Masdar, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, has partnered with the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) of the Seychelles to build a 5MW solar PV plant with 5MW / 3.3MWh of battery storage.

The project is being financed with a AED31 million (US$8.44 million) loan from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), as well as equity from PUC.

The 5MW Ile de Romainville Solar Park will be located on the same site as the existing 6MW Port Victoria Wind Farm, which was also built by Masdar in 2013 and which also received ADFD financing of AED103 million. Both the wind and solar-plus-storage projects will also be integrated with PUC’s existing power station.

The battery will then be able to provide services for grid stability and safe operation of PUC’s conventional fuel-fired power station when supplying electricity to the main island of Mahé.

The Seychelles currently relies heavily on fossil fuels, which account for around 20% of the country’s imports. In this regard, the Ile de Romainville solar project is expected to save around 2 million litres of fuel annually.

Philippe Morin, CEO of PUC, said: “By combining solar energy with wind power, Seychelles will double its renewables capacity while freeing up resources for economic development. The battery storage component will also address the intermittency challenges of renewables, further consolidating Seychelles’ energy security.”

EPC services on the project will include subsea cabling, switchgear extensions, and an underground water piping system for module cleaning and the project is due for completion in Q2 2019.

Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, director general of ADFD, said: “Seychelles has placed climate change at the centre of its sustainable development strategy. Contributing to the financing of this solar park with integrated battery storage will bolster ADFD’s efforts in supporting the island country’s priorities, especially with regard to mitigating carbon emissions through the deployment of renewable energy. Cutting-edge projects like the Ile de Romainville Solar Park demonstrate the benefits of renewable energy ventures in long-term socio-economic development.”

The California legislature has put its stamp of approval on SB 700, a bill that will provide up to $830 million in new incentives to add behind the meter storage to residential and small business solar systems. “What we’re trying to do is create a mainstream market for energy storage, like we’ve done for solar PV,” Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar & Storage Association, tells Green Tech Media.

Backers of SB 700 call it the “Million Solar Roofs of Energy Storage” bill. They anticipate the legislation will help boost the state’s behind the meter battery storage total to 3,ooo MW by 2026, compared to only 176 MW today.

The official name of the program is the Self Generated Installation Program and it has been around in one form or another since 2006. Companies like  Tesla, Stem, Green Charge Networks, and Sunverge have taken advantage of its incentives for systems under 30 kilowatts in size.

The California PUC has amended the program to direct that 75% of the funds be used for energy storage. The application process now favors proposals that feature additional greenhouse gas or grid balancing benefits. The incentives also decrease over the period of the program, a decided advantage for those who want to add battery storage now rather than later.

While behind the meter storage is important, it comes at greater cost than grid-scale storage while giving individual customers greater control over their personal energy usage. However, some industry analysts expect the growing use of time of use rate structures could provide many of the benefits of behind the meter storage without the upfront expense.

“Funding is always a boon for an emerging technology like storage, so an additional infusion of cash will only boost the market,” says Brett Simon, senior energy storage analyst for Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.. “However, we’ve seen in recent years that SGIP, while still important, has been less of a factor in California deployments compared to the program’s early years.”

In fact last year, of the 6.5 megawatts of residential storage deployed in California, only 1.6 megawatts were SGIP projects. On the non-residential side, only 17 MW of the 45 megawatts of behind-the-meter storage installed last year received SGIP credits. “We’ve heard from developers and installers that, as storage economics have improved and customer demand has risen, some customers forgo the SGIP,” Simon adds. Many residential customers “just want to get systems installed ASAP, don’t want to worry about additional paperwork and red tape, and are generally emotional buyers anyhow who aren’t concerned with price.”

The market Study is segmented by key regions which is accelerating the marketization. At present, the market is developing its presence and some of the key players from the complete study are ABB, GE, Echelon, S&C Electric Co, Siemens, General Microgrids, Microgrid Solar, Raytheon, Sunverge Energy, Toshiba, NEC , Aquion Energy, EnStorage, SGCC, Moixa, EnSync, Ampard, Green Energy Corp, Growing Energy Labs Inc & HOMER Energy etc. 

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The key players are highly focusing innovation in production technologies to improve efficiency and shelf life. The best long-term growth opportunities for this sector can be captured by ensuring ongoing process improvements and financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies. Company profile section of players such as ABB, GE, Echelon, S&C Electric Co, Siemens, General Microgrids, Microgrid Solar, Raytheon, Sunverge Energy, Toshiba, NEC , Aquion Energy, EnStorage, SGCC, Moixa, EnSync, Ampard, Green Energy Corp, Growing Energy Labs Inc & HOMER Energy includes its basic information like legal name, website, headquarters, its market position, historical background and top 5 closest competitors by Market capitalization / revenue along with contact information. Each player/ manufacturer revenue figures, growth rate and gross profit margin is provided in easy to understand tabular format for past 5 years and a separate section on recent development like mergers, acquisition or any new product/service launch etc.

Several of the proposals approved by CAISO’s board on Wednesday were part of the third and final phase of the Energy Storage and Distributed Energy Resources (ESDER) initiative that stakeholders launched to foster greater participation of those resources in the wholesale market.

The proposals remove one more set of barriers and would allow greater participation of DERs and energy storage in the wholesale market, CAISO spokesman Steven Greenlee told Utility Dive.

The proposal approved for energy storage would allow BTM batteries to more easily consume energy during oversupply conditions and return that energy to the system during times of need.

BTM batteries can already participate in CAISO’s day-ahead and real time markets, but the proposed change to ISO rules would allow two resource identifications for one storage unit, depending on whether it is charging or discharging energy.

The rule change would create a new product, the proxy demand resource-load shift resource (PDR-LSR) that would help avoid confusion when a storage unit receives conflicting dispatch signals. In addition, it would allow a storage device to enter separate bids for charging and discharging.

That would help “incentivize behind-the-meter storage operators to operate their unit in alignment with grid needs,” Greenlee said. For example, he said, it would provide a signal for battery operators not to send energy to the grid when it is not needed or to charge when the energy is needed. The proposal would require direct metering of BTM batteries.

Subsidies will be available to residents of South Australia who want to purchase home battery systems from next month, the state’s Premier has announced.

On Saturday, the office of Premier Steven Marshall MP announced that more South Australians then ever will have access to “more affordable, reliable, secure energy”, revealing the opening of the Home Battery Scheme.

Up to 40,000 households will be eligible to receive funding towards the cost of home battery storage systems, which are in most cases – although not always – paired with solar PV installations. The state government will provide up to AU$100 million (US$71.22 million) in funding, while the Commonwealth Government (Australia’s national government) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with South Australian Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan via its Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to also provide a funding package, again worth AU$100 million.

The latter CEFC funding is understood to be enabling the additional offering of low-cost loans for solar, storage and related equipment, “competitive, flexible loans where needed, in addition to the subsidies,” Dan van Holst Pellekaan said, through which his administration expects “to be able to further assist households [to] overcome the upfront financial barriers to accessing storage technology”.

As with similar schemes already opened in limited regions of the world including Germany, Japan and latterly California, the Home Battery Scheme will offer assistance for a portion of a system’s cost. In South Australia’s case that will be capped at AU$6,000 per customer. Sample quotes from providers in Australia peg the cost of the likes of Tesla Powerwall 2 and Sonnen’s Eco systems between around AU$9,000 to AU$12,000.

The term “market disruptor” is seemingly thrown around for every new technology with promise, but it will be quite prescient when it comes to energy storage and U.S. power markets.

New U.S. energy storage projects make solar power competitive against existing coal and new natural gas generation, and could soon displace these power market incumbents.  Meanwhile, projects in Australia and Germany show how energy storage can completely reshape power market economics and generate revenue in unexpected ways .

In part one of this series, we discussed the three ways energy storage can tap economic opportunities in U.S. organized power markets. Now in part two of the series, let’s explore how storage will disrupt power markets as more and more capacity comes online.

New projects in Colorado and Nevada embody “market disruption”

True market disruption happens when existing or incumbent technologies can only improve their performance or costs incrementally and industries focus on achieving those incremental improvements, while an entirely new technology enters the market with capabilities incumbents can’t dream of with exponentially falling costs incumbents can’t approach.

As energy storage continues getting cheaper, it will increasingly out-compete other resources and change the mix of resources that run the grid.  Recent contracts for new solar-plus-storage projects signed by Xcel Energy in Colorado and NV Energy in Nevada will allow solar production to extend past sunset and into the evening peak demand period, making it competitive against existing fossil fuel resources and new natural gas.

In fact, energy storage can increasingly replace inefficient (and often dirty) peaker plants and gas plants maintained for reliability.  This trend isn’t limited to utility-scale power plants – behind the meter (i.e., small-scale or residential) energy storage surged in Q2 2018, installing more capacity than front-of-meter storage for the first time.

US energy storage deployments for the first time saw home energy storage beating out front-of-meter storage figures in the second quarter according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables’ most recent US Energy Storage Monitor.

Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables (formerly known as GTM Research) this week published its most recent US Energy Storage Monitor in collaboration with the Energy Storage Association, revealing that 156.5 megawatt-hours (MWh) of energy storage were deployed in the second quarter of 2018, 24% over the MWh installed in the first quarter of 2018 but a phenomenal 200% over that which was deployed a year earlier (though it’s worth noting that Q2’17 was particularly low).

In terms of MW installed, the second quarter saw 61.8 MW installed compared to 43.6 MW installed in the first quarter of 2018 and up 60% year-over-year.

The top energy storage markets across the United States depend on the sector in question, with California leading the residential and non-residential sectors, but Arizona driving front-of-meter deployments.

Residential deployments for the quarter were concentrated in California and Hawaii, which together accounted for 72% of all MWh deployed in the quarter. Brett Simon, a Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables senior analyst, believes that there are no signs that either state will yield their grasp on the top two spots for residential solar installation — though there is a race for the number three spot, with both Massachusetts and Arizona making ground.

“So far in 2018, 24 states and the District of Columbia have taken some form of regulatory or legislative policy action with respect to energy storage, with even more states poised to do so in 2019,” said Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association. “The industry is bullish about continued state action designed to ensure fair and equal access for storage to the grid and markets, to enable competition in all grid planning and procurements, and to capture the full value of energy storage.  As these barriers to storage are removed in state markets, we will likely see new state names on the leaderboards for residential, non-residential, and front-of-the-meter deployments.”

While the growth of the residential market segment will remain strong, the authors of the report do not expect that pace of growth to continue for the rest of the year due to the lack of supply.

Residential installers and distributors are saying that there are not enough residential storage systems available to meet demand, Brett Simon, senior energy storage analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, told Greentech Media.

Usually the second half of the year tops the first half, but because of lithium-ion constraints, Simon is expecting comparable numbers for residential energy storage deployments in the second half. Longer term, however, Wood Mackenzie does not expect lithium-ion battery supply to be an issue because several large battery manufacturing plants are scheduled to open early in the next decade.

Another report also saw strong growth in residential energy storage. The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) reported that residential energy storage additions grew by 202% from 2016 to 2017 while non-residential storage deployments grew at only a 9% rate.​

The Wood Mackenzie report found that most of the growth in the residential storage market came from California and Hawaii, which accounted for 72% of the megawatt hours of energy storage deployed in the second quarter.

Most of the growth in storage deployment over the second quarter was the result of a rebound in the non-residential market and the continued strength of the residential market, the report said.

The strong performance of residential energy storage is not “an aberration,” Simon told Utility Dive via email. He expects the economics of residential storage to continue to improve, as net metering programs change and utility tariffs shift to more time-of-use rates. In addition, “BTM solar installers continue to improve their understanding of storage and are more heavily investing this piece of their business line,” Simon said.

Simon expects California and Hawaii to continue to lead the residential energy storage market because of favorable policies. California’s second Demand Response Auction Mechanism 2019 results included at least 2 MW of BTM energy storage. And the state’s Self Generation Incentive Program, which offers incentives for BTM storage projects, was recently extended by the legislature with $800 million in funding.

US-based energy storage technology provider Powin Energy has claimed it has a pipeline close to 500MWh of projects under contract, including recent awards totalling 70MWh for customers in North and Central America and in Italy.

Powin supplies lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for utility-scale energy storage projects, delivering large-scale systems into strategically important markets. The company, which in 2017 was awarded some big contracts in leading storage market territories including a 26.5MWh project in California and a 52.8MWh roll out of systems in Canada, made a ‘pivot’ towards the end of that year from developing projects to a focus on technology provision.

An update from the company issued this week spells out just how active it currently is. There is a sizeable microgrid system under construction, coupled with an islanded natural gas generator in Mexico, using a 12MW/12MWh battery storage system. Aiding operations at a manufacturing plant, the system will provide voltage and frequency regulation as well as emergency spinning reserve for the manufacturing facility.

In Italy, Powin will provide a battery system for deployment at a coal power plant, a 10MW/10MWh system to deliver frequency regulation services to the grid. The unnamed customer is a large utility company. In Energy-Storage.news’ recent video round table feature, ‘Silver bullets are for werewolf movies: Being real about energy storage’, panellist Marek Kubik of rival storage tech provider Fluence used an example of a project he had worked on in Chile to illustrate how batteries deployed at existing coal plants can work together to boost efficiency and by extension play a role in emissions reduction.

Powin also highlighted the completion of two recent projects in Ontario, Canada, a market which Energy-Storage.news has pointed out many other providers and developers have also spotted the potential of. While many recent headlines have focused on the commercial and industrial sector and the business case for ‘peak shaving’ by businesses that pay high rates for electricity due to Ontario’s Global Adjustment Charge policy, Powin’s two completed projects deliver ancillary services for the province’s IESO (Independent electricity system operator).