Pika, a manufacturer of home energy storage systems headquartered in Maine, US, has been bought up by power generation equipment manufacturer Generac.

The company makes a line of ‘smart’ battery storage products, including the Coral smart battery, an ‘entry-level’ system for households scalable up to 8kW. The system is based on AGM (absorbent glass mat) lead-acid battery technology and promises to aid integration of solar and provide backup power in the event of outages.

The company also makes energy storage systems using Panasonic’s batteries, with Pika’s inverters showcased at last year’s Solar Power International in California in September, paired with Panasonic equipment. Pika’s Harbor ‘smart battery’ can go up to 10kW / 17kWh using the Japanese company’s lithium-ion battery modules.

The company has been marketing backup power products to regions including Puerto Rico recently, where, in the wake of recent disasters and the territory’s island geography, backup power is considered a big value-add feature for energy storage systems.

Generac, in the power solutions business since 1959 when it first started making and selling residential backup generators, makes a wide range of power products up to industrial scale and transfer switching and backup power equipment for applications up to 2MW.

Generac announced last week that with the acquisition of Pika, Generac has “entered the home energy storage market”. A Generac press release said that Pika has expertise in developing power electronics, software and controls for “smart energy storage and management”, while the integrated nature of the solutions help reduce costs and minimise disruption to the grid. The acquisition closed on 26 April. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Energy-Storage.news approached Pika for comment but did not receive a reply at time of going to press. Ben Polito’ Pika’s CEO and co-founder was quoted by the Generac release as saying that: “Generac is dedicated to providing people with innovative and forward-thinking solutions to power their homes and businesses. Pika energy storage technology, combined with Generac’s distribution strength and demand creation capabilities, will make this solution immediately available to more users.”

The battle between renewable energy and fossil fuel is already at a boiling point, but that’s nothing compared to the steaming hot mosh pit of internecine warfare going on between coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. In the latest development on that score, US Energy Secretary Rick Perry went on a bomb-throwing mission at the EarthX 2019 conference in Dallas, Texas last week.

Wait — What Is EarthX?
If you’ve never heard of EarthX before, join the club. Here’s the pitch:

We are an international, nonprofit environmental forum whose purpose is to educate and inspire people to action towards a more sustainable future. We assemble and connect citizens, educators, students, businesses, nonprofits, and global leaders to explore sustainable solutions for today’s most pressing challenges.

As for where they are coming from, the person behind EarthX is Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day in Texas. EarthX lists Tetrapak, Oncor, and Santander as main sponsors.

Occidental Petroleum also weighs in along with Green Spring Technologies (think hemp, not electricity) and other local Dallas companies.

A Quick Digression Over To Occidental
Wait — Occidental?! Didn’t huge fan of wind power and mega mogul Warren Buffett just lay down a cool $10 billion to juice Occidental’s takeover of Andarko — even though Chevron already has dibs?

Oh yes he did! If anybody can guess what that is all about, drop us a note in the comment thread. Buffett is asking for a good slice of the shareholder pie, which could mean that Occidental-Andarko will finally join the ranks of legacy oil and gas companies diversifying into renewables.

On the other hand, nah. We’re thinking natural gas power plants and petrochemicals, which should give ExxonMobil the willies, but that’s just a wild guess.

Where Were We? Oh Right — Coal, Meet Bus
With all this in mind, let’s take a look at what Secretary Perry said at EarthX. In a speech on April 25, he basically made the case that the US energy strategy for decarbonization should be this:

Now the first step is to take energy that is free of emissions…and generate more of it.

Okay, so that excludes coal and includes renewables, except for that intermittent thing (don’t tell Perry about wind and solar complementarity because he doesn’t think that’s a thing yet).

The UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has conducted testing of an advanced energy storage system in collaboration with the US Navy.

The system is known as the Flywheel Energy Storage System (FESS) and is based on Le Mans motor-sport technologies.

FESS has been developed under collaboration between GKN and Dstl to demonstrate an energy storage option for the Royal Navy’s most advanced ships. The new technology was originally developed by the Williams F1 team.

Testing of the FESS was performed at both UK and US facilities under an agreement called Advanced Electric Power and Propulsion Project Arrangement (AEP3).

To perform testing, the UK’s Dstl and DE&S teamed up with the US NAVSEA’s Electric Ship Office and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

The testing in the US was also supported by US Coalition Warfare Program (CWP) funding.

FESS uses high-speed and lightweight flywheels to provide high-power electrical pulses.

It is intended to serve the Royal Navy’s future systems such as Dragonfire Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW) and help reduce the impact of these systems to the rest of the ship.

In addition, the technology will remove safety concerns related to battery-based systems.

As part of the collaborative programme, the US and UK used a power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) approach.

The PHIL approach involved the integration of a ‘real’ FESS into a virtual ship power system that simulated a Royal Navy vessel operating in real-time.

This approach can be used to develop the hardware and de-risk its integration into a real ship in a cost-effective way.

Following the US trials, the FESS was delivered to the UK and tested at the Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC) in Scotland.

Two Arkansas utilities are in a race to offer the state’s first solar energy facility featuring an onsite battery for energy storage, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving Arkansans money.

Ozarks Electric Cooperative (OEC), in a trilateral agreement with Today’s Power, Inc. (TPI) and the city of Fayetteville, broke ground in March on two solar power systems with a combined 12-megawatts of solar generation and a total of 24-megawatt hours of energy. Concurrently, Entergy Arkansas, in partnership with NextEra, announced plans in March to build a 100-megawatt solar energy facility near Searcy that will be capable of storing up to 30-megawatt hours of electricity.

Ozarks Electric Cooperative joins forces with Today’s Power Inc., on Fayetteville’s Energy Action Plan

“Ozarks Electric Cooperative is the first utility in the Mid-South to lead the charge on energy storage in partnership with the City of Fayetteville, who has accomplished 72 percent of their renewable energy goals with this project,” TPI spokesperson Jennah Denney says, adding that TPI is currently deploying the only energy storage system in the Mid-South.

Kris Williams, director of Energy Services at Ozarks Electric Cooperative, says the project is expected to be completed in late June of 2019.

Located at the east and west wastewater treatment facilities in Fayetteville and spanning a total of 70 acres, each system will utilize an onsite battery charged through solar panels during the day and offloaded during peak evening hours.

“Batteries with their increasing capacities and decreasing prices take the intermittency out of renewable energy,” Denney says. “Batteries also enable us to continue using green solar energy into the night, long after the sun has set.”

Williams says the batteries are each about the size of a school bus and will be kept in structures separate from the solar panels to ensure the appropriate environmental conditions to preserve the life of the batteries.

The power grid is a pretty complex system. Electricity is generally produced on an as-needed basis. Generators ramp up and down based on demand. However, energy storage systems are beginning to change how demands are being met.

Hydro Is Storage
Energy storage isn’t a new concept. In fact, pumped-storage hydro systems have been around since the late 1800s. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), there was 23.6 GW of operational pumped-storage capacity in the U.S. in June 2018, which accounted for 94% of the country’s energy storage. Furthermore, some experts have argued that all hydropower is a form of energy storage.

“Our water reservoir[s] are our batteries,” Eric Martel, president and CEO of Hydro-Quebec, said in March during a panel session at the BloombergNEF (BNEF) Summit in New York. Hydro-Quebec is a Canadian public utility that operates some 60 hydroelectric generating stations. Martel said Hydro-Quebec’s reservoirs are so large that the utility “can store 175 TWh, which is more than enough to provide the whole electricity for the New York state for a year and a half almost.”

Pumped-storage hydro systems function kind of like a bank. Owners can make deposits, that is, use electricity to pump water into a reservoir when power is abundant and the price is cheap. Then, they can make withdrawals by reversing the operation and generating power when electricity prices increase, thus pocketing the price difference. There is some lost energy along the way, because the systems are not 100% efficient, but as long as the price difference more than makes up for the losses, the economics work.

Besides arbitrage, energy storage can also help defer generation, transmission, and distribution capacity additions; improve grid flexibility, reliability, and resiliency; provide ancillary services; stabilize power quality; minimize renewable energy curtailments; and assist end-users in managing energy costs.

“If we use the hydro capacity to store energy and to firm the production of other resources, then we are getting to power which is as-consumed power, no longer as-produced,” Grzegorz Górski, managing director of ENGIE’s Centralized Generation Métier, said at the BNEF event.

By concluding another solicitation for energy storage resources, SCE continues its run as one of the country’s leading utilities in storage deployment. SCE’s vision to add 30 GW of additional renewable capacity to California’s electric grid by 2030 makes energy storage increasingly important.

The seven new projects, which remain subject to California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approval, further the utility’s clean energy goals.

“Unlike other solicitations to increase the generation capacity of the overall electric system, this solicitation specifically sought to meet local needs in the Moorpark area and address electrical energy storage needs related to restricted natural gas operations at Southern California Gas Company’s Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Field,” Colin Cushnie, vice president of energy procurement and management at SEC, said in a statement.

SCE’s Aliso Canyon Energy Storage 2 request for offers and the Local Capacity requirements request for proposal targeted clean energy resources connecting through the Santa Clara and Goleta substations to address local reliability needs, the company said.

The latest SCE procurement comes only months after Pacific Gas & Electric received the CPUC’s approval for four energy storage projects totaling 567.5 MW / 2,270 MWh in capacity.

Energy storage has helped decrease California’s reliance on gas for years, particularly since 2016, when regulators ordered accelerated battery procurements to counteract the closure of a natural gas storage facility outside Los Angeles.

Utilities across the country are increasingly turning to energy storage. The technology is vital as it turns power generated by non-dispatchable energy sources, such as wind and solar, into dispatchable ones, improving grid reliability and allowing the integration of even more renewable capacity.

However, there are some concerns regarding the safety of large-scale energy storage facilities, in particular those using lithium-ion batteries.

A recent explosion at an Arizona Public Service (APS) facility that sent four fire fighters to the hospital highlighted those concerns, though the exact cause of the accident remains under investigation.

“The question of how you manage these things safely, when you’ve got thousands of these cells in close proximity, that’s still a work in progress,” Donald Sadoway, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert in battery technology, told Utility Dive.

APS, the largest investor-owned utility in Arizona, has been a leader in the procurement of energy storage. In February, the utility announced that it will add 850 MW of battery storage and at least 100 MW of solar generation by 2025. Despite the incident at its McMicken facility, the utility plans to follow through with its plans.

“As far as we are concerned, we know that energy storage, including batteries, is vital to a clean energy future. We will continue with our plans to add clean energy projects to our system,” Lily Quezada, APS spokesperson, said. “[It] is a breakthrough technology that is solving important issues and challenges. We are still committed to our plans.”

Concerns in the industry
The fire at its storage facility in Surprise, Arizona was not the first such incident for APS. Back in 2012, a 1.5-MW system near Flagstaff, Arizona also caught fire. The utility said it took several key design lessons from the 2012 fire, including improving air ventilation between cabinets, incorporating a 24/7 monitoring system and the ability to send remote alarms.

Fox News and other right-wing media have done a good job of convincing the conservative base to oppose Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’ (D-New York) Green New Deal. However, the plan has not lost its magic in the blue states.

The Green New Deal has served to inspire policies from both presidential candidates and state leaders, but its most ambitious form yet may come at the city level. At least that is the bar that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti set yesterday with the roll out of a plan dubbed L.A.’s Green New Deal, whose 13 points cover everything from solar to single-use plastic, with a strong current of environmental justice and equity initiatives that shows the ideological inspiration of the original.

There’s far more to cover in the 151-page plan than any one article can do justice to, but among the top-line is an acceleration of the energy transition in electricity, with goals of 55% renewables by 2025 and 80% by 2036, and host of policies to enable a rapid build-out of local solar and energy storage.

This is not the only bold move; the plan also mandates that all new city-owned buildings and major renovations be all-electric, as well as setting a target for every single building in the city to become emissions-free by 2050 – with a major focus on electrification to meet that target.

Finally, the plan calls for an increase in the portion of electric and zero-emissions vehicles in the city to 25% by 2025, 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2050.

WAUKESHA, Apr 29, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE via COMTEX) — WAUKESHA, Wis., April 29, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Generac Holdings Inc. GNRC, -0.25% (“Generac” or the “Company”), a global leader in the design and manufacture of a wide range of residential, commercial and industrial power products, announced today the Company has acquired Pika Energy, Inc., a manufacturer of innovative battery storage technologies that capture and store solar or grid power for homeowners and businesses.
“Pika’s integrated battery storage solutions are a crucial component in developing a comprehensive system to store and consume clean energy,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, Generac president and CEO. “The visionary ideas and technology that Pika has developed give us a considerable edge as we expand into the rapidly developing market for energy storage.”

Pika is an expert in developing advanced power electronics, software and controls for smart energy storage and management, and their integrated energy storage systems allow users to easily capture, store and use solar energy to reduce energy costs and minimize grid disruptions. The company is located in Westbrook, Maine and was founded in 2010.

“Generac is dedicated to providing people with innovative and forward-thinking solutions to power their homes and businesses,” said Ben Polito, Pika Energy CEO and co-founder. “Pika energy storage technology, combined with Generac’s distribution strength and demand creation capabilities, will make this solution immediately available to more users. We are thrilled to be a part of the Generac team.”

“Pika, now together with Generac and Neurio, a leading energy management technology company recently acquired by Generac, share a vision to develop groundbreaking technologies that modernize the way electricity is generated, stored, and used in homes,” said Jagdfeld. “By combining Generac’s expertise in power products; Neurio’s unprecedented insight into home energy use; and Pika’s expertise in battery storage, we can bring to market the first truly intelligent home energy management system.”

A group of nine influential environmental groups has joined calls for energy storage to get access to the same tax credits as solar and wind.

Legislation has been introduced in both houses for an investment tax credit (ITC) for energy storage. As it stands energy storage systems have to be paired with an ITC recipient such as a solar farm in order to be eligible.

The 30% ITC, due to step down to 26% at the end of the year, was one of the crucial sparks for rooftop solar’s breakout, especially after a $2,000 cap was lifted in 2008.

In the letter to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, the signatories said:

“Clarifying energy storage’s full eligibility for the ITC would accelerate energy storage deployment, improve power system reliability and resilience, and optimize the nation’s renewable energy resources.

“An energy storage tax credit is a shared priority for extenders legislation. Such a credit provides a uniquely near-term and impactful way to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, spur economic growth, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”