

Batteries — whether they’re powering a smartphone or storing energy on the grid — take a beating.

Repeated charging and discharging causes all kinds of wear and tear on the devices we increasingly rely on to keep our gadgets, cars and renewable energy sources running. But what if batteries could repair themselves automatically and fix on-the-fly the cracks that lead to dead laptop batteries, the limited range of electric carsand other modern woes?

That’s the idea behind the work of a team led by two professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). They’re taking self-healing materials research and applying it to a novel subject area: energy storage. The hope is that a better understanding of how nanoparticles bind and come undone will lead to more reliable, longer-lasting and higher-capacity batteries.

“The idea was to try to take some of the self-healing work we’ve done in plastics and bring it into the battery world, because batteries do have all these reliability issues,” says Nancy Sottos, a professor of materials science and engineering, and one of the lead researchers on the project. “There’s a lot of cracking and chemical changes that go on in the battery that are, in general, undesirable. And of course what you see in your devices is basically they’re just not charging anymore.”

A breakthrough in battery technology is a sort of Holy Grail in today’s era of mobile communications and distributed energy. Consumers demand more and more from their portable devices, and energy storage is seen as a key ingredient for widespread renewable energy deployment. In short, better batteries would make it easier for utilities and grid operators to manage the variable flows of power from intermittent wind and solar energy sources.

The UIUC team — led by Sottos and Scott White, a professor of aerospace engineering — introduces a unique nanoparticle composite material into a key part of lithium-ion batteries, the energy-storage technology that dominates personal electronics and plays an increasing role in transportation and electricity.

In May, the team published a study in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, finding that their experimental technology mitigated a lithium-ion battery’s typical deterioration, retaining 80 percent of its initial capacity after cycling through its charge 400 times.

Click Here to Read Full Article

Giants of the UK energy sector are to work within a new collaborative group aimed at enabling significant cost reductions for the electricity system through the use of energy storage applications.

The Energy Systems Innovation Platform (ESIP) has been unveiled today by emissions reduction advisory group, the Carbon Trust and brings together utilities Centrica, DONG Energy, SSE, Scottish Power, Statoil and Wood Group’s Clean Energy division.

The companies will work together to solve what they see as “key issues” currently preventing a more cost effective transition to a low carbon energy system by developing new business models.

Andrew Lever, director of innovation at the Carbon Trust, said: “There is now general consensus that the UK energy market needs to be revamped so we can embrace a flexible and more decentralised energy system. However, the fragmented nature of the energy market is driving fragmented decision making and many investments are led by technology, not market needs.

“We now have a window of opportunity to foster new business models and put in place the regulatory mechanisms that will give investors the confidence to stop chasing market distortions and focus on the long term.

“The formation of ESIP is indicative that no one organisation can solve this issue alone and a collaborative approach is essential to deliver the biggest benefit to society as a whole.”

Representing almost half of the UK’s electricity supply market and with initial support from the Scottish government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the initiative will tackle regulatory barriers which many believe have held back the development of UK storage.

It will also seek greater transparency around the decision making made across the UK energy system concerning the services storage can provide. According to Lever, this includes the choices made across DNOs, Ofgem, National Grid and government which he said “needs to be joined up and transparent to ensure the right direction, rules and signals are given to the market”.  

It is hoped this will help ESIP develop the long term business models necessary to encourage stronger investment and reach the potential of greater flexibility in the UK energy system.

Last year the Carbon Trust led a study which found that the UK could be saving up to £2.4 billion (US$3.05 billion) every year by 2030 if flexibility solutions such as energy storage were integrated into the UK electricity system.

Click Here to Read Full Article

SaltX Technology and CSP and integrated energy systems provider Aalborg CSP have signed off on a non-exclusive joint development agreement to develop and commercialise an integrated energy storage solution for Concentrated Solar Power.

The energy storage system will be based on SaltX’s technology for large-scale energy storage, known as EnerStore.

A first prototype of the storage system is expected to be developed later in 2017, with both companies planning to secure a commercial pilot plant during 2018.

Karl Bohman, CEO of SaltX Technology, said: “SaltX and Aalborg CSP complement each other perfectly – SaltX with its cutting-edge technology, and Aalborg CSP with its strong brand, global solar project portfolio and experience to engineer and build integrated energy systems.

“The market for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is expected to explode over the next three years, especially in China, Africa and India. It is therefore important to quickly position ourselves and to accelerate the development of EnerStore.”

Over the next few months, both companies will begin jointly developing a solution that integrates the SaltX EnerStore technology into Aalborg CSP energy systems. The solution will then be marketed and sold to Aalborg CSP’s target customers worldwide.

Peter Badstue Jensen, executive vice president of Aalborg CSP, added: “With the development of EnerStore we expect the competitiveness of our integrated energy systems to increase, allowing us to offer even better feasibility and improved return on investment for our customers.

“The future will see more hybridised energy systems and together with SaltX we will be able to offer a more cost-effective, on-demand renewable energy solution than our competitors. We see this as a long-term partnership where we can grow together in this rapidly developing market.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

The first quarter was the biggest quarter ever in terms of energy storage installations, but it could also be the biggest quarter of the year, according to the latest version of the U.S Energy Storage Monitor released by GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association.

The first-quarter Energy Storage Monitor recorded 234 MWh of storage installations in the first quarter, a 944% increase compared with first-quarter 2016.

In terms of power rating, 71 MW of storage projects were deployed in the first quarter, a 276% increase over first-quarter 2016 and the second highest quarter since GTM and the ESA began tracking energy storage in 2013, beat only by installation in the fourth quarter of last year.

Much of the growth in the first quarter can be attributed to “the shift from short-duration projects to medium- and long-duration projects in the utility-scale market, along with a surge of deployments geared to offset the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage.

The Also methane gas leak jeopardized the flow of fuel for gas-fired generation, so the California Public Utilities Commission in May 2016 granted fast track approval for 104.5 MW of battery-based storage systems Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric’s service areas to offset the possible curtailment of gas-fired generation.

While the speed and scale of the Aliso Canyon storage deployments is impressive Manghani says the industry “shouldn’t get too comfortable” with that scenario because there are not that many 10+ megawatt-hour projects in the 2017 pipeline, indicating that the first quarter may be the largest quarter this year.

The completion of large storage projects is also reflected in the fact that 91% of all deployments in the first quarter were front of the meter projects. Front of the meter installations also grew by 591% on a year over year basis, boosted by large projects in California, as well as Arizona and Hawaii.

In Arizona, Tucson Electric Power signed a power purchase agreement for a low cost solar-plus-storage project that features a 100 MW solar array and a 30 MW, 120 MWh energy storage facility.

Click Here to Read Full Article