ISO New England and interconnecting transmission owner Central Maine Power on Dec. 19 filed with FERC an executed non-conforming Standard Small Generator Interconnection Agreement with FPL Energy Wyman for a 16 MW battery project at an existing power plant site in Maine.

The existing generating facilities where this project site is located make up the Wyman Station, which is a fossil generating facility comprised of Units 1, 2 and 3 in Yarmouth, Maine, and FPL Wyman IV’s William F. Wyman No. 4, a fossil generating facility also located there.

This new facility is a battery energy storage project comprised of eight bi-directional inverter-based generating units each rated at 2.39 MVA, totaling 16.7 MW gross and 16.2 MW net for Summer and Winter. While this new project is separate from and does not include the fossil units at the site, it will be interconnecting to CMP’s existing William F. Wyman Station 115-kV switchyard.

Click Here to Read Full Article

Southern California Edison (SCE) on Dec. 20 filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission a Generator Interconnection Agreement with PPA Grand Johanna LLC for a 2 MW storage project.

The utility also filed a notice of cancellation of a prior Engineering, Design, Procurement and Construction Letter Agreement for this project, which is superseded by the GIA.

In May 2016, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) issued a resolution authorizing expedited procurement of storage resources to ensure electric reliability in the Los Angeles Basin due to limited operations of the damaged Aliso Canyon Gas Storage Facility.

The resolution, among other things, required SCE to hold an expedited competitive energy storage procurement solicitation to help alleviate outage risks during the upcoming winter of 2016-2017. The resolution also requires SCE to take all reasonable steps to expedite the interconnection process to allow utility-owned or third-party owned storage resources to connect to the grid. Storage projects secured through this solicitation are required to be online by Dec. 31, 2016.

Pursuant to this resolution, on June 17, PPA Grand Johanna submitted an Interconnection Request to interconnect 2 MW battery storage project named the 2 MW Powin Bess, Irvine, California Project located in Irvine, California. It wants SCE to interconnect the project on the Virgo 12 kV distribution line out of the Estrella 66/12 kV Substation to transmit energy to the California Independent System Operator-controlled grid.

Click Here to Read Full Article

CALMAC‘s ice-based thermal energy storage technology was implemented into the Naval Post Graduate School’s Integrated Multi-Physics Renewable Energy Laboratory in Monterey, California.

The IMPREL microgrid project uses various forms of energy storage to store energy in the form it will be needed in, and a unique multi-physics approach to optimize the use of onsite sources of renewable energy. CALMAC’s ice-based energy storage provided the microgrid with a durable and smart technology for flexible use of solar and wind to store cooling.

“Ice-based energy storage is the low-hanging fruit of the industry,” said Mark MacCracken, CEO of CALMAC. “The biggest advantage that fossil fuels have over renewable energy resources is that a barrel of oil or lump of coal is a form of stored energy that can be released at any time. Sun and wind are forms of pure energy that, without being paired with energy storage, are either used or wasted. Luckily, energy storage can easily be integrated into our buildings and power grid.”

Energy storage is an integral technology for microgrids, which can act as a single entity that can connect to the power grid or work independently from the grid in what is called “island-mode.” The multi-physics approach used by the IMPREL matches demand to the supply of electricity created by onsite photovoltaic panels and wind turbines. To achieve independence from the rest of the grid, energy is either used as it is generated or stored for later use when output dips. This differs from the traditional approach of our power grid where supply is dictated by demand. In fact, the traditional approach does not account well for the intermittence of renewable energy output, often leading to times when end-user demand surpasses renewable output and vice versa.  

“Applying the multi-physics approach to our microgrid project, over the traditional microgrid approach, allowed for the use of fewer renewable energy sources to meet demand, reducing size, costs and the amount of unused energy,” said Dr. Anthony Gannon, Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Naval Postgraduate School. “Using thermal energy storage allowed for the project to greatly reduce its costs and improve efficiency by storing the energy in the form that it would be ultimately used in. Based on the project’s operation, we feel like this design could easily be scaled-up for larger applications.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

Green Charge won a contract from Con Edison to deliver 13 MWh for Con Edison’s Brooklyn-Queens Neighborhood Program. Green Charge will install and operate intelligent energy storage, at no cost to site host customers, within areas of Brooklyn and Queens.

The distributed energy storage portfolio will operate as a virtual power plant to mitigate peak load on the local distribution system. Con Edison’s Neighborhood Program will help Con Edison defer more than $1 billion in new infrastructure spending.

“Our Neighborhood Program is all about finding new strategies and technologies to help our customers manage their energy usage and still have the reliable power they need,” said Greg Elcock, who manages the program for Con Edison. “We decided to test out an auction as a way to help us keep service reliable at times of high demand and we’re pleased with the outcome.”

Green Charge will install, operate and maintain GridSynergy Storage at businesses, schools, housing cooperatives and multi-family unit facilities in the Brooklyn-Queens boroughs. Green Charge co-optimizes systems to provide customers with utility bill savings, backup power for critical loads, and solar PV integration. These systems will run for 10 years, adjusting operations in accordance with facility energy use patterns, time of day, weather variations, and solar production (if present).

Click Here to Read Full Article

Energy storage company Younicos has signed an agreement with strategic partner Panasonic to design and build a solar-plus-storage system at Peña Station NEXT in Denver, Colorado, which includes the operations hub for Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Co. and Panasonic CityNOW.

The system will make use of multiple Younicos Y.Cubes, the “energy storage-in-a-box” solution for C&I applications from the German-American industry pioneer.

The project calls for four Y.Cubes to be installed at the Panasonic facility in Denver, Colorado. The 1 MW storage resource, which will be connected to the Xcel Energy power grid, will provide frequency regulation, solar grid integration through ramp control, grid peak shaving, passive energy arbitrage, and backup power – enabled by Younicos’s Y.Q storage control software.

This multi-mode operating capability will enable Panasonic, Xcel Energy, and other microgrid stakeholders to derive maximum benefits from Xcel Energy’s 1.6 MW solar PV system sited on a parking structure nearby, along with 259 kW of PV on the building’s rooftop.

“The solar-plus-storage microgrid is an anchor, not just of Panasonic’s new Denver operations hub, but also for the broader Peña Station NEXT development, which is a 400-acre, smart and sustainable transit-oriented development in Denver,” said Jamie Evans, managing director of the Energy Solutions Group at Panasonic Enterprise Solutions Company. “We are excited to partner with Younicos and Xcel Energy to bring this innovative project to life.”

“We’re very pleased to work with Panasonic on this project, which highlights the advantages of our plug-and-play Y.Cube system for commercial and industrial use cases,” said Stephen Prince, Younicos CEO. “Like Younicos, Panasonic is a technology leader with a strong focus on the benefits of solar-plus-storage for different applications. They and the local grid will benefit enormously from this resource.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

The residential energy storage industry has gained significant momentum during the past year. Yet while there has been substantial progress, recent high-profile product launches have led to media attention that overestimates the current state of the industry. Despite the potential of residential battery energy storage systems to drive transformation in electric power systems, they are an economical investment only in select markets today.

Going forward, utility involvement in the residential energy storage system (RESS) market will be a turning point for the industry as utilities look to own, distribute or access these storage systems. This article explores the evolving economics of RESS, how utility involvement is rapidly shifting market dynamics and the potential for this technology to lay the foundation for the distributed energy revolution.

Evolving Economics

Residential storage is a flexible resource that provides benefits for both utilities and their customers. These systems are typically installed to help homeowners save money on monthly bills, improve the economics of new or legacy solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and act as a backup power source. In addition, RESS technology is increasingly being recognized for the grid services it can deliver. Benefiting from economies of scale from the consumer electronics and electric vehicle (EV) industries, RESS lithium ion battery costs have come down dramatically. By some estimates, costs have come down by 80 percent for an installed system in leading markets in the past 18 months. This industry’s growth is directly tied to a number of interrelated factors that will dictate residential storage economics, as well as market size in a given country.

One of the most significant factors that will dictate the residential energy storage industry’s growth is how domestic customers pay for electricity around the world. Adjusted compensation paid for excess solar PV generation, time-of-use pricing and the implementation of residential demand charges can quickly change the economics of RESS for a given customer. The reduced compensation paid for excess PV energy sent to the grid has been the foundation of the residential storage business case in leading markets. Due to the growth of the solar PV industry, compensation programs (including net metering and feed-in tariffs) are being phased out or replaced with alternatives.

Click Here to Read Full Article

NEC Energy Solutions, a unit of NEC Corp., announced that it is supplying the Sterling Municipal Light Department of Sterling, Massachusetts with a 2 MW, 3.9 MWh GSS grid energy storage solution.

Once complete in December of this year, it will be the largest battery-based energy storage system installed in New England and the first utility scale project in Massachusetts.

It will improve grid resiliency against weather-related power outages, while providing enhanced clean energy usage and cost savings to the town of Sterling. Town, State and NEC ES officials commemorated the project today in an official groundbreaking ceremony.

To reduce Sterling’s carbon footprint, SMLD has been installing large amounts of photovoltaic solar and is currently ranked seventh in the nation in installed PV per capita. However, SMLD desired greater resiliency and further modernization of its grid.

The energy storage system will work in conjunction with the overall installed base of PV solar to provide the needed energy resiliency, particularly to critical town departments such as police, dispatch, and fire service.

It will also provide transmission capacity charge savings from reducing peak demand, which will deliver energy cost saving benefits to the community. NEC ES is providing its turn-key GSS energy storage solution which includes a single 53’ container housing 3.9MWh of lithium ion batteries, a 2MW power conversion system, and proprietary NEC ES AEROS controls software suite. NEC ES will also provide service and maintenance packages to SMLD for the GSS energy storage installation.

Click Here to Read Full Article

Wet’n’Wild Hawaii and energy storage firm Stem Inc., flipped the switch to activate a customer-sited energy storage system in Hawaii, supported by Hawaii’s Energy Excelerator, the Hawaiian Electric Co. and the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative.

The Wet’N’Wild system—108 kW / 216 kWh—is part of a three-year pilot to deploy electric storage systems at about 30 local businesses on O‘ahu, Maui and Hawai‘i Island, using Stem’s storage solution to help improve reliable electric service for customers of utilities with high levels of rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources. The project will be part of the U.S. DOE SunShot Initiative’s “Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) to demonstrate visibility and control of edge-of-network resources.

With its robust software platform, supported by real-time data and predictive analytics, Stem will work to better integrate energy storage at customer sites to help customers manage their loads and provide the Hawaiian ElectricCompanies with grid responsive resources. For the first time, grid operators will be able to see and manage customer-sited resources, including energy storage, alongside conventional generation resources from their existing control platforms.

“We follow the sun. Our hours of operation are specifically during peak times for sunlight, so this project is very attractive for us,” said Jerry Pupillo, Wet’n’Wild Hawaii general manager. “The batteries will kick in to decrease that peak usage spike we have always battled. This makes dollars and sense for us as a business as our peak use determines the rate we pay.  Big picture: this could help the utility avoid building another power plant because with battery storage our electricity use can be more precise and controlled to help manage the grid.”

“Hawaiian Electric is very happy to partner with Wet’n’Wild in our distributed energy storage pilot with Stem,” said Shelee Kimura, Hawaiian Electric vice president for corporate planning and business development. “With this ‘behind-the-meter’ storage at our customers’ sites, we can help them manage how they use energy with technologies that have dual value, saving participating customers money and improving grid reliability and efficiency for all our customers.”

Click Here to Read Full Article

GE and longtime customer Southern California Edison announced a plan to install a battery storage and gas turbine hybrid.

The two-project solution first calls for installation of a battery energy storage system from Current, powered by GE, followed by upgrades to a GE LM6000 gas turbine to integrate the two systems.

The LM6000 Hybrid EGT, which is scheduled to be deployed at two SCE sites in the coming months, was developed in response to changing regulations and grid requirements in the wake of California’s Aliso Canyon energy crisis earlier this year and will ultimately support increasing renewable energy capacity on the California grid.

The solution, which will qualify for California’s Independent System Operator’s tariff for contingency reserve, answers a critical need for Southern California, where regulations on natural gas usage and storage are changing in the wake of the state’s Aliso Canyon energy crisis earlier this year. GE’s Power Services and Current businesses worked to develop the joint solution in a competitive offer in collaboration with Wellhead Power Solutions, LLC.

The LM6000 Hybrid EGT product integrates a 10 MW battery energy storage system from Current and an existing GE LM6000 aeroderivative gas turbine with control system upgrades provided by GE’s Power Services. The system will allow the turbine to operate in standby mode without using fuel and enable immediate response to changing energy dispatch needs. By eliminating the need to constantly run the turbines at minimum loads to maintain spinning reserves, the LM6000 Hybrid EGT will save fuel, reduce maintenance costs and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

The LM6000 Hybrid EGT offers ancillary and grid support at a lower cost and smaller GHG footprint than traditional resources, plus it can provide 50 MW of GHG-free spinning reserve, flexible capacity, and peaking energy; 25 MW of high-quality regulation; and 10 MVA of reactive voltage support and primary frequency response when not online.

The battery energy storage system is expected to be installed and operational by the end of 2016, and the updated and integrated turbine controls are scheduled to be operational in early 2017.

Click Here to Read Full Article