Solar Panel–Level Energy Storage Developer Yotta Receives $1.5 Million

on September 3, 2019
Cleantechnica

The solar power panel–level energy storage developer Yotta, based in Austin, Texas, has received $1.5 million in funding to continue work on SolarLEAF, the company’s energy storage solution. (Several hundred thousand dollars in grant money has also been obtained.) The funding will be used to continue with technological development and commercialization.

Additionally, the company hired former SunPower employee Phil Gilchrist to be the Director of Mechanical Design Engineering. Yotta’s CEO, Omeed Badkoobeh, answered some questions about the SolarLEAF technology for CleanTechnica.

What is the capacity of each panel-level energy storage unit, how much does a unit weight and what are the dimensions?

Each unit has 1kWh of capacity, weighs 52.6 lb, and has dimensions that are approximately 15” x 26” x 4”.

What are the advantages of using panel-level storage?

Panel-level storage shares a lot of the advantages that other module-level power electronics — microinverters, DC optimizers, etc. — bring to the industry, such as the simplification of design, power efficiency, and power optimization. Unlike other large stationary ESS systems, the SolarLEAF™ simply integrates with the same racking system as the solar module and uses the same balance of system. This is advantageous in situations with limited space or where the placement of stationary storage may add significant trenching costs. Additionally, the distributed design of the SolarLEAF™ with lithium-iron-phosphate technology is the safest way to integrate storage, as there is no risk of a cascading thermal runaway. In commercial rooftop systems with ballast racking, the SolarLEAF™ offsets the additional weight needed, which is typically accomplished with concrete ballast blocks.

Where are your energy storage units located in relation to the solar panels in a solar power system?

SolarLEAF™ is designed to be mounted directly behind the solar module that is powering it. The SolarLEAF™ can install electrically between the PV modules and the inverter because it can work with microinverters, string inverters, and battery inverters.

Can your storage units be used with ground-mounted solar?

Yes, Yotta is developing attachment brackets for various ground-mount racking solutions.

Could they be used on motorhomes, travel trailers, or mobile homes?

The SolarLEAF™ is generally not recommend for moving vehicles unless the installation is completed via a professional attachment process.

What battery chemistry do your storage units use?

Lithium-Iron-Phosphate.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsSolar Panel–Level Energy Storage Developer Yotta Receives $1.5 Million

Every Charge Cycle Counts When It Comes To Battery Degradation

on September 3, 2019
Energy-Storage-News

As battery owners and operators seek to maximise the returns from their assets, they simultaneously face the Herculean challenge of managing degradation. This remains one of the most prominent challenges in the industry, where assets are expected to last around 15 years before reaching End-of-Life (EoL).

Degradation manifests itself in several ways leading to reduced energy capacity, power, efficiency and ultimately return on investment.

Put simply, battery degradation is a serious economic problem which will vary according to how the battery is used. It is therefore essential to monitor factors which drive degradation. These include temperature, ramp rate, average State of Charge (SoC) and Depth of Discharge (DoD).

Analysing the impact of these factors is vital to assessing the cost-benefit of decisions to charge or discharge a battery in response to different market signals.

This is especially important as single/multi-service batteries have the option of participating in a variety of markets, such as frequency regulation or the Balancing Mechanism (BM), and each market can have a different risk level according to the asset’s load profile and cycling behaviour.

Back to basics: what ‘exactly’ is a charge cycle?
Unfortunately, and confusingly, the industry has different definitions for what ‘a cycle’ actually is. In commercial documents, such as warranties, a cycle is calculated via energy throughput. This tallies the energy going in/out of the battery and divides total energy throughput by capacity. Even though this is a relatively simple calculation, it actually only tells you the number of ‘Equivalent Full Cycles’, or EFCs.

EFCs do not quantify DoD, which factors how deep charge cycles are. As can be seen below, EFCs would be unable to distinguish 1 cycle of 100% DoD vs 2 cycles of 50% DoD vs 10 cycles of 10% DoD. Cycle depth is completely ignored in EFCs! For this reason, KiWi Power utilises the Rainflow algorithm as a tool for profiling each ‘real cycle’ in terms of DoD.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsEvery Charge Cycle Counts When It Comes To Battery Degradation

ESS Beyond The Hype: PV Tech Power’s Special Report Looks At The Challenges Ahead

on September 3, 2019
Energy-Storage-News

The stationary energy storage industry, with batteries as the prime mover, has enjoyed a series of record years of deployment across North America, Europe and Asia in particular, but what comes next after that first wave? What are the challenges still posed for the ‘mainstream’ adoption of cost-effective energy storage technologies in a modern, low-carbon grid?

PV Tech Power, the downstream solar industry journal from our publisher Solar Media, has reached its fifth ‘birthday’ and Volume 20 of the quarterly magazine, out now, includes a special report on energy storage. In addition to some excellent technical papers and guest submissions, every edition of the magazine has for more than five years brought you the latest news and feature articles from writers and industry experts at PV Tech, Energy-Storage.news and our other channels including energy transition site Current± and Solar Power Portal (UK).

It’s got the usual great solar PV industry analysis on everyone’s favourite topics, technologies and gripes. From bi-facial modules in a post-trade tariff environment, to president Emmanuel Macron’s attempts to revive French solar makers, to the impact of digitalisation on the solar industry, PV Tech Power 20 has it covered across its mammoth 126 pages. Better understanding of corporate solar PPAs, the ‘terawatt opportunity’ of floating PV, utility-scale solar site safety and much more, from the worlds of solar technology, business and inevitably, policy.

But this issue’s Special Report focuses squarely on energy storage, with no less than seven feature articles and technical papers looking at everything from the policy and regulatory initiatives that still need to happen, to bankability and profitability of ESS, system technologies and architecture, all the way to recycling and end-of-life care for batteries. Additionally, Energy-Storage.news’ contributed section of the journal, Storage & Smart Power, returns once again, with feature articles on the UK’s recent blackouts and how batteries can help maintain system stability, the role of flexibility in smarter energy networks and finally a fascinating technical paper on the role batteries can play in delivering a ‘synchronous grid takeover’.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsESS Beyond The Hype: PV Tech Power’s Special Report Looks At The Challenges Ahead

Bridging The Gap For Battery Storage: How M-Kopa Labs Is Pulling Academic Research Into The Off-Grid Solar Industry

on September 2, 2019
Cleantechnica

Knowledge transfer between academia and industry has the potential to affect a lot of change for a small off-grid solar company like M-KOPA Solar, a Kenya-based company and 2015 recipient of the Zayed Future Energy Prize. This is why Harini Hewa Dewage joined M-KOPA Labs, the research branch of M-KOPA, in November of 2016 as its battery technology specialist.

She has been connecting academia to industry in the battery storage sector ever since.

Now Battery Research Lead for M-KOPA Labs, Dewage believes in the mission of M-KOPA: providing access to energy through high-quality solutions that are affordable for all. As of November 2018, M-KOPA has over 700,000 total households subscribing to their services. But while typical businesses or nonprofits working in the low-cost distributed solar industry focus on the potential for solar power to support lights, M-KOPA has worked to meet demand for larger appliances such as TVs or refrigerators.

“Coming from the western world, we have this idea that access to energy is being able to get lightbulbs and light,” explained Dewage. “And I think that’s a fantastic first move to be able to displace candles and kerosene for light, but I think where you see people’s quality of life really improve is with access to appliances and other services.”

At M-KOPA, Dewage believes in giving people not just access to lighting, but the full range of what energy can provide. She explained that a common assumption is that if you ask people what’s the first appliance they want, it would be a fridge or a washing machine. While those two appliances are important, however, the first appliance most people want is a TV.

But with larger appliances, it requires more battery understanding and development. And that is where things get tricky.

“Any problem you have on a smaller battery it might be magnified on a larger one by the sheer fact that you have more cells,” said Dewage. “But also new challenges will appear. For example, as your pack increases in size you might have to put in cooling systems, you might have to manage, you know, thermal radiance better within the pack.”

“Any problem you have on a smaller battery it might be magnified on a larger one by the sheer fact that you have more cells,” said Dewage. “But also new challenges will appear. For example, as your pack increases in size you might have to put in cooling systems, you might have to manage, you know, thermal radiance better within the pack.”

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsBridging The Gap For Battery Storage: How M-Kopa Labs Is Pulling Academic Research Into The Off-Grid Solar Industry

Energy Storage Enjoys Another Record Year

on September 2, 2019

The energy storage market enjoyed another record year for deployment in 2018, according to a new study by Navigant Research.

The news is not so surprising for a growth sector that is just finding its feet. However, while that growth is driving energy storage into new applications and in increasing volumes, the geographic distribution remains concentrated in just ten countries. Those being U.K., France, Germany, U.S., Brazil, India, China, Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Navigant expects these countries to install 1,242.1MW of energy storage in 2019, which it predicts will represent 80% of the market all in all.

As costs fall and the regulatory goalposts shift (in a positive direction) more and more use cases become economical in more territories.

Most new energy storage markets start off with systems providing short-duration discharges that provide services to the grid such as recalibrating the frequency. These are often rewarded through specifically designed market structures.

“In terms of applications for new utility-scale energy storage projects, solar plus storage has emerged as a major opportunity and driver of new growth,” says Alex Eller, senior research analyst at Navigant Research. “The rapidly falling costs for both technologies have made combined solar plus storage plants economically competitive against conventional fossil fuel plants in a growing number of markets, which allows a solar plant to be a predictable resource for grid operators.”

With around 100GW of solar installed annually the scale of that particular opportunity is significant.

Discharging batteries storing renewable electricity to meet peaks in demand instead of starting up natural gas peaker plants is proving increasingly economical. U.S. developer Fluence has commissioned research that found the economics could work not just in the very peakiest moments of demand but further down the shoulders of these peaks as well.

Storage facilities, particularly battery-based storage can also deliver extremely fast start-up times responding to momentary fluctuations on the grid that can trigger blackouts.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsEnergy Storage Enjoys Another Record Year

Researching the Human Side of Microgrids, Too, for Storm-Battered Tallahassee

on September 2, 2019

Battered by Hurricane Michael last year, the City of Tallahassee and researchers are trying to design a storm-hardened microgrid system, one that considers both engineering and human psychology.

The city is working with a cross-disciplinary research team from Colorado State University (CSU) that won a $194,000 grant in June from the National Science Foundation. The team hopes to create a microgrid that would minimize damages and losses even in Category 5 hurricanes.

Hurricane Michael brought down 90% of Tallahassee’s electricity grid and cut the interconnection to a neighboring utility that ultimately affected 1.2 million people in the Southeast. Aiming to avoid damages of that scope, the research team is working with city officials and departments to review emergency preparedness plans and existing utilities and infrastructure.

Their goal is to create a design framework for Tallahassee that can be used by other communities, according to Sid Suryanarayanan, CSU Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor and project leader.

“We are confident that there is a significant place for microgrids in providing resilience to electricity grids in hurricane-prone regions. What we intend to bring to the table is the use of behavioral psychology and systems engineering concepts of emergency response in the design and operation of these microgrids,” he told Microgrid Knowledge.

Achieving stakeholder buy-in
The CSU research team is applying their collective expertise in electrical power engineering, microgrid design and operation, behavioral psychology, and emergency response to identify and reconcile design trade-offs, Suryanarayanan explained.

A sustainable grid needs to balance costs on three legs: environmental, budgetary viability, and costs passed on to customers, he said.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsResearching the Human Side of Microgrids, Too, for Storm-Battered Tallahassee

Utility-Scale Storage To Grow 1.2GW in 2019

on August 30, 2019
renews

This year new global installed utility-scale energy storage capacity will reach 1242MW, according to a report by Navigant Research.

The study has identified that 10 countries will account for 80% of this amount. They are the US, France, Germany, the UK, Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil.

The report, Country Forecasts for Utility-Scale Energy Storage, provides forecasts for utility-Scale systems deployed globally in terms of power capacity (MW), energy capacity megawatt hour), and revenue generated from the development of new projects in 26 countries worldwide.
With the emergence of new markets and applications, 2018 represented the largest year on record for new energy storage capacity, Navigant’s study found.

Despite this growth, however, the market remains concentrated in a relatively small number of countries with the right policies, market structures, regulations, and renewable energy deployments, according to the analyst outfit.

Navigant senior research analyst Alex Eller said: “In terms of applications for new utility-scale energy storage projects, solar-plus-storage has emerged as a major opportunity and driver of new growth.

“The rapidly falling costs for both technologies have made combined solar-plus-storage plants economically competitive against conventional fossil fuel plants in a growing number of markets, which allows a solar plant to be a predictable resource for grid operators.”

Despite the growth in new renewable energy shifting projects, the shorter duration grid stability applications remain the foundation for many emerging markets, according to Navigant.

The analyst has identified a general pattern as energy storage markets mature, transitioning from these shorter duration stability applications, such as frequency regulation, to longer duration bulk storage services such as renewable energy shifting and transmission and distribution asset optimisation.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsUtility-Scale Storage To Grow 1.2GW in 2019

‘Energy Storage Is Not Enough, A Renewables Grid Needs Flexible Gas Back-Up’

on August 30, 2019
PV-Magazine

The importance of energy storage in providing back-up grid power was demonstrated during an extensive blackout in the U.K. this month when 100 MW of battery capacity kicked in within 0.1 seconds to help keep the lights on.

The battery capacity, operated by flexible power infrastructure business Statera, provided “100% of our performance to mitigate the effects” of the power outage, managing director Tom Vernon told pv magazine.

Despite the tip-top performance of Statera’s utility scale battery capacity, however, Vernon said the ambition of a carbon-neutral U.K. by 2050 will prove impossible without extensive deployment of flexible gas back-up generation facilities.

When a lightning strike was followed by two power stations tripping to take down an extensive portion of the U.K. grid in London and the South East of England for 15 minutes on August 9, “it brought into focus the need for resilience in the grid”, said Vernon.

Flexible gas

In addition to Statera’s storage capacity, the company’s flexible gas peaking plant came online rapidly, to help ease a blackout that affected as much as 10-15% of the national grid and left passengers stuck on trains for nine hours and critical infrastructure including hospitals suffering outages.

“We had a flexible gas project which we understand prevented around 100,000 homes in the area of Hull experiencing a blackout,” said Vernon, referring to the city in the northeast of England. “It’s a high efficiency gas generating unit that only comes on for a limited number of hours each year, but when they are used they are critical.”

Vernon told pv magazine battery storage alone will not be enough to guarantee security of supply as the penetration of renewables rises in the energy mix.

“Renewables are going to be leading the charge and batteries will balance the grid,” said the Statera MD. “But it won’t be possible to balance the grid without flexible gas back-up. Even if you oversize the amount of [renewables] generation you need considerably, you would still need a battery so huge it would be unfeasible. You can’t account for the days when, in the middle of winter, the wind doesn’t blow for a week. A battery that is load shifting for a month at a time is only doing three to four cycles per year so it would have to be unfeasibly large and very cheap, and we are a long, long way from that.”

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Fractal Energy Storage Consultants‘Energy Storage Is Not Enough, A Renewables Grid Needs Flexible Gas Back-Up’

Montgomery County, Maryland Seeks Microgrid-Ready Project for Electric Bus Depot

on August 30, 2019

Already on the map for its public service microgrids, Montgomery County is advancing into the next frontier of the technology — its nexus with transportation — with plans for a microgrid-ready depot to charge electric buses.

The Maryland county on Wednesday issued a solicitation seeking proposals for energy infrastructure to power electric buses at its Brookville Maintenance Facility in Silver Spring.

A neighbor to the nation’s capital, Montgomery County is Maryland’s most affluent and populated county. It’s also become a leader in microgrids, creating prototype contracts and development procedures for local governments to study and use.

Seeks public-private partnership
The county began exploring microgrids after a violent storm in 2012 knocked out power to 480,000 county residents for several days. Last year it activated two advanced microgrids at its Public Safety Headquarters and Correctional Facility. The microgrids were built in a public-private partnership with Duke Energy Renewables and Schneider Electric under an energy-as-a-service contract.

Now Montgomery County seeks to duplicate the approach. It’s in search of a partner to develop and help finance the smart depot using a minimum amount of county capital and leveraging tax credits, environmental credits and other incentives. The partner will design, build, finance, operate and maintain the smart energy facility.

Microgrid-ready and green
Like a growing number of jurisdictions, Montgomery County has set clean energy goals; it hopes to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. So it seeks clean — as well as resilient — resources to charge the electric buses.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsMontgomery County, Maryland Seeks Microgrid-Ready Project for Electric Bus Depot

UC San Diego Launches Study On Recycling EV Batteries Into Energy Storage

on August 29, 2019

With the expected uptick in EV adoption over the next few years, companies around the world are looking for ways to repurpose used EV batteries that can have up to a decade of life left in them, and energy storage is one potential application.

Previous second-life projects often included EV manufacturers. In October, Nissan and EDF Energy announced a project that will combine used EV batteries with demand response capabilities developed by the U.K. energy company. Also in 2018, Wärtsilä and Hyundai Motor Group partnered on a project to develop uses for second-life EV batteries in Germany. Hyundai estimates that in 2025, there will be 29 GWh of second-life EV batteries available.

A focus area of the agreement between Cummins and UC San Diego will be stationary energy storage system performance under grid energy storage applications, Katie Zarich, a spokesperson for Cummins, told Utility Dive. University researchers will perform tests and develop an outdoor second-life demonstration system comprised of Cummins battery modules, according to a statement.

For Cummins, which founded its electrified power business in 2018, the partnership will provide valuable data on the aging behaviors of its battery modules.

“Electrification has the potential to play an enormous role as we move toward decarbonization of many industries, but in order to maximize that potential, it’s crucial that we focus on the sustainability of the entire product life cycle,” Julie Furber, vice president of electrified power of Cummins, said. “One piece of the puzzle that requires additional research is the second-life of batteries, and Cummins now has a highly-skilled and capable partner in UC San Diego as we move towards the development of reuse solutions.”

Used EV batteries maintain a significant battery capacity, up to 70%, according to Nissan and EDF. While this may no longer meet the requirements to power a vehicle’s drivetrain, it is sufficient capacity for less demanding applications, Cummins said.

The Indiana-based company also pointed out that repurposing batteries increases sustainability as it postpones recycling, which has proved to be a challenge.

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Fractal Energy Storage ConsultantsUC San Diego Launches Study On Recycling EV Batteries Into Energy Storage