A battery software start-up company spun out of one of the largest research groups for energy storage at RWTH Aachen University in Germany recently secured €2.3 million in seed funding to commercialise and expand a platform that aims to take a lot of the “hassle” out of operating energy storage systems.

Dr Kai-Philipp Kairies, a battery scientist and former research programme leader and technical consulting department head at the industry-focused university, is now CEO of ACCURE. The company uses both laboratory and operational data to determine and forecast the health of batteries, allowing customers to analyse and monitor the best ways to use those assets and to gain transparency on how long they will last in the field under a range of usage parameters.

Dr Kairies spoke to us for our recent tech deep dive into Tesla’s Battery Day and we also took the opportunity to learn more about ACCURE and what it aims to do. From working at the heart of the University at Aachen’s “amazing battery technology ecosystem,” Kairies and his colleagues realised that mobility and energy companies and grid operators alike were “all facing very similar challenges, based on the fact that batteries are pretty complex”.

ACCURE manages more than 200,000 battery modules out in the field, including residential storage for one of Germany’s major providers, E3DC, utility-scale storage systems and electromobility: not just electric cars and their chargers, but also electric ships too.

What are some of the key challenges that you said your customers are facing, based on the “complexity” of batteries and their operation?

Designing an energy storage system is a very lengthy and difficult process and then operating it the right way – that would be manageable, but most system integrators have at least two, three, or four suppliers of battery modules.

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Indian Energy LLC, a utility-scale and microgrid development and systems integration firm, was awarded $1.2 million by the California Energy Commission (CEC) to demonstrate a non-lithium ion, long-duration energy storage solution.

According to Indian Energy, long-duration, non-lithium ion energy storage is the final key to unlocking renewables and permanently evading the blackouts and brownouts that California is currently facing due to fires, a changing energy mix and climate change. Without storage, 100% renewables penetration is not possible. To address this, the California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded a number of grants earlier this year to lead in solving these problems.

The grant was the result of CEC Solicitation GFO-19-306, “Demonstrating Long-Duration and Title 24-Compatible Energy Storage Technologies.” The purpose of this solicitation was to fund technology demonstration and the deployment of research projects that support the State of California’s “Development of Customer’s Business Proposition to Accelerate Integrated Distributed Storage Market.” The energy storage goals are aimed at rapidly advancing the deployment of state-of-the-art and 100% renewable microgrids in California. These projects involve both the installation and operation of pre-and post-commercial energy storage technologies.

Utilizing the grant funds, Indian Energy, along with partners Webcor and KE Storage Corporation (KESC), will develop an energy storage Integration and Certification Unit (VICU), located on the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay lands.

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The California Energy Commission (CEC) selected UK-based Invinity Energy Systems for funding as part of an initiative for long-duration, non-lithium energy storage with the use of its vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) technology. CEC also awarded modular microgrid energy solution company, BoxPower, a $1.2 million dollar grant to further develop its software and hardware solution at 15 microgrid sites in California.

California’s renewable generation often outstrips demand, though not always when energy is most needed. The CEC, California’s primary energy policy and planning agency, sees long-duration storage as a key to stabilize the grid and deliver on the state’s decarbonization goals.

State officials expect that California needs 1 gigawatt (GW) of new long-duration energy storage to advance its targets for electricity sector decarbonization. Consequently, a $20m solicitation was launched this year to fund innovative long-duration non-lithium storage.

The CEC received 23 proposals and selected eight for funding, with four of the winning eight including VFBs supplied by Invinity. The project sites in California are comprised of 7.8MWh of Invinity VFBs. Invinity’s long-duration batteries will be paired with renewable energy to perform services including peak shaving, demand charge reduction and provision of back-up power.

Invinity’s VFBs are a form of heavy duty, non-degrading, stationary energy storage which are deployed in high-utilization, industrial applications such as grid balancing, renewable ‘firming’ and electric vehicle integration. In addition to the state’s wind and solar generation, the storage system can power for eight to ten hours for a 20- to 30-year lifespan. This solution yields better economics for these energy-shifting applications than comparable lithium-ion batteries.

“California has pioneered renewable technology for decades, but their electric grid is currently plagued by problems, with wildfires, regular blackouts and tremendous instability in electricity supply,” said Matt Harper, Chief Commercial Officer at Invinity. “Our vanadium flow batteries can help to address these issues by dispatching clean, low-cost renewable energy on demand, delivering the stability needed to achieve California’s ambitious decarbonization targets.”

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Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corp. (Rosatom) is entering the energy storage business through its TVEL Fuel Company (TVEL) unit, which has set up a dedicated subsidiary, Renera.

The new company will produce module type lithium-ion traction batteries for electric vehicles, as well as energy storage systems for emergency power supplies, renewable energy resources, and the smoothing of load demand, TVEL stated.

“Our enterprises have had some experience in developing energy storage products, and since 2018,” a company spokesperson told pv magazine. “But now a special-purpose company is finally incorporated to develop this business systematically.”

“We are committed to comply with individual customer requirements for technical specifications and offer flexible commercial conditions,” said Renera General Director Emin Askerov. “We already accomplish projects under a rent scheme and plan to start leasing and life cycle agreements.”

Rosatom is already operating in the renewable energy sector via its NovaWind unit, which mostly focuses on the wind power business.

“We have an R&D center which is capable to develop energy storage solutions as for grids and substations, as well as for renewable energy sources, including both wind and solar,” the spokesperson said.

The Russian state-owned conglomerate’s nuclear power plants currently cover around 20% of Russia’s total electricity demand.

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North America is currently leading the world for utility-scale energy storage deployments, but could be overtaken by the second-largest market, the Asia-Pacific region, as early as 2023, according to forecasting and analysis by Guidehouse Insights.

The Colorado-headquartered research company recently published its Q3 2020 ‘Utility-scale energy storage market update’, which examines market drivers, trends and forecasts for the large-scale energy storage industry worldwide through to 2029.

Only a couple of years ago, utility-scale energy storage was considered “too expensive or complex for integration into energy markets” in many parts of the world, but since then there has been a “major shift”, Guidehouse analysts said. Guidehouse expects annual installed utility-scale storage power capacity to be in the region of 25,000MW globally by 2029, and more than 5,000MW next year, more than doubling this year’s figures.

While renewable energy integration remains, and is expected to continue to be, the strongest driver of that growth, energy storage can help and reduce costs associated with many different aspects of the power system, according to Guidehouse.

“Developed markets with growing storage industries have shown that once energy storage becomes a component of utility planning, cost-effective opportunities to use the technology will present themselves,” report authors Pritil Gunjan, Ricardo Rodriguez and Maria Chavez told Energy-Storage.news.

“In the US, the mandated inclusion of energy storage alongside other assets in utility integrated resource planning (IRP) processes quickly led to the identification of new project opportunities. This trend will replicate itself in emerging markets throughout the world once a sufficient level of understanding has been achieved.”

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South Africa’s Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy is conducting a fairly unique procurement programme for 2GW of energy capacity, to come from a “range of energy source technologies”.

With a closing date of 25 November this year and projects needing to be in commercial operation by mid-2022, the government, together with the national energy regulator, has determined that it quickly needs to bridge the gap between demand and supply on the grid.

Independent power producers (IPPs) are invited to prepare bids for projects with an installed capacity of between 50MW and 450MW, for 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs). Winning projects will need to be dispatchable under terms defined by the tender: the main requirement being that they can dispatch power to the grid as needed between the hours of 05:00 and 21:30.

With the tender closed off to coal and diesel plants, this opens a pathway for renewable energy projects paired with energy storage, it also leaves the door open for natural gas. Consultancy Clean Horizon has partnered with local renewables consultancy Harmattan to unpick and analyse the tender and how it works.

Clean Horizon head of market analysis, Corentin Baschet, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about what the “almost technology agnostic” tender aims to do and the type of companies and projects likely to be successful in it.

The new tender is called the Risk Mitigation IPP Request for Proposals (RFP) – what’s the element of risk mitigation about and how is that put into the tender’s design?

The Risk Mitigation IPP RFP is a 2GW tender put out by the government of South Africa. ‘Risk mitigation’: because they’re lacking 2GW of capacity in the coming years, they’re risking a lot of load shedding essentially. Coal and diesel cannot participate [in the tender], it’s open to gas, renewables and storage. It’s close to technology agnostic, it’s made so that any distributed generation power plant can participate, except for diesel and coal.

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