Tesla has built another Powerpack system in record time, this time at Osaka train station in Japan, where it will be used as emergency backup and to reduce peak energy demand. According to the company on Twitter, the 42 Powerpack units will provide enough energy to safely move a train and its passengers for up to 30 minutes to the nearest station in the event of a power failure.

Tesla says the 7MWh project makes this one its biggest energy storage development in Asia, and like its giant Australian Powerpack system, it was completed with eye-watering speed — the hardware was apparently installed in just two days.

Osaka’s trains are some of the busiest in Japan, transporting millions of people every day, so Tesla’s Powerpack will undoubtedly prove a blessing during power interruptions. While the company’s energy division tends to take a backseat to its EV work, its 2018 figures show it’s playing an increasingly prominent role not only within the Tesla empire, but across the energy storage landscape in general. Last year the company deployed 1.04Gwh of energy storage, nearly triple the 358MWh rolled out in 2017.

Update (3/27 7 PM): This post has been updated to reflect that Osaka Powerpack is Tesla’s largest energy storage system in Asia, not the largest one in all of Asia.

Energy storage product developer Dynapower has introduced a new line of utility-scale energy storage inverters.

The air-cooled CPS-1500 and CPS-3000 are available in both indoor and outdoor configurations and work with all battery chemistries. Each feature a high-efficiency, three-level topology designed for both grid-tied and microgrid applications.

The Gen 4 CPS inverters also feature Dynapower’s proprietary Dynamic Transfer technology, which allows for the seamless transfer from grid-tied to microgrid mode, and industry-leading Black Start capabilities (in the event of a complete system power outage, Black Start restores power to the facility without the need for external power). Multiple CPS units can be paralleled together to meet the sizing and power needs of any energy storage installation.

Outdoor rated CPS inverters are enclosed in NEMA 3R containers that can be moved with a forklift and allow for placement on gravel or concrete pylons, creating installation savings.

Dynapower’s CPS inverters are an integrated solution containing all required protective features, as well as an AC output breaker and DC disconnect switch. This creates cost savings for end-users and integrators when compared with other inverters that require additional add-on items needed for battery integration. CPS inverters can be supplied with MV transformers to easily integrate customer supplied battery systems into any network.

Spain’s largest oil and gas company, Repsol, has invested in Spanish battery startup Ampere Energy, in a move to emulate industry peers taking positions in clean energy technologies.

Madrid-based Repsol this month put an unspecified amount into Ampere, a residential energy storage player from Valencia with a presence in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Benelux and the U.K.

The deal gives Repsol a seat on Ampere’s board and provides Ampere with access to Repsol’s Technology Lab research and development center. Ampere Energy CEO Ignacio Osorio said Repsol’s backing would help the company “undertake ambitious growth plans.”

Ampere has developed a virtual power plant technology called Amperia that it said could be used to tie together distributed energy storage assets. It is unclear if this aggregation capability extends to third-party batteries or is limited to Ampere’s own battery systems, which the company says use artificial intelligence to adapt to user requirements.

The investment comes as Repsol undergoes a major corporate repositioning. In common with other European oil and gas majors, the Spanish giant is keen to reinvent itself as a diversified energy company.

Last November it paid €733 million ($826 million) for almost 2.4 gigawatts of low-emission generation capacity plus a portfolio of 750,000 residential grid customers from the Cantabria-based electricity supplier Viesgo.

Thermal energy storage is gaining ground in refrigeration applications, providing demand management for one of utilities’ most energy-intensive industries.

Industrial refrigeration consumes more energy per cubic foot than any other utility load, said Collin Coker, vice president, sales and marketing, Viking Cold Solutions.

Thermal energy storage generally involves salt water-based solutions that can absorb heat and supplement refrigeration. In these applications, thermal storage offers cost advantages over lithium ion batteries, he said.

“From the utility’s perspective, refrigeration is a very intense load and these commercial and industrial sites are located all over the place,” he said. The grocery stores and other cold storage operators often pay high demand charges in areas like California and New England, he added.

“We can shift the load from peak daytime usage to night time usage, and also reduce overall consumption by running refrigerators at night, when they run more efficiently,” he said.

Who’s using thermal storage
Viking Cold Solutions and Axiom Energy are participating in demand management programs to provide thermal energy storage in refrigeration applications.

Viking Cold Solutions partnered with Eversource to install a thermal energy storage system to reduce the Greater Boston Food Bank’s peak demand, realizing a 75 percent reduction in consumption during the program period, the company said. The partnership is part of Eversource’s Demand Reduction Demonstration in Massachusetts.

A new 1 MW / 1 MWh battery is expected to come online in Consolidated Edison’s territory next month, the first of several the New York City utility will roll out as part of a demonstration project that challenges the definition of energy innovation: sometimes it’s a new technology, other times it’s a real estate deal.

The project takes a new approach to developing energy storage for peak shaving and other grid benefits: rather than search for customers with the perfect load to also benefit and co-own the asset, ConEd tasked distributed generation developer GI Energy with finding under-utilized real estate to lease.

The utility gave GI a list of locations on its grid where batteries could provide a benefit, and the company took care of project development and customer acquisition.

“The conventional behind-the-meter (BTM) model is basically arbitraging utility tariffs,” GI Energy Director of Analytics James Robinson told Utility Dive. “It works but it has some limitations.”

The arrangement with GI utilizes a new type of dispatch and ownership arrangement the company says can help knock down barriers to locating batteries in some areas, particularly where real estate is expensive.

A more traditional battery solution might leverage customer-owned BTM storage assets, but that can be limiting — the utility must find the right customer in the right location with the right peak demand, in order for project economics to work out. And even then, the BTM storage assets tend to be smaller.

A new approach
ConEd’s Commercial Battery Storage (CBS) project takes a new approach, utilizing a third-party to locate and lease appropriate real estate for batteries — with the utility holding primary dispatch rights.