Tesla has acquired German engineering firm Grohmann Engineering to form a new advanced automation segment of its business, producing manufacturing equipment for its factories in the US.

It is believed the acquisition and subsequent creation of Tesla Grohmann Automation will boost production of its stationary storage as well as its automotive segment, with the parent company anticipating the hire of 1,000 advanced engineering and skilled technicians in Germany. This would be in addition to the existing 700 employees on Grohmann’s books.

Tesla reiterated in a blog post announcing the news that it has set itself a target of producing 500,000 cars annually by 2018, which by then will include the Model 3 “affordable” EV with a range of over 200km.

“Accelerating a sustainable energy future is only possible with high-volume factories,” the post read.

“At very high production volumes, the factory becomes more of a product than the product itself.”

While a spokesperson confirmed that production of the cars and stationary storage Powerwalls and Powerpacks will remain in the US, including its EV factory in Fremont, California and the Gigafactory in Nevada, some of Tesla’s automated manufacturing systems will be designed and engineered by the Grohmann team. Tesla said it expected to add more locations for Tesla Grohmann Automation centres in future.

The Grohmann acquisition remains subject to approval by regulators with Tesla hoping to close the deal early next year. The news follows the launch of the second-generation Powerwall residential and Powerpack commercial and industrial storage systems, both with significantly increased energy density from previous models, as well as solar roof tiles in a joint undertaking with SolarCity. Tesla and SolarCity could merge later this month, with shareholders voting on 17 November.

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Battery manufacturer and developer NEC Energy Solutions is to supply Southern California Edison (SCE) with its first grid energy storage pilot system under a procurement programme established last year.

The NEC ES GSS grid storage solution is a ‘plug-and-play’ procurement strategy being used by the Californian utility to pilot energy storage as a grid stabilising solution. It allows SCE to employ energy storage with a variety of features and configurations on-demand and could be installed almost anywhere across the state to support SCE pilot programmes.

The first storage system delivered under the procurement programme will include 3.4MWh of containerised lithium-ion batteries, a 3MW power conversion system and NEC Energy Solution’s software controls.

The energy storage system will be installed to prevent conventional grid upgrades that are becoming increasingly challenging, particularly in dense urban environments such as those found in SCE service territory. NEC Energy will also provide service and maintenance offerings to the utility for the upkeep of the energy storage system.

“Commercialisation of energy storage in a way that allows quick and easy procurement has always been a goal of ours,” said Bud Collins, CEO, NEC Energy Solutions, in a statement. “We worked extensively with SCE on this innovative programme to make energy storage transactional while ensuring safety, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of the technology. Programmes like this will make energy storage – a fast, flexible, clean, and dispatchable resource – an integral part of the grid.”

Recently, SCE and GE announced that they plan to install the world’s first battery storage and gas turbine hybrid. SCE is one of California’s three investor owned utilities that make up around 75% of the state’s electricity supply andare bound by AB2514, the mandate that orders the utilities to put 1.3GW of energy storage on the grid by 2020.

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Tesla-SolarCity could become an energy equivalent to an Uber or AirBnB, with a merger between the two creating “an integrated sustainable energy company, which does not own any centralised generation assets”, one expert has commented.

Julian Jansen, analyst and energy storage research manager at Delta Energy & Environment (Delta EE), spoke to Energy-Storage.News about an investor presentation issued by Tesla ahead of the merger talks, which go to a shareholder vote on 17 November.

Tesla, led by CEO and chief product architect Elon Musk, and SolarCity, headed up by Musk’s cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive – CEO and CTO respectively – are seeking to become an integrated provider of electric vehicles, rooftop solar, battery energy storage and now also BIPV solar roof tiles.

At last week’s launch event for the solar roof tiles, Musk also launched Powerwall 2, with an increased 14kWh of storage capacity and a new look. The unveiling of the updated home storage system which will retail at US$5,500, followed the lower key announcement via Tesla’s official blog of the new generation of Powerpack commercial, industrial and utility-scale batteries.

Delta EE’s Jansen said that the unification of Tesla and SolarCity follows the path of convergence seen between energy storage and solar over the past couple of years and the acquisition “is really part of the wider transformation of the energy system”. While it was somewhat novel for an energy storage manufacturer to move into solar through acquisition, there are plenty of examples of other big companies moving from solar PV, automobiles or energy into energy storage, such as Panasonic, Mercedes-Benz and Total.

Jansen said therefore that the new entity created by a potential merger would be in some ways analogous to taxi app Uber, which hires out drivers and their cars rather than owning its own fleet of cars.

“It’s not hard to imagine Tesla evolving into a company that provides new energy solutions for different customers groups, connecting customers and aggregating loads and distributed generation, as well as providing flexibility to the system,” Jansen said.

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Strategic planning of Chinese industry at a state level could see electrical energy storage installations grow in importance, rocketing to as much as 24GW by 2020, according to one analysis firm.

Asia Europe Clean Energy Advisory Co Ltd (AECEA) said in a report sent out today that electrical energy storage as the “next big thing” could represent China’s “solar PV 2.0” moment. The firm’s China expert Frank Haugwitz included a look at energy storage as the closing segment to a briefing paper on solar market development.

Haugwitz said that while around 105MW of EES systems were installed by the end of 2015, under a business-as-usual scenario AECEA anticipated the market reaching 14GW and 24GW under a more optimistic modelling.

The reasoning given for this was that, in common with solar PV, which received a huge amount of government backing and has gone beyond 10GW of new installations each year since 2013, China has identified opportunities in the energy storage industry. Government officials in Beijing consider the development of an energy storage industry domestically to be “strategically important,” Haugwitz wrote.

The country appears keen to capture the industry’s value domestically and has included electrical energy storage in its “13th Five year plan on science and innovation” as well as its “National energy administration energy innovation action plan (2016-2030)” in which it also included solar as one of 15 key technologies.

“In light of these recent developments, it is obvious that EES applications are high on the political agenda, in order to make sure that Chinese companies will be in the position to meet the anticipated future demand,” Haugwitz wrote.

According to Haugwitz, industry observers now expect that the forthcoming “13th Five year plan for solar energy development (2016-2020)” will include policies designed to drive up demand for EES.

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Carmaker Daimler has completed construction of the world’s largest energy storage facility using second-hand car batteries in Lünen, Westphalia, in Germany.

The new site, which utilises batteries from Daimler’s second-generation smart fortwo electric cars, will provide 13MWh of capacity to the German energy market by the end of the year. Daimler said the first power units are already plugged into the German energy grid.

Daimler said in a statement energy output from the facility will be made available to the “winner of weekly auctions among the network operators for primary controlling power range”.

The project, a joint venture between German firms Daimler, The Mobility House, GETEC and Remondis, will see 1,000 used EV battery systems grouped into a single storage solution.

Each partner takes a distinct role in the new operation, with Daimler covering the initial manufacture and configuration of the battery systems, The Mobility House and GETEC handling their installation and marketing to the energy markets, and Remondis taking charge of their recycling at end-of-life.

Meanwhile, German manufacturer Bosch said in a blog post it has worked with car giant BMW and energy company Vattenfall on a parallel storage project using “second-life” EV batteries. Its project, located in Hamburg, incorporates 2,600 battery modules from 100 electric cars, and provides 2MW of output and 2.8MWh of capacity.

“This energy is available within seconds to stabilize the power grid,” it said in the post.

The German Ministry for the Economy and Energy (BMWi) wants around 45% of power consumed in Germany to be generated from renewable resources by 2025, increasing to around 60% by 2035.

EV batteries remain operational even after the electric vehicles themselves have been scrapped. Daimler said: “If used in stationary power storage, the systems are fully operational even after the service life guaranteed by the manufacturer – with slight capacity losses only of secondary importance. Cost-effective use in stationary operation is possible for at least 10 years longer.”

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The UK is a key market for Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack energy storage products, and Tesla is seeing demand for additional installations of its commercial oriented products after the first Powerpack install was completed last month.

Tesla is exhibiting at Solar Energy UK|Clean Energy Live this week. This is the first exhibition in Europe where the company is demonstrating its three key products – Powerwall, Powerpack and its electric vehicle range.

The UK was the third market globally to receive Tesla Energy products after the US and Australia due to the high level of interest expressed when the Powerwall and Powerpack products where launched in 2015.

Tesla has been accrediting installers to its programme since the turn of the year and has increased its base to several hundred. It said it intends to increase this number in the coming months with the right partners to provide customers great service and technology.

Although the first Tesla Powerpack install in Europe was completed by Camborne Energy Storage to provide services to the grid, Tesla sees a product benefit when stacking this with other applications such as peak-shaving, that enables commercial and industrial customers to reduce their exposure to peak energy prices.

While there had been early doubts surrounding the potential for commercial energy storage solutions, particularly at the start of the year, the UK market is appearing to embrace the technology. Earlier this summer supermarket chain Sainsbury’s revealed it was testing an energy storage application in one of its stores with a view to a wider roll-out in the near future.

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Electricity storage and energy efficiency product manufacturer, Powervault, has collaborated with Solar Power Portal to conduct a survey of the electricity storage market in the UK.

The survey comprises 23 questions designed to better understand how installers and end users are adapting to electricity storage as a new technology for the home. It is also going to be used to understand how installers and end users would like the market to develop over the next 6 – 18 months.

You, as a respondent to the survey, will automatically be entered into a prize draw to win a 4kWh Lead Acid Powervault, which will help you use energy more efficiently, cut your electricity bills, and gain access to power during black outs.

Powervault’s Lead Acid product can reduce average domestic electricity bills by 35%, comes with a comprehensive 5 year warranty, and can be installed in the home within 1 hour.

The survey, which takes just 2 minutes to complete, can be found here.

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German manufacturer Stornetic aims to provide its flywheel storage system to wind power plants, it said today at the trade fair, WindEnergy, in Hamburg.

The company said its flywheel system, which turns electrical energy into rotational energy and stores it for later use, allows wind farm operators to balance output fluctuations over the long term.

Stornetic managing director Rainer vor dem Esche said: “Our storage machine EnWheel allows output peaks to be absorbed, thereby making the output of entire wind farms more even and predictable.”

He suggested flywheel energy storage will also be able to provide grid services in combination with wind power plants. “This is an ideal starting point for the challenges of the future,” said vor dem Esche.

Earlier this month, Stornetic announced its EnWheel system has been optimised as wayside storage for the public transportation industry, and particularly for train operators, which can store energy from braking trains at stations to help power them as they depart again.

Stornetic reckons its energy storage solution, designed for more than 100,000 load change cycles, can absorb load changes in the range of milliseconds, and is particularly suitable for applications in which many fast load changes are required.

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The US Department of Energy has set aside US$37 million to improve energy storage and conversion technologies in transportation batteries, grid-level storage, and fuel cells.

The department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) will fund 16 new research projects into how new technology, specifically solid ion conductors, can overcome the limitations of current battery and fuel cell products.

Current fuel cells convert chemical energy into electricity, and back again, and can therefore store electricity from intermittent resources like wind and solar power, and also generate it as required from stored energy, whether from carbon free sources or natural gas or hydrogen. At the same time, the inherent limitations of electrochemical batteries has “stifled further innovation,” reckons ARPA-E.

Instead, batteries using parts built with solid ion conductors – solids in which ions can be mobile and store energy – offer a high-performance alternative to traditional liquid electrolytes or expensive materials used in current fuel cell stacks.

The new research will focus on how to overcome associated drawbacks such as low ionic conductivity and expensive processing, and how to finally integrate these parts into energy storage devices. It will also explore how to increase battery energy capacity while preventing short circuits and degradation, and how expensive elements like platinum can be replaced with more common metals.

ARPA-E director Ellen Williams said: “While battery technologies have improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years, there remain some imposing physical and chemical barriers that have stifled further innovation. Solid ion conductors made of affordable, easily produced materials could replace today’s mostly liquid electrolytes and expensive fuel cell parts, helping create a next generation of batteries and fuel cells that are low-cost, durable, and more efficient.”

This week, the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) set out a three-year research programme to improve the performance of lead batteries in energy storage and electric vehicles, and close the gap on lithium-ion in the energy storage and electric vehicle markets.

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US automotive manufacturer General Motors (GM) has said its expertise in electric vehicle batteries will help it to power 100% of its global operations with renewable energy by 2050, meeting annual demand of upwards of 9TW/h.

GM said its “pursuit of electrified vehicles and efficient manufacturing”, combined with its expertise in electric vehicle batteries, will see it meet its 2050 target. “Energy storage can ultimately address the intermittency or reliability of wind and solar energy,” it said in a statement.

GM is using repurposed Chevrolet Volt batteries, originally used in Chevrolet’s Volt extended-range electric cars, for energy storage from solar and wind generation at its vehicle testing facility in Milford, in Michigan. The Volt batteries supply power to its Milford data centre; excess energy is returned to the grid supplying the rest of the Milford site.

A similar scheme is in place in Japan, where Japanese trading company Sumitomo has a joint venture with Nissan Motors to reuse electric vehicle batteries.

The company said solar power will continue as the major part of its international energy generation. GM is in the process of adding 30MW of solar arrays in China, with 10MW of rooftop solar to be installed at its Jinqiao Cadillac assembly plant in Shanghai, and 20MW of solar carports, covering 81,000 paring spaces, at its distribution centre in Wuhan.

GM’s 11.8MW rooftop solar installation in Zaragoza, Spain, is one of the largest in the world, after Italian renewable energy firm Enel Green Power 25MW array in Naples, Italy, and Indian conglomerate Tata’s 12MW project in the Punjab, in India.

GM reckons it saves US$5 million per year, and has saved US$80 million to date, from using renewable energy. The company said costs to install and produce renewable energy will decrease further, resulting in more “bottom-line returns”.

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