Fractal Energy Storage Consultants

Three Key Ideas Emerging about Microgrids in an Era of Societal Disruption

on June 9, 2020

Microgrids are among the disruptive class of tech, that which challenges the status quo to improve society. However, lately a technology’s worth is based less on how well it disrupts and more on how well it responds to societal disruption.

With the disruption brought by COVID-19, products like teleconferencing, home delivery and telemedicine appear to be emerging as winners. So too are microgrids, as became apparent last week as more than 4,000 people joined our virtual conference — the largest gathering ever of those interested in microgrids. They came to understand — and help chart — a course for microgrids in this new era.

More than 50 energy leaders offered their take on the role of microgrids as society rethinks the old way of doing things — and where it really can’t lose power. Here are three key messages we took away.

Supply chains are thin. Flexibility is crucial
The pandemic reminded us that it’s impossible to prepare for every contingency, noted Erik Svenholm, vice president of non-wires alternatives at S&C Electric. “Flexibility and ability to quickly adjust are crucial.”

And that’s what microgrids offer with their multiple energy assets and intelligence that allows them to quickly shift what combination of solar, storage, generators, grid assets or other resources are best to employ at any given time based on grid reliability, weather, pricing and other metrics. This is something mere backup generators cannot do.

“For energy resiliency a backup generator solves a single issue a single way, has its own supply chain and inserts a new point of failure,” he said. “The best bet is to have flexible systems with multiple operational modes and pathways that have a better chance of exhibiting a useful operating mode regardless of what actually happens out there. For microgrids, to me, this points toward advanced systems with multiple energy sources and use cases.”

Energy Storage Could Take $40B Foothold in Microgrid Sector By 2029

on June 9, 2020

A growth in microgrids will drive a major rise in energy storage capacity over the next decade, according to a new report.

Guidehouse Insights (formerly Navigant Research) forecasts that cumulative capacity for new installed energy storage in microgrids is expected to exceed 36,938 MW globally by 2029. The installations, if fully realized, could generate about $40 billion in revenue worldwide.

“The markets for both energy storage and microgrids have developed significantly in the last few years thanks to major price decreases and accelerated adoption,” says Ricardo F. Rodriguez, research analyst with Guidehouse Insights. “Looking ahead, the global market for ESMG is expected to grow rapidly, with total annual capacity additions increasing from 650.4 MW in 2020 to 8,633.4 MW in 2029.”

Microgrids are increasing in adoption at military posts and in storm-ravaged areas looking for grid resiliency. A previous Navigant report indicated that about 575 microgrid projects moved into planning or deployment phrases in the first half of 2019 alone.

Microgrids can involve and integrate various generation resources including solar, combined heat and power (CHP) and diesel or gas-fired on-site power gensets. They do not require energy storage/battery assets, but the latter provides a backup and balancing solutions for the intermittency of the renewable resources.

In April 2019, ABB and Rolls-Royce announced a global partnership on microgrid technology and advanced automation. Together the two companies will offer a microgrid solution for utilities, commercial and industrial entities.

Through the partnership, Rolls-Royce’s MTU Onsite Energy brand power system solutions will be combined with ABBs Ability e-Mesh modular microgrid solution, control capability and remote service.

The Pandemic Affects the Pace of Renewables’ Deployment, Not Its Future

on June 9, 2020

While the novel coronavirus pandemic stalled the expansion of the renewables sector in the U.S. and abroad, the industry is ready to ramp up as nations reopen.

“The largest effect from the pandemic we have seen [on the renewables’ industry] is the slowing of construction activity,” according to Erin Decker, director, cleantech client management for Schneider Electric. “It takes a long time for products to get built. There is slowing there, as well as slowing within the infrastructure and supply chain in the U.S. and Europe. There also is uncertainty in the capital markets, and some are slowing to look at new renewables in the U.S.”

Crises aside, renewables are poised for even more growth
Despite the economic slowdown of the past few months affecting construction, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has forecasted that renewables will account for the largest portion of new electricity generating capacity this year. The EIA says it anticipates the power generation sector will more than 20 gigawatts of new wind power capacity and close to 13 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity in 2020 – in sum, the renewables sector will be the most rapidly growing source of power generation in 2020.

In a boost to the U.S. renewables industry, a recent IRS ruling allows solar and wind power companies with projects in the pipeline another year to get them online, due to the pandemic, and still receive the Federal Production Tax Credit. “Every business has had to adjust for safety, as the world emerges, and that goes for renewable energy as well,” added Decker.

Not to mention that goals for clean energy remain in place and banks and investors view renewable energy as a solid investment, according to Renewable Energy World.

Wind and solar power continue to be the dominant renewable energy in the U.S., and more companies are eager to finance projects through renewable energy certificates and power purchase agreements. “Some have invested directly,” Decker said. “There have been massive amounts invested by corporations already.”

Community Energy Utilities in California Investigate Long Duration Energy Storage

on June 8, 2020

A group of 11 community-focused energy utility groups in California have issued a Request for Information on long duration energy storage technologies that could be connected to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) grid.

Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) are permitted to supply energy to residents in several US states. In California CCAs operate in the service areas of the major investor-owned utilities and benefit from the IOUs infrastructure, while being able to freely determine their energy suppliers and generation mix. Deanne Barrow, a senior associate at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, who has worked on several deals involving CCAs, told Energy-Storage.news recently that the CCAs role in procuring energy in the US is growing.

Energy-Storage.news has reported on several moves by CCAs to procure energy storage, both standalone and in combination with solar PV. Most recently, in early April this year, CCA CalChoice picked esVolta for a 15MW / 60MWh lithium-ion battery storage system to help provide Resource Adequacy in Santa Paula, a city in California’s Ventura County.

Later that month, thin-film solar technology company and project developer First Solar signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) with CCAs Monterey Bay Community Power (MBCP) and Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE) for a 100MW solar PV plant combined with 20MW / 50MWh of battery energy storage systems.

Last week, the long duration request for information was published jointly by MBCP, SVCE and nine other CCAs: Clean Power Alliance of Southern California, CleanPowerSF, East Bay Community Energy, Marin Clean Energy, Peninsula Clean Energy, Redwood Coast Energy Authority, San Jose Clean Energy, Sonoma Clean Power and Valley Clean Energy.

The groups are collecting information to help with their long-term resource planning, through which a need for long duration storage has been identified. The ‘Joint CCAs’ group also said the information may inform a “subsequent long-duration storage request for offers” that might be issued “as soon as this summer”, either by the CCAs in some combination, or individually.

Battery Storage for Microgrids Growing Globally, But Needs Utility Support

on June 8, 2020

Energy storage systems are on the rise as a component of new microgrids or portable energy supplies that have traditionally used fossil fuel-based resources. But utilities need to undertake more widespread usage of storage on permanent microgrids, according to Guidehouse Insights.

Peter Asmus, who developed the “Energy Storage for Microgrids and Remote Power Systems” report with primary author Ricardo Rodriquez, said that utilities need to play a bigger role in developing permanent microgrids. Utilities have played a lead role in remote microgrid projects in places like Alaska, but are not in the lead on permanent microgrids in California or anywhere.

Utilities seem to be “waiting to see how it’s all going to play out,” he said in an interview with Microgrid Knowledge.

He also noted that California utilities rejected some proposals for storage on permanent microgrids because they didn’t think the microgrids could be up and running by this year’s fire season.

Such efforts as Pacific Gas & Electric’s December 2019 solicitation for 20 microgrids, totalling more than 500 MW, was disappointing to storage developers because it mostly used fossil-fuel sources and placed the microgrids at substations rather than customer sites. The utility in March said it had temporarily suspended, but not canceled the project.

Adding storage to microgrid projects, however, offers various benefits to the system, including enhancing the ability of the microgrid to manage renewable energy. The battery can store energy for discharge in the evening when the solar panels are no longer generating electricity, for example.

Hawaii Leads Way in Long Duration Battery Storage on Road to 100% Renewables

on June 5, 2020

The island state of Hawaii has clearly taken the lead in the global pursuit of long duration battery storage, after its main electric utility revealed this week the details of 16 winning battery storage tenders in a second round of auctions that feature up to eight hours of battery storage.

The results are quite stunning for an industry used to being told that batteries are not a reasonable proposition for more than two or four hours of storage, and are normally best in shorter periods where their fast, accurate and flexible response make them ideal to provide essential grid services such as frequency control and more recently inertia.

However, storage lengths of two to four hours have become more common as the owners of large scale wind and solar farms look to store more output to ensure they can be put into the grid when needed most, and when prices are higher. Four hour battery storage proposals have become common in states like California, where batteries are increasingly preferred to peaking gas generators.

Now, Hawaii has pushed the barriers even further back. All but two of the battery storage proposals announced for the islands of Oahu, Maui and Hawaii feature at least four hours storage, while one 30MW project put forward by leading US developer AES proposes eight hours storage (240MWh) on the island of Oahu.

The deep storage proposed for Hawaii is likely a matter of need: It has fewer options for pumped hydro or other non-fossil dispatchable generation, and not so many possibilities for wind energy, which might have offered some balance to the solar plans.

The proposals were detailed by Hawaiian Electric, which is at the forefront of the local government’s law to reach 100 per cent renewables by 2045 – largely to replace the huge bill for imported oil and gas, and the last remaining coal fired generator on the island of Oahu which is due to close in 2022.

Oil & Gas Still King Despite Renewable Hype

on June 5, 2020

The death of coal has run hand-in-hand with the rise of renewable energy, though the real credit for killing king coal might just go to U.S. shale. Even if the renewable revolution is growing too big to ignore.

There are plenty of environmental and ideological reasons that many academics and pundits are pushing for placing renewable energy at the heart of COVID-19 economic recovery plans. But it turns out that there are plenty of economically compelling reasons for a renewables-forward strategy as well. Last month the World Economic Forum published a report pleading with the energy industry to use the novel coronavirus’ unprecedented disruption of the economic and societal status quo to begin building a “new energy order.” Although COVID-19 has severely battered (in some cases irreparably) huge portions of the global energy industry, this is a unique opportunity to redirect resources, investment, and research and development into renewable energy ventures that we may never see again in our lifetimes–and then it will be too late.

“Though this is the worst possible way to begin a decade, the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of oil prices also offer an opportunity to consider unorthodox intervention in the energy markets and global collaboration to support the recovery phase once the acute crisis subsides,” stated the World Economic Forum. “This giant reset grants us the option to launch aggressive, forward-thinking and long-term strategies leading to a diversified, secure and reliable energy system that will ultimately support the future growth of the world economy in a sustainable and equitable way.”

Writers at the Verge also argued that renewable energy should be the way forward and is the clear answer to employing the tens of thousands of oil patch workers that have been fired or furloughed thanks to the oil price crash of recent months. As business as usual has ceased to become an option, “transforming America into a country that runs on clean energy is one-way experts hope to alleviate the devastating economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Verge reported.

‘Calm Before The Storm’: US Deployed 98MW / 208MWh of Energy Storage During First Quarter of 2020

on June 5, 2020

Research firm Wood Mackenzie has held onto its forecast that the US will deploy around 7GW of energy storage annually by 2025 and found that 97.5MW / 208MWh of storage was installed during the first quarter of this year.

COVID-19 caused some near-term downside in the market during Q1 2020, particularly in the behind-the-meter segment, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables notes in the latest edition of its quarterly US Energy Storage Monitor report, but acknowledged that the impacts of the pandemic did not begin to really hit the sector until March and April, meaning that its effect on installations overall was limited.

From conversations with industry participants, Wood Mackenzie found that the market downside was mainly to be found “as a result of challenges relating to customer acquisition, installation and interconnection”. Brett Simon, senior analyst for energy storage at the company tweeted yesterday that the first quarter was “the calm before the storm,” and that the “economy-wide slowdown will bleed into market opportunities” in 2021 as well as during this year.

Although Brett Simon said that forecasts for this year and next have therefore been revised downward to reflect this, overall his firm still believes the annual market in the US will reach 7GW annually by the middle of this decade, having predicted earlier this year pre-pandemic that it expected that figure to be closer to 7.3GW.

The amount of annual deployment expected in 2020 is around 1.2GW, and the market will still exceed the US$1 billion mark in value for this year. By 2025 that figure will be closer to US$6.9 billion annually, according to the Monitor report. The company expects significant growth in residential, non-residential and front-of-the-meter segments, with front-of-meter becoming the biggest segment by far this year and continuing to grow.

UK Industry Says More Energy Storage is Needed, as COVID-19 Offers Glimpse of Low Carbon Future

on June 4, 2020

Industry voices in the UK have said that electricity market activity during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the network will become prohibitively expensive and possibly unmanageable without the further rapid deployment of energy storage.

In article published last week by our UK-based energy transition site, Current±, Aaron Lally, head of trading at aggregator and battery asset operator Kiwi Power said that the penultimate weekend in May, during which a record was set for low carbon intensity, offered a “glimpse of how the electricity grid has to look if National Grid are to hit 2025 targets”.

National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO) arm said that the grid dropped to 46g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of power on Sunday 24 May. Power generator Drax’s Electric Insights service also measured that wholesale electricity price on the day-ahead market across Friday 22 May – which was a public holiday – averaged out at £-9.92 (US$-12.43) per MWh, more than halving the previous record low set in December 2019 of £-4.62 per Mh. Prices bottomed out at £-52.03 per MWh at one point on the Friday morning.

With the UK still in lockdown and a public holiday taking place, the grid operator used its Optional Downward Flexibility Management (ODFM) service to balance the network. This is a new tool brought in by the operator that allows it to balance over generation without the need to turn off embedded generation without warning – which means that renewable assets do not have to be curtailed in large numbers, as had been feared.

Kiwi Power as well as EDF’s Energy Trading Services division both said that they helped balanced the grid using the ODFM. Batteries can play their role as they can absorb energy from the grid, EDF’s head of trading Chris Regan pointed out in a LinkedIn post.

Kiwi Power’s Aaron Lally similarly said that his company “utilised battery storage site across various revenue streams including ODFM, the new National Grid service to manage low demand,” during the long weekend.

Are Diamonds The Future Of Energy Storage?

on June 4, 2020

The advance of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs) has incentivized scientists to look into various ways to solve the problem with efficient energy storage, which is the key to wider adoption of green energy technologies.

Most research focuses on batteries—how to make lithium-ion batteries safer and more efficient or how other, cheaper elements, can be used in batteries.

Most previous research has focused on the chemical storage and the electrochemical reactions in batteries.

Now researchers at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) are proposing a design based on the mechanical properties of nanostructures containing diamonds that could potentially be used in mechanical energy storage devices, including batteries, biomedical sensing systems, wearables, and small robotics and electronics.

The mechanical functions of a diamond nanothread (DNT) bundle have the potential to store and release energy when stretched or twisted. These diamond nanothread bundles consist of one-dimensional carbon threads.

“Similar to a compressed coil or children’s wind-up toy, energy can be released as the twisted bundle unravels,” Dr. Haifei Zhan from the QUT Centre for Materials Science said in a statement.

Zhan and his colleagues have found that the diamond bundles have high energy density—that is how much energy a system contains compared to its mass. The team have successfully modeled the mechanical energy storage and release capabilities of a DNT bundle and published their research paper in Nature Communications.

The model is just a first step in the team’s research into the potential of mechanical energy storage as compared to electrochemical energy storage. The scientists now plan to design an experimental nanoscale mechanical energy system as proof of concept and will spend the next two-three years building the system that will control the twisting and stretching of the nanothread bundle.

Three Key Ideas Emerging about Microgrids in an Era of Societal Disruption

Energy Storage Could Take $40B Foothold in Microgrid Sector By 2029

The Pandemic Affects the Pace of Renewables’ Deployment, Not Its Future

Community Energy Utilities in California Investigate Long Duration Energy Storage

Battery Storage for Microgrids Growing Globally, But Needs Utility Support

Hawaii Leads Way in Long Duration Battery Storage on Road to 100% Renewables

Oil & Gas Still King Despite Renewable Hype

‘Calm Before The Storm’: US Deployed 98MW / 208MWh of Energy Storage During First Quarter of 2020

UK Industry Says More Energy Storage is Needed, as COVID-19 Offers Glimpse of Low Carbon Future

Are Diamonds The Future Of Energy Storage?

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