US energy storage safety expert advisory Energy Storage Response Group (ESRG) was created through a meeting of minds from the battery industry and fire service. This includes alumni of DNV GL and the Fire Department of New York.

Energy-Storage.news recently heard from ESRG founder and principal Nick Warner that the company, approaches the industry from a position of “tough love”, having become concerned at a number of shortcomings that could result in serious incidents that could not only endanger lives but also endanger the future of the industry if they are not addressed.

ESRG is about to rebrand under a new name as the Energy Safety Response Group, highlighting the increasing combination of energy storage systems (ESS) with other energy assets and the importance of keeping them all safe. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Nick Warner and business manager Ryan Franks for an in-depth look at what the industry needs to do to win the trust of firefighters, code officials and other stakeholders including banks and insurers.

ESRG is a fairly new company, only a year or two in existence, but you have a lot of experience between your leadership team in batteries, energy storage and fire safety. What’s behind the origin of what you do?

Nick Warner, founding principal: I got into batteries a little over a decade ago, originally in the electric vehicle performance and degradation space, working at Ohio State University, which at the time, had a pretty state-of-the-art battery lab, did a lot of battery testing for about four years, did my Master’s thesis there and then ultimately ran the lab. Over time, I started developing more of an interest in battery second use and battery controls, that ultimately proved to be helpful down the road.

About five years ago, I made the jump over to DNV GL. Instead of cycling the batteries for performance, we were lighting the batteries on fire to see to see what they were doing. I’ve been a firefighter in kind of a previous life in undergrad. And so it was a pretty seamless transition for me. Over the next three and a half years at DNV GL, I built out their safety and testing programme in the US, leading their efforts in all things related to energy storage safety.

German grid operator TransnetBW has partnered with solar inverter supplier SMA to gather data that will ease potential issues with energy distribution in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

The collaboration will help TransnetBW alleviate issues that can arise amid Germany’s booming home energy storage market.

As more battery storage systems are adopted and the renewable energy market gradually becomes decentralised, grid operators have less insight over precisely where power should be distributed.

Data analysis and forecasting, therefore has become far more important for “reliable, efficient and cost-effective grid operation”, Jochen Bornemann, executive vice president of SMA’s digital centre, said.

Dr Philipp Guthke, who oversees special prognsosis and optimisation tasks at Transnet, said that roughly 10% of power generated is no longer arriving at the utility grid.

And that figure is likely to grow over the coming years. Recent analysis from trade body SolarPower Europe found that total installed capacity for battery energy storage systems (BESS) reached almost 2GWh by the end of 2019, representing a 57% increase in capacity year-on-year. Germany is Europe’s leading market for residential battery storage by a wide margin, and even in 2020 year-on-year capacity growth is forecast at 9%, higher than previously thought due to the resilience of the market. SolarPower Europe’s analysts expect storage capacity to grow by 14% next year.

With more residential power users storing their own energy, Transnet has less control over the distribution of power across the Baden-Wurttemberg region’s grid.

SMA manages more than 700,000 registered PV and storage systems, and collects real-time data on their power generation, grid feed-in and self-consumption rates. The company has access to generation and consumption data on more than 20,000 PV systems in the Baden-Württemberg region.

“In Germany alone, more than 180,000 PV systems of all sizes send data from low and medium voltage to our Sunny Portal online monitoring portal via SMA inverters,” Bornemann said, adding that the company’s data solutions could be applied to other parts of the country.

Southern California Edison has signed long-term contracts for four projects totaling 590 megawatts of battery energy storage resources. These contracts increase SCE’s total amount of installed and procured battery storage capacity to approximately 2,050 MWs. SCE hopes this will help further enhance the region’s electric system reliability needs.

Three of the four projects are utility-scale projects totaling 585 MW and will take advantage of lithium-ion batteries that can store energy for use later. The fourth project is a 5 MW demand response contract that will use energy from customer-owned energy storage. Economically impacted communities that suffer most from the effects of air pollution will provide 5% of the MWs for this project.

One of the many ways these flexible energy resources can be used is by capturing solar energy during the day and distributing the energy as the sun sets and energy use remains high. They can also be used to respond to the California Independent System Operator signals, high-demand events, heat waves, or when the energy grid is strained.

The projects are expected to come online by August 2022 and 2023.

As laid out in Pathway 2045, SCE estimates the state needs to add 30 GW of utility-scale storage to the grid and 10 GW of storage from distributed energy resources to meet the state’s clean energy and carbon neutrality goals. These new contracts will further help California meet these goals while providing additional grid reliability. They also help improve California’s economy by creating craft and skilled clean energy jobs while reducing GHG emissions.

The recently introduced Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act aims to achieve a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Achieving this goal will require a modernisation of Canada’s electricity system. While the federal government has taken initial steps toward this goal by phasing out coal and encouraging renewables and other zero-emission technologies, it has become clear that energy storage will need to play a much bigger role for the government’s strategy to succeed.

The election of President-elect Joe Biden south of the border gives added urgency to meeting this challenge. Biden’s platform includes “an historic investment in energy efficiency, clean energy, electrical systems and line infrastructure that makes it easier to electrify transportation, and new battery storage and transmission infrastructure that will address bottlenecks and unlock America’s full clean energy potential.” 

Energy storage is mentioned a number of times in Biden’s climate and energy policies, making it clear that it will be a major area of development. Many U.S. jurisdictions are already ahead of Canada in deploying energy storage to improve their energy systems. Canada may soon find itself even further behind.

Energy storage provides a diverse spectrum of benefits, reducing ratepayer costs, improving reliability and resiliency of the electrical grid, and mitigating Climate Change. As electricity demands fluctuate through the Pandemic and the eventual recovery, storage can provide the cost-effective flexibility that we will need through these uncertain times.

Storage can reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) by supporting increased renewables integration and optimising existing assets on the system. Technologies such as solar and wind often produce electricity at low-demand periods. Storing this energy so it can be dispatched when needed during peak demand periods will be the key to unlocking the potential of these zero-emitting sources. 

Storage can also improve the efficiency of existing electricity resources, including transmission and distribution (T&D) assets, to reduce the need for new infrastructure.

Energy storage firm Stem is taking on new owners and liquidity as it aims for greater share in the growing battery storage gains market of the coming decade.

Stem announced that it was combining with Star Peak Energy Transition Corp., a blank check company created to effect a merger, in a transaction estimated at about $608 million. Star Peak includes investments from funds managed by private equity firms such as BlackRock, Adage Capital Management, Electron Capital Partners and Senator Investment Group.

Once the deal closes as expected in the first quarter of 2021, the equity value of the new formation should be close to $1.35 billion, according to release. The cash influx will enable Stem to capitalize on growth opportunities, including advancing its Athena software platform.

“This transaction is transformative for us and we expect it to significantly accelerate our growth,” John Carrington, Stem CEO, said. “Stem is a market leader and our Athena™ software platform is proven in the U.S., Japan and Canadian markets, and this merger will enable expansion to several additional global markets.”

Founded in 2009, Stem has deployed more than 600 MWh of energy storage capacity commissioned in the past six years. The Athena system is contracted or operating in more than 900 systems in 200 cities, according to the company y.

Stem offers an artificial intelligence (AI) software platform for battery storage systems. Its products have operated globally with more than 40 utilities.

Around 2.1GWh of battery storage had been installed in Germany by the end of 2019, in households, at commercial and industrial (C&I) facilities and at large-scale in grid-connected applications.

While the home energy storage market and industrial segment both grew last year and are expected to continue growing, the large-scale segment slowed down and saw just nine projects deployed in the country during 2019, according to research gathered and analysed by academics at RWTH Aachen University, research group Forschungszentrum Jülich and battery expert group ACCURE.

Economics are challenging for large-scale projects

In 2018, 22 large-scale projects (>1MW rated output or >1MWh capacity) went online. This slowdown at grid-scale came largely as a result of the falling revenues battery project owners and investors can expect from providing frequency containment reserve (FCR). The research team pointed out that FCR is almost the sole source of financing for large-scale storage in Germany, meaning that the saturated nature of the market makes the economics more challenging.

In other words, it could be said that batteries are a victim of their own success, having been able to provide the vital grid-balancing service quickly and efficiently and subsequent competitive auctions for FCR have pushed prices down. The market rose quickly and there had been 68 projects installed by the end of 2019 cumulatively, adding up to 400MW of power and 620MWh of capacity. The nine projects added in 2019 totalled 54MW / 62MWh.

Prices declining to around €1,000 MW/week (US$1212) at the beginning of 2020 from around €1,500 the year before have made the market “increasingly unattractive to new participants”, the research paper: ‘The development of stationary battery storage systems in Germany – status 2020’, said.

However some promising developments are on the horizon in the near term. Earlier this year the German network regulator Bundesnetzagentur approved proposals by grid companies to create so-called ‘virtual transmission lines,’ in a big undertaking called GridBooster. As the paper points out, this should include two projects of 100MW / 100MWh each and another of 250MW / 250MWh providing redundancy and spare capacity to large transmission lines.

The transport sector is one of the principal producers of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. This, and the UK government’s pledge to reach net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, has catalysed the expansion of the electric vehicle (EV) market in recent years.

Due to this increase, the number of end-of-life EV batteries are predicted to surge in the coming years.

An EV battery is generally considered to be ‘end-of-life’ when its capacity has declined to approximately 80% of its original value.

However, these spent batteries are now attracting attention from battery manufacturers and start-up companies, with their significant remaining capacity offering huge potential for use in a secondary application.

Due to the current economic and infrastructural issues faced of widespread lithium-ion battery (LiB) recycling, the second life battery (SLB) market provides a promising opportunity to deal with early generations of spent EV batteries – particularly in stationary energy storage (SES) applications.

Why do we need stationary energy storage? 

SES is vital in times where electricity supply is in substantial demand.

SES can be used commercially, residentially, and industrially, in applications including charging infrastructure, off-grid energy supply, or even street lights.

SES ensures energy can be bought and stored in periods of low demand, when it is cheap, to then be used in times of high demand.

Though they are not currently using SLBs, Pivot Power, a UK-based start-up SES company, are committed to developing the world’s largest battery storage and EV charging network using stationary technology.

According to the latest edition of Wood Mackenzie’s U.S. energy storage monitor, the country deployed 476 MW of energy storage in Q2, 240% more than was installed in Q2, which just so happened to be the previous quarterly record for installed capacity. That 476 MW mark represents more than 500% year-over-year growth from Q3 2019.

The jump in capacity forced WoodMac to edit the y-axis on it’s deployment graph, producing a pretty funny result:

As the graph shows, this exponential capacity increase was driven predominantly by the front-of-the-meter (FTM) market, with that segment alone representing more capacity than the total installations across all segments in any other quarter from the past 7 years.

Beyond MWs

Pure MWs installed, however, are not the main focus of deployed storage, with the other half of the story being told by MWh deployment. What’s interesting here is that, while the 764 MWh deployed in Q3 is a record in its own right, more than doubling the previous record of 378 MWh in Q4 2018, that figure is less than double that of the 476 MW installed, yet most batteries are developed for four-hour charge or discharge.

The answer to this oddity comes from California, where numerous installations were built for only one hour of capacity, though many were also planned or built with the capability to move to four-hours in duration in the future. This phenomenon includes LS Power’s Gateway Energy Storage project, the largest grid battery in the world, clocking in at 230 MW and 230 MWh, with plans to expand to 250 MW/250 MWh.

Just as it was with MW deployed, FTM installations drove this record quarter, with additions growing 475% compared to Q2 and beating the previous FTM record, set in Q1 2017, by nearly 200%.