As renewable energy capacity rises around the globe, markets are changing, creating opportunities for new businesses and technologies.

One of the primary beneficiaries of the tide of renewable energy is a battery storage industry whose global market volume will rise to $13.13 billion by 2023, buoyed by necessity and falling system prices.

That is the prediction made by market analysis company Globaldata in its Battery Energy Storage Market, Update 2019 – Global Market Size, Competitive Landscape and Key Country Analysis to 2023 report, which states the Asia and Pacific region (APAC), as well as Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), will be the most dominant battery storage markets up to 2023.

According to the analysts, the APAC region made up 45% of the world’s installed battery storage capacity last year. The region will continue on that trajectory, said Globaldata. In China, India, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines in particular, said the analysts, significant uptake of grid connected renewable electricity generation will necessitate frequency control in grid networks to improve resilience.

The EMEA region significantly increased its battery storage market share between 2013 and 2018, to a 26% slice of the world market worth $1.72 billion. The Globaldata report adds, the European market has robust demand for flexibility and will be EMEA’s driver for new storage capacity with Africa and the Middle East to follow suit once renewable energy deployment gains traction.

The Americas battery storage market was slightly larger than EMEA with a registered value of $1.97 billion last year, to make up around 28% of the global market. Chile, Canada, Brazil and the U.S. in particular saw rapid uptake of storage.

Globaldata analyst Bhavana Sri said: “The U.S. has been the largest [national] market for battery energy storage systems, both in terms of cumulative installed capacity and by market value, for projects installed up to 2018 and is likely to continue to lead the market at the country level. The U.S. market for battery energy storage is estimated to reach $2.96 billion in 2023, accounting for 23% of the global market.”

Washington — Having received the nod from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, New York’s grid operator is moving forward with a proposal to prepare its real-time market settlement rules for the expansion of wholesale market participation by energy storage resources.

New York currently has about 30 MW of energy storage capability, all located downstate, but its grid operator anticipates that figure growing to more than 1,000 MW by 2025 and nearly 4,000 MW by 2039.
FERC’s Order 841, issued last year, mandated tariff changes creating market participation rules that recognize the physical and operational characteristics of storage and accommodate its participation in the wholesale power markets. New York Independent System Operator in December filed a suite of tariff revisions (ER16-467) to comply with the order, and separately worked energy storage resources into a March 15 proposal (ER19-1332) to remove unnecessary complexity from its real-time market settlement rules.

NYISO has requested an effective date no earlier than May 1, 2020, for its Order 841 compliance filing, which remains under FERC review. But the commission Friday accepted the proposed real-time market settlement rule tweaks.

The changes, which will take effect May 15, clarify calculations regarding energy injections and withdrawals that are not scheduled in the day-ahead market, including deviations from day-ahead schedules. Such injections and withdrawals are subject to NYISO’s real-time market settlement often referred to as balancing market settlements.

The resulting balancing payments and charges address differences between scheduled and actual energy injections and withdrawals as well as differences between real-time and day-ahead energy schedules.

CONSOLIDATED TARIFF SECTIONS
FERC’s Friday sign-off clears the way for NYISO to consolidate tariff language addressing real-time market settlement for energy injections into one section and settlement for withdrawals in another section. The grid operator determined that differentiating between whether actual market activity exceeded or was less than day-ahead schedules was adding “unneeded complexity to the tariff rules.”

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Convergent Energy + Power (Convergent), the leading independent developer of energy storage solutions in North America, and Shell *, today announced a joint venture starting with 21 MWh of industrial battery storage systems at two Shell Canada Products facilities in Ontario. Convergent and Shell New Energies intend to collaborate on future projects for customers within and beyond Shell’s affiliated portfolio.

“Convergent is focused on building projects that save our customers real money while also increasing the overall sustainability and reliability of electricity,” says Convergent CEO Johannes Rittershausen. “We are proud to launch this joint venture with Shell to create value for a broader group of customers.”

By using the energy storage solutions developed and operated by Convergent, commercial and industrial customers can lower their energy bills by decreasing the amount of electricity their facilities consume during grid peak periods. For example, Convergent’s PEAK IQ™ dispatch algorithm is 25% more accurate at peak prediction than public market forecasts, which, coupled with the energy storage system, can save large commercial and industrial customers up to 40% on their electricity bills. The first two projects under the joint venture are currently in the construction phase at Shell Canada Products facilities in Brockville and Sarnia, Ontario.

“Convergent has a strong track record of delivering cost savings and resiliency services to large industrial customers,” says Eric Bradley, Global General Manager Connected Energy, Shell New Energies. “This energy storage offering complements the broader suite of solutions, including energy efficiency and energy management, that we already provide.”

Convergent is the largest operator of energy storage solutions in Ontario, with 26 MW in service, and Shell Energies North America provides comprehensive power services to industrial customers throughout North America, including Ontario. Under the partnership agreement, Convergent’s energy storage solutions will be offered to existing Shell Energy North America customers in Canada.

Massachusetts is a leader in the deployment of distributed energy storage in America, due to forward-thinking legislative approaches and other measures aimed at unlocking the full potential of the resource, analysts told Utility Dive.

The state, which is part of ISO New England (ISO-NE), recently became the first in the nation to allow behind-the-meter (BTM) energy storage to qualify for energy efficiency incentives. But the biggest boost to storage deployment in the state came when regulators decided to include storage resources in a new solar incentive program, Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART).

“Solar projects that participate under our SMART program are eligible to get an additional compensation rate if they pair with energy storage. You get more money if you pair with storage. The bigger the storage is and the longer duration it is, the more money you get,” Michael Judge, renewable energy division director of the state’s Department of Energy Resources (DOER), told Utility Dive.

The policy allowed Sunrun to bid into ISO-NE’s capacity market with 20 MW of aggregated BTM solar-plus-storage.

First of its kind
As a developer, Sunrun has reaped the benefits of Massachusetts’ aggressive push to expand energy storage deployment. The California-based renewable energy developer earlier this year set a new benchmark when ISO-NE accepted its bid for the 2022-2023 capacity market auction.

The success of Sunrun’s bid was a combination of strong state level policies and favorable wholesale market pathways, Christopher Rauscher, the company’s director for policy and storage market strategy, told Utility Dive.

“If we didn’t have that rock solid foundation for residential solar, we would not have been able to add on the storage in aggregate and fit into the market. That’s really what unlocked this at the state level,” he said. “The New England system operator, they have market access rules that are much more conducive to residential demand side resources than any other market in the country.”

Similar to Massachusetts, other ISO-NE markets, including Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have policies to encourage the development of residential solar and energy storage. Sunrun anticipates that the contract’s 20 MWs of capacity will be met with roughly 5,000 homes featuring onsite solar-plus-storage, which will be tied together through software to create a dispatchable resource for the system operator.

The Extinction Rebellion movement formed last year in Britain with a three-headed list of demands (1. Tell the truth 2. Act now 3. Beyond politics) in response to growing concern over climate change. The group brought Central London to a standstill last week, blocking traffic and seeing hundreds of its members arrested.

While from the outside, the group might look like a continuation of past protest movements for social justice, there’s a recognition that the sheer number of people involved mean that it is increasingly a more inclusive movement than, say, the pro-Brexit marches also taking place on London’s streets over the past few weeks.

The protestors have joined schoolchildren from around the world who decided to ‘Climate Strike’, kicking back against a futureless future and even the UK government finally caved in and admitted the scale of the climate emergency – while at the same time concerns grow over air pollution and the other environmental costs associated with ‘business as usual’ carrying on despite the rise in global temperatures.

We think they’ve done a pretty good job of raising awareness. Certainly the ‘XR’ Extinction Rebellion logos are to be seen on mobile phone cases, handbags and all over the ticket barriers of the underground tube train network. But in focusing on climate doom, are they misrepresenting or failing to see the existence of solutions? It’s a tricky question.

For me, I would say that it is our job at Solar Media to present the arguments for clean energy and the specific technologies that can play a role in modernising our energy system(s) along a path to decarbonisation. Every day we see that solutions are in many cases already present for the biggest problems the world faces. We’ve seen batteries and solar replacing coal and now gas, we’ve seen the cost of solar drop 90% in the past 10 years and we’ve seen that even the UK is committed to phasing out petrol-powered vehicles by 2040.

However, there’s no time to be smug. Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat it, those that do study history are sometimes condemned to watching others repeating its mistakes. To fail to act now on climate change would be a huge dereliction of duty by us all. While Extinction Rebellion may have helped draw attention to the scale of the problem, it’s now up to us all – especially those of us with a head-start in the industry – to bring the solutions to life.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry has announced $89 million to support innovative, advanced manufacturing research and development projects. This Department of Energy (DOE) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) tackles key Departmental priorities — such as domestic manufacturing for energy storage.

“Embracing new technologies that drive innovation in American manufacturing is the key to creating real-world progress that significantly improves energy efficiency in manufacturing,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “By focusing on energy-related advanced manufacturing technologies, we are building a new era of manufacturing that will stimulate the economy, create jobs and build American energy independence.”

The FOA requests proposals in three areas that will improve the global competitiveness of the U.S. by catalyzing innovation around manufacturing of key energy technologies and by reducing industrial process energy intensity.

Topic 1: Innovations for the Manufacture of Advanced Materials. Focuses on employing machine learning to develop better batteries, phase change storage materials for heating and cooling applications, and new semiconductors that convert temperature differences into electricity. A key focus is developing and scaling new, low-cost manufacturing processes to catalyze increased domestic battery manufacturing for vehicle and stationary applications.

Topic 2: Lower Thermal Budget Processes for Industrial Efficiency & Productivity. With 70% of all process energy use related to heating, this topic focuses on novel research on industrial process drying technologies that increase energy efficiency throughput and product quality. It also seeks new ideas on process intensification to reduce overall heating energy.

Topic 3. Connected, Flexible & Efficient Manufacturing Facilities and Energy Systems. With recent advances in new, wide band-gap semiconductors supported by DOE, this topic seeks application of more efficient industrial power conversion equipment and new opportunities for converting process energy to electrical energy and better integrating it with the electrical grid. It also seeks advancements in combined heat and power that result in higher electrical efficiencies.

The national Renewable Energy Association has taken aim at a British government proposal to hike up tax rates attached to some energy saving equipment purchases, including solar and battery storage.

A consultation launched by the government department responsible for tax, HM Revenue & Customs closed late last week, proposing an increase in the VAT (value-added tax, the UK’s sales tax mechanism) attached to these energy saving materials from 5% to 20%, essentially eliminating a discount that had been applied to those products.

It is not the first time that solar PV has been threatened with a higher rate of VAT. In 2015 the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK’s application of a discounted rate was illegal and, despite attempting to fight it, the government eventually conceded that the increase could not be averted.

An increase to 20% – the default rate of VAT for goods and services – was initially expected in the 2016 Budget. However HMRC’s consultation response was absent, and later it emerged that a cross-party group of MPs had voiced their concerns over the plans.

Just a few weeks later, the ECJ published its VAT action plan with no comment on the solar decision, instead electing to “modernise and reboot” Europe’s taxation framework.

Since then the government has remained coy, however the storage market secured a partial victory in late 2017 when HMRC said that domestic battery storage systems could also enjoy the 5% VAT rate as long as they were installed alongside solar systems.

The new consultation seeks to amend the discounted rate so that a full 20% rate of VAT is applied to the machinery costs should they be above 60% of a total installation fee. Labour costs will still benefit from the reduce rate.

There is also a carve out for homeowners who are aged 60 or above and those receiving particular benefits, and housing associations will also be eligible for the reduced rate still. The new rates are proposed to come into effect from 1 October 2019.

The race to build Europe’s first lithium-ion energy storage system ‘Gigafactory’ could be won by Tesvolt, as the German manufacturer announced a “multimillion-euro investment” in production lines this week.

Promising fully carbon neutral production of the company’s battery energy storage systems, which have been used both on and off-grid in more than 1,000 projects already, Tesvolt’s factory will be “fully supplied by solar energy”, the company claims.

This will include a 200kWp PV system to power offices and system production lines, paired with a 350kWh Tesvolt energy storage system. Heat pumps using a natural refrigerant will mean the facilities’ heating also comes from solar. Mechanical engineering company teamtechnik will fit out the factory’s semi-automated production line. The facility will have an annual production capacity of over 1GWh when completed.

Tesvolt’s battery systems were recently installed at Britain’s largest subsidy-free solar farm to date, with the energy storage thought to be a key part of the project’s business plan. Similarly, Tesvolt said it is “financing its multi-million Euro investment in the gigafactory without any outside funding”, although it is accepting a small amount of EU support worth 10% of the cost.

The company did not give a timeline for completion of the production lines, although it says 12,000 sqm of floor space will be ready next month and that by the final phase of construction the production space will total 20,000sqm. Tesvolt expects employee numbers to roughly double by then from today’s workforce of 60. As with the majority of its competitors, Tesvolt does not make its own battery cells and has sourced nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells from Samsung SDI in the past.

“The world market for stationary energy storage systems has already reached a total capacity of 16GWh. Europeans are calling for an end to harmful coal-fired power plants and diesel scandals. They want a future free of environmental disasters. We want the gigafactory to be our contribution to reaching this goal, making clean and affordable energy possible anywhere in the world,” Tesvolt co-founder and CEO Daniel Hannemann said.

Utility Arizona Public Service reaffirmed its commitment to grid batteries after a fire at one such facility injured four first responders.

The April 19 explosion at the McMicken facility prompted Arizona’s largest utility to power down its remaining energy storage plants, and raised questions about the future of this rapidly growing grid technology. APS committed in February to a considerable escalation of energy storage installations, to capture more solar power during the day and make it available at night.

The investigation to determine the cause of the fire is still underway, but APS is not giving up on those plans for battery expansion, President Jeff Guldner told Arizona regulators last week.

“As you know, we have moved forward and made an announcement as to work that we intend to pursue on battery storage,” Guldner said. “This hasn’t changed our determination to move forward on that.”

In February APS announced plans to deploy 850 megawatts of battery storage by 2025, the single largest storage procurement from a utility to date.

Indeed, the investigation will provide valuable information to ensure safe practices as that expansion proceeds, locally and nationally. “This is important because battery technology is such an important future component to the operation of the grid,” Guldner noted.

The full remarks, made at the April 23 meeting of the Arizona Corporation Commission, are visible on a public video recording (starting around 2:46:00).

The ACC similarly signaled that it sees batteries playing a larger role in the future of the state’s grid.

During the hearing, Commissioner Boyd Dunn made that point explicitly.

“I agree with your comment that batteries are our future,” he said. “Wherever you go, that’s going to be the talk.”