A year after Massachusetts awarded $20 million in energy storage grants, the first project is online and showing promise to help shave peak demand, save customers money, and pave the way for more solar power.

Municipal utility Braintree Electric Light Department (BELD) paid for most of the $2.6 million battery installation using its reserve funds and some of its business customers invested additional money in exchange for lower demand charges.

But it was a grant from Massachusetts’ Advancing Commonwealth Energy Storage (ACES) program that helped make the numbers add up for the pilot project. The program is part of the state’s Energy Storage Initiative, which has a goal of deploying 200 megawatt-hours of energy storage in the state by 2020, up from the current level of seven megawatt-hours.

In 2016, the state commissioned a report on the use of energy storage in the state and strategies to expand its deployment. Among the recommendations was a grant program to provide at least $10 million to demonstration projects that would identify and resolve obstacles to storage deployment, explore business models, and help developers gain experience working through the kinks of the process.

This proposal became the ACES program. In December 2017, the state announced $20 million in grants — twice the original target sum — to 26 projects planned for commercial sites, utilities, hospitals and education institutions.

The battery storage industry is at a pivotal moment, said Eric Hittinger, an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Rochester with a focus on electricity production. Like solar a decade ago, storage technology is getting better and cheaper, and is widely perceived as having strong potential, but there is still some uncertainty about it, he said.

“People see it as a tech that can provide a lot of value,” he said. “But it’s perceived as a little bit risky — people are not sure how to use it, where to put it, what the business model is.”

The PJM Interconnection has made a temporary change in the rules for its frequency regulation market that could mean lower revenue and market participation for energy storage.

The proposed rule — which still requires approval by federal regulators — addresses price spikes, or “price excursions,” observed by PJM staff.

Reinstates floor value

PJM stakeholders endorsed a rule change that would reinstate a floor value of 0.1 for the “benefits factor” the regional transmission organization uses to compensate for different types of frequency regulation resources.

Two types of resources can participate in PJM’s frequency regulation market: Reg D for fast responding resources, such as batteries, and Reg A for conventional resources, such as gas turbines or hydropower. PJM has only one market for frequency regulation, however, so the benefits factor is designed to create equivalence between offers from the two types of resources.

PJM set the benefits factor floor value at 1 in December 2015, but modified it in January 2017 and then effectively removed it in August 2018.

When the benefits factor fell to values approaching zero it would skew the results of the equations that PJM uses to score offers in the frequency regulation market. The benefits factor is always present as a denominator in those equations, which also include values for a performance score and a lost opportunity cost.

In cases where the benefits factor fell to less than 0.1 and the lost opportunity cost was above zero, PJM observed regulation market clearing prices as high as $7,000/MWh. Between May 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2018, PJM observed 80 intervals where the regulation market clearing price was above $500/MWh and 16 of these hours had marginal benefits factors less than 0.1. By way of comparision, the weighted average clearing price for regulation was $32.99/MW in the first six months of 2018.

Solar, UPS and the Kokam acquisition

The battery boom is coming to China, California and basically everywhere else—and it will be even bigger than previously thought.

The global energy-storage market will surge to a cumulative 942 gigawatts by 2040, according to a new forecast from Bloomberg NEF published Tuesday, and that growth will necessitate $1.2 trillion in investment. Sharply falling battery costs is a key driver of the boom. BNEF sees the capital cost of a utility-scale lithium-ion storage system falling another 52 percent by 2030.

But cost isn’t the only factor. Governments from China to California are spurring demand, as is the rise of electric vehicles and solar power. There’s also been a greater focus on storage for electric-vehicle charging as well as energy access in remote areas.

“Costs have come down faster than we expected,” Yayoi Sekine, a New York-based analyst at BNEF, said in an interview. “Batteries are going to permeate our lives.”

The implications of cheaper batteries are far-reaching, upending multiple industries and helping spur technologies necessary to help fight climate change. Batteries power the electric vehicles that are popping up on our freeways. They also unlock solar power from the exclusive confines of the sun.

Two important markets come into particular focus. China, which is building up its battery-manufacturing capacity, will be a central player in the boom. California, meanwhile, has pushed through a series of measures in recent years that will directly or indirectly spur more batteries, including legislation that would require all of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by 2045.

Largest single rooftop

CARMEL, Ind. — A recent MISO workshop on storage providing transmission services made clear how much the technology is blurring the once clear lines between generation and transmission.

In opening the Oct. 31 workshop, MISO Director of Planning Jeff Webb jokingly nodded to the industry’s choice of “SATA” as shorthand for “storage as a transmission asset,” saying: “Happy Halloween. Welcome to what we’re calling SATAN’s workshop.”

MISO last month detailed how SATA would be evaluated in its annual Transmission Expansion Plan reliability studies compared with traditional solutions. The RTO is proposing that costs for storage projects selected as a preferred transmission solution would be recovered in local transmission zonal rates while avoiding double recovery for the same service in the energy market. (See MISO Contemplates Storage as Tx Reliability Asset.)

“I don’t expect … that we’re going to have a lot of energy storage resources that we’re going to consider to be the preferred option,” Webb said.

For now, MISO is only proposing a model for storage to act as a transmission reliability solution, solving thermal, voltage or stability issues. Beyond that, Webb said the RTO will have to pick through more complex Tariff issues.

He said it will hold off on discussions around evaluating storage as economic transmission, competitive storage projects and how regional cost sharing for high-voltage transmission projects applies to storage.

The Interconnection Question

MISO has laid out potential paths for interconnecting SATA, including only requiring the MTEP process — not the interconnection queue — for transmission-only assets. An interconnection queue requirement would kick in if a storage owner decides to begin offering market services.

Alternatively, MISO could require entering the interconnection queue for all SATA, even for assets that don’t plan on participating in the energy market, Webb said. Some stakeholders also contend that SATA providing some market services should not be subject to a queue requirement unless it plans to offer capacity.

Clean tech giant Tesla has delivered its Powerpack battery storage system to a tidal power station off the coast of the Shetland Islands in the UK.

Tesla’s Powerpack can store excess energy generated at the tidal power station, which is operated by Scottish firm Nova Innovation, to be used when the turbines stop producing electricity.

Nova Innovation CEO Simon Forrest said: “By storing the clean energy generated by the natural ebb and flow of the tide, we can control the supply of electricity to the grid to match demand. This creates a consistent source of completely predictable power from a clean, sustainable resource.

“Nova’s expertise in smart grid control, renewable generation and energy storage has delivered this game-changing innovation. We now look forward to expanding our services to other markets and renewable projects.”

The scale of the project, said to create “the world’s first grid-connected ‘baseload’ tidal power station”, has not been confirmed. However, the 600kW tidal system has now been connected to the national grid.

The delivery of Powerpack battery storage system was backed by the Scottish Government, which donated £272,606 in funds to the project.

Scotland’s Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse commented: “This project will utilise both renewable tidal technology and battery storage from one of the world’s pioneers of battery storage, Tesla, to overcome the challenges of current grid constraints and to enable the improved, uninterrupted, provision of low carbon energy not only in Shetland but in other small island communities across Scotland.

“Crucially, however, by undertaking this work in Scotland, we can also play a key role in helping inform the sustainable decarbonisation of energy for communities across the world.”

Tesla has already deployed its Powerpack battery storage system for several renewable solar and wind projects, but this is the first tidal power station using the technology.

Sembcorp has signed an agreement to build 6.2MW of rooftop solar projects on top of two Singapore facilities owned by a major energy industry service provider, including one of Singapore’s largest rooftop projects, standing at 4.7MW.

Both systems together are expected to produce around 7,435MWh of power annually. The solar farm will help power the on-site operations of the customer, with surplus power channelled to the grid. One of the two locations, located in the Tuas area, is also said to be the largest solar installation on a single rooftop in Singapore to date, with more than 12,700 solar panels amounting to over 4.7MW.

Sembcorp Group president and CEO Neil McGregor said: “We are very pleased to sign this 25-year deal and welcome another new client for our solar power solutions that help companies save money and cut their carbon footprint. With this newest project, Sembcorp now has over 115MW peak of solar power assets in operation and under development. As we grow our solar portfolio here, Sembcorp is actively supporting Singapore in its goal of achieving 350MW peak of solar power capacity by 2020.”

Sembcorp also unveiled a range of affordable power plans for residential customers yesterday with a range of options.

Energy storage collaboration

In related news, Sembcorp will collaborate with Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) as part of a pilot programme to support the deployment of energy storage in the country and they will partner on piloting storage systems. EMA will also help Sembcorp explore business models for energy storage systems, and facilitate regulatory and market approvals for Sembcorp’s operation of such systems in Singapore.

The initiative, also known as ACCESS (ACCelerating Energy Storage for Singapore), aims to make storage more common in Singapore as it can help counter the intermittency of renewable power sources and enhance the overall stability of the grid. It can also potentially allow consumers to save on their energy bills by storing power for use at peak times.

ISO New England, joined by the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL), has filed revisions with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to codify a new design that would enable batteries and other storage technologies to more fully participate in the New England wholesale electricity markets.

According to ISO New England, the revisions would allow emerging storage technologies to be dispatched in the Real-Time Energy Market in a manner that more fully recognizes their ability to transition continuously and rapidly between a charging state and a discharging state. The revisions would also provide a means for their simultaneous participation in the energy, reserves and regulation markets.

The ISO and NEPOOL filed the changes on Oct. 10 and have requested FERC respond by Dec. 10 so that the changes can become effective on April 1, 2019.

In early 2016, in response to growing interest in storage participation, the ISO began working to build a platform that would enable batteries and other similar technologies to participate more fully in the wholesale markets. When FERC issued Order No. 841 in early 2018, the ISO had already completed the internal design work on the new storage design, and the process of vetting those revisions with NEPOOL was already scheduled.

The new storage design brings the region a long way toward compliance with Order No. 841, according to ISO. The new storage revisions, if approved, will become effective eight months before the effective date contemplated in Order No. 841.