The Arizona Corporation Commission has approved a pilot program for Arizona Public Service (APS) to offer incentives for residents to purchase energy storage battery systems in their homes next year.

Under the pilot program, the first of its kind in the state, homeowners could receive up to $2,500 for the purchase and installation of at-home energy storage devices that can capture electricity from the grid or rooftop solar and dispatch it for later use.

Commissioner Lea Márquez Peterson, who led the effort to advance the program, said she hopes a similar program can be offered by Tucson Electric Power. Eventually, small businesses, retail and commercial industries could be involved if the experiment proves successful.

APS, which worked with storage stakeholders and the utility commission to put together the pilot, must finalize all of the details before it officially kicks off next year.

To encourage homeowners to participate, the 3-year pilot program includes other benefits including:

• Customers who participate in the pilot will receive an increased incentive per household from $300 per kilowatt to $500 per kilowatt
• Grandfathered net metering rooftop solar customers will remain grandfathered if they install new energy storage devices under the program
• Energy storage currently a luxury item
• So far, energy storage battery systems are considered luxury items because of their high cost. A typical energy storage system ranges from $4,000 to $14,000 depending on the size and capacity.

“Typical batteries for a typical home are between 5 and 10 kilowatts and they’re still fairly pricey,” said Márquez Peterson. “So the ultimate decision homeowners will have to make is, is this something they’re willing to invest in–to be a first mover.”

The renewable energy investment and asset management company Low Carbon and Gore Street Energy Storage Fund has switched on what is considered to be the ‘largest’ energy storage project in Northern Ireland.

The battery storage project at Drumkee, County Tyrone, uses lithium-ion technology and has a capacity of 50MW.

In combination with one more project, which is anticipated to be energised in December, the work is expected to support Northern Ireland’s ambitious 2030 renewable energy targets.

Northern Ireland has a target for 70% renewable electricity by 2030.

Roy Bedlow, Chief Executive and Founder of Low Carbon, said: “Often overlooked, battery storage paves the way for a renewable-powered future.”

Alex O’Cinneide, Chief Executive Officer of Gore Street Capital, commented: “We are delighted to announce the energisation of Drumkee, the largest energy storage asset on the national electricity grid, an important milestone for local climate change goals.”

Most stocks with exposure to batteries, energy storage, or renewables have taken off this year. This is partly due to industry fundamentals – electric transport is growing like crazy – but it’s also influenced by the Tesla (TSLA) effect. Any stock that looks like Tesla has become a retail investor darling with hopes of getting rich quick.

That said, there are some companies that remain attractive opportunities and have yet to have future growth priced in. Eos Energy Enterprises (EOSE) is one of those companies. While it’s already run up 35% from its SPAC launch to $13.50 per share, it remains attractive through $15-20 in the short term. Traded warrants (NASDAQ:EOSEW) provide an opportunity for enhanced return via increased risk exposure.

Eos recently went public via a SPAC acquisition. B. Riley Principal Merger Corp. II (BMRG) acquired EOS for $176 million and a pro-forma market capitalization of approximately $500 million. Each unit of BMRG represented 1 share in the newly formed company and one half of a warrant, which are trading under the tickers EOSE and EOSEW, respectively.

Company Overview

Eos Energy Enterprises is a battery manufacturer. It has developed an alternative chemistry to the well-known and widely used Li-ion battery. Li-ion batteries have lots of advantages, which is why they have taken off everywhere from mobile phones and laptops to electric vehicles. Among commercially viable options, Li-ion batteries are currently the most energy dense, measured in kWh/kg or kWh/m³, which makes them especially suited for any application where portability is the priority. When it comes to transport, they can’t be beaten. In fact, much of Tesla’s capital investments have been to increase Li-ion battery capacity to support its growing vehicle fleet.

BYD “Build Your Dreams” announced it will partner with Canadian Solar to provide advanced battery technology for the 100-MW_AC Mustang solar plant in Kings County, California.

The 75-MW or 4-hour 300 MWh energy storage system is a retrofit addition to the Mustang solar plant, which was originally developed by Canadian Solar’s wholly owned subsidiary Recurrent Energy. The solar plant connected to the grid in August 2016 and the project’s equity stake was sold to Goldman Sachs in May 2019, the current owner of the project.

“We are excited to partner with Canadian Solar on this solution. We are very proud to be able to provide reliable and safe BYD technology to the Mustang project,” said BYD North America president Stella Li. “We will deliver the lithium-ion battery storage solution to Canadian Solar, who acts as the full system integrator of the storage retrofit.”

By pairing solar PV with advanced battery technology, Canadian Solar helps its customers to generate and store solar power during the day for use in the evening. This approach allows California’s power grid to absorb and integrate higher levels of reliable, safe and affordable renewable energy while contributing to the state’s climate mitigation efforts.

“We are pleased to start supplying this large-scale solar + energy storage project which will be fully developed and integrated by Canadian Solar with our proprietary battery technology. The adoption and integration of BYD’s batteries will improve the utilization of solar energy and meaningfully enlarge our global addressable market in the solar industry.”

For the Mustang project, BYD will utilize Cube Pro, the latest generation energy storage solution designed for larger utility-scale projects. At 2.5 MWh per unit, the Cube Pro has a new liquid-cool battery system in the enclosure, with an energy density increase of 80% compared to the previous generation that used customized shipping containers as the enclosure.

A battery storage site in Northern Ireland developed by Low Carbon and Gore Street Energy Storage Fund has been energised.

The lithium-ion project, located at Drumkee, County Tyrone, is being lauded as the country’s largest energy storage project and is to serve the Single Electricity Market. It was completed on time, the two companies said, despite the closure of the site for several weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as social distancing measures being needed when the site reopened.

A second 50MW project – Mullavilly – is expected to be energised in December, with both projects to be commissioned and operational in Q1 2021.

NEC Energy Solutions was awarded EPC and long-term O&M contracts for the two projects in January 2020. Whilst NEC Energy Solutions has since announced its closure, it is continuing to deliver on its obligations to existing projects.

As part of the Irish portfolio, Low Carbon and Gore Street are also developing two 30MW projects in the Republic of Ireland, both of which have secured 6-year contracts in Ireland’s DS3 flexibility market. Gore Street acquired a controlling interest in the portfolio in 2019, with the two companies to jointly own and operate the assets.

Earlier this month, Gore Street announced it had signed an EPC and O&M contract with Fluence for one of the 30MW projects – Porterstown – and had also applied to triple its capacity in the Republic of Ireland, up to a total of 180MW.

As power markets decarbonize, there is still a need for dispatchable, peaking power plants. Currently, most of this need is met by fossil-fueled units, but there could be opportunities for battery storage.

In California this past August, rotating outages were implemented because of capacity shortages. During these events, over 50% of the power on the California ISO grid was coming from natural gas-fired plants.

Earlier this year, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered load serving entities in the state to procure 3,300 MW of new resources by the summer of 2023, and California’s State Water Resources Control Board granted a temporary exemption to regulatory deadlines that would have required 3,700 MW of natural gas-fired steam turbine units to retire or install alternate cooling systems that do not harm marine life. These actions were both designed to shore up system resource adequacy. New natural gas resources are not eligible to contract with load serving entities under the CPUC procurement order, but the S&P Global Market Intelligence Power Forecast indicates that new energy storage is more economical than natural gas-fired power plants, especially when it is co-located with solar.

Despite having a much higher reserve margin than CAISO, PJM Interconnection has multiple states with aggressive renewable portfolio standards, or RPS. For example: 50% of retail electricity sales in New Jersey need to be procured from qualifying renewable energy sources by 2030. However, renewable energy has not grown in PJM as quickly as CAISO. The market still generates over half of its electricity from resources that emit carbon when operating.One of the core sources of value for battery storage in CAISO is energy arbitrage, taking advantage of the duck curve by buying power during the day when prices are low because of ample solar generation and selling it later in the day when the sun sets and electricity demand is still high. The market for system resource adequacy capacity contracts also appears ready to support the entry of additional battery storage and hybrid solar-plus-battery storage resources. Even before the current shortfall, capacity prices for system resource adequacy were in a range that would allow generic battery storage and hybrid solar plus battery storage resources to fully recover their net cost of new entry, based on estimates from the S&P Global Market Intelligence Power Forecast.

Germany-headquartered residential battery storage manufacturer sonnen has launched an “all-in-one” system in the US which comes at a recommended retail price of US$9,500.

The company, owned by oil and gas major Shell since last year, has just brought out sonnenCore, a home energy storage system (HESS) which comes with a free 10 year or 10,000 cycle warranty to an expected lifetime throughput of 58MWh.

SonnenCore has 4.8kW of continuous AC output or 8.6kW peak output and 10kWh usable capacity to 100% depth-of-discharge (DoD). The system, which uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry, has been listed to UL 9540 standards for fire safety and sonnen said it is suitable for applications including time-of-use load shifting, solar self-consumption and emergency backup power.

The company said it comes with a newly-developed sonnen inverter and includes custom energy management software (EMS) which sonnen claimed enables “comprehensive end-to-end system integration and optimisation”.

The unit has been designed to be compact at a height of 68 inches, width of 27 inches and depth of 11 inches and made to meet National Electrical Manufacturer Association (NEMA) standard 12 for indoor use.

According to sonnen the product has been brought out to meet demand for lower-cost home energy storage and a sonnen press release claimed that it is a “one-size-fits-all” solution that offers “easily repeatable design and installation”.

According to US price comparison and reviews website SolarReviews, the company’s EcoLinx unit, with 8kW / 30kWh of home storage costs more than three times as much as the new system, coming in at about US$36,000. While EcoLinx was launched this year as something of a premium version of the original sonnen Eco unit and sonnen Eco’s pricing starts at around US$9,000 before installation, that price is for the 5kWh sonnen Eco model.

Africa’s installed capacity of renewable energy, which stood at 12.6 gigawatt (GW) in 2019, is set for consecutive years of growth, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. The continent’s capacity is forecast to reach 16.8 GW in 2020, add another 5.5 GW in 2021, and further climb to 51.2 GW in 2025, led by growth in solar and wind projects in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Ethiopia.

At present, South Africa leads the continent in terms of installed renewable energy capacity with 3.5 GW of wind, 2.4 GW of utility solar, and a solar-dominant 1 GW pipeline of projects in development. Egypt and Morocco are in second and third place in terms of solar capacity with 1.6 GW and 0.8 GW, respectively.

Nearly 40 out of 50 African countries have installed – or plan to install – wind or solar projects. And although the learning curve may be steep for first-time market entrants with sizable development pipelines, inexperienced players will be able to leverage the lessons learned in Egypt, South Africa and Morocco and implement this knowledge into development plans.

Algeria will see the most renewable growth in Africa towards 2025, increasing capacity from just 500 megawatt (MW) in 2020 to almost 2.9 GW in 2025. The increase will come primarily from one mega-project, the 4 GW Tafouk 1 Mega Solar Project, which will be developed in five phases of 800 MW capacity each, to be tendered between 2020 and 2024. Rystad Energy expects three of the tendered projects with 2.4 GW of capacity will be commissioned by 2025.

Tunisia will also see formidable growth, skyrocketing from 350 MW of renewable capacity in 2020 to 4.5 GW in 2025. The additions will come from larger solar plants such as the 2 GW TuNur Mega Project, which is currently in the early stages of development and is expected to come on line by 2025.

In terms of speed, Egypt has been one of the quickest African nations to install solar and wind since 2017, and currently has approximately 3 GW of installed capacity. The country has a massive 9.2 GW development pipeline – which mostly consists of wind projects – putting Egypt on track to overtake South Africa in 2025 and become the green powerhouse of Africa.

Growth will come from large projects such as the 2 GW Gulf of Suez Red Sea Wind Project, which will be located in the governorate of the Red Sea. Of the capacity to be installed, 500 MW will be developed by German giant Siemens Gamesa and 1,500 MW remains to be awarded. Four out of the top 10 projects to be developed in Africa in the next five years will be in Egypt, underscoring the Egyptian government’s commitment to its renewable goals.