A 30MW / 30MWh battery energy storage system has been inaugurated with a ceremony in Victoria, Australia, with one project partner describing the switching-on as “a real watershed moment in the continuing modernisation” of the state’s energy supply.

This morning, Victoria’s Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio officially opened the battery energy storage system (BESS) at Ballarat Terminal Station, Warrenheip. The lithium-ion battery project was announced in March this year, along with another 25MW/50MWh project at the 60MW Gannawarra Solar Farm.

At the time of that announcement in March, AES-Siemens joint venture company Fluence was announced as supplier of the Ballarat system, part of a consortium which includes developer Spotless (now Downer-Spotless, having been taken over by the former company), electricity and gas supplier EnergyAustralia and energy delivery company AusNet. Meanwhile the Gannawarra project is being supplied with its battery system by Tesla along with developer Wirsol and project owner Edify Energy.

The two projects are being funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and Victoria’s government, with each organisation matching the AU$25 million (US$19.31 million) commitment of the other. The electricity transmission terminal at Ballarat is congested, particularly at peak times, meaning the storage system can help stabilise the grid by drawing power at times of peak generation and push it out again when demand peaks. The batteries could also prevent the need for expensive substation upgrades. Both battery projects will be operated by EnergyAustralia through long-term power purchase agreements (PPA).

The advent of technologies such as energy storage, small-scale embedded generation and smart grid solutions are set to fundamentally change South Africa’s electricitylandscape, outgoing Eskom generation group executive Thava Govender said during an opening address at the SA Energy Storage conference on Tuesday.

“The challenge we face today is making this invisible produc tcalled electricity visible. Once visible, electricity can be better directed and optimised. Energy storage offers the means to make electricity visible.”

The recently released draft Integrated Resources Plan 2018 targets an electricity generation mix that comprises 20% renewables by 2030, thereby confirming that South Africawill continue to integrate intermittent and variable energy sources.

“Those 2030 visions increase the need for advanced grid management mechanisms and revised grid operating philosophies to ensure the South African grid is flexible, robust and reliable,” Govender said.

He added that energy storage provided a multitude of solutions to enable a smooth transition to grid modernisation, while providing utilities with capabilities such as load shifting and backup and reserve capacity.

Govender stated that energy storage must not be considered a form of energy generation, and is probably the reason why the IRP has not quantified the requirement or mentioned the integration of energy storage, since it is rather a tool used to realise or optimise a particular form of electricity generation.

Moreover, he explained that there is immense value in battery storage. He said the African continent is rich in natural mineral resources that are used in manufacturingbatteries for energy storage.

“With Southern African Development Community countries possessing an abundance of vanadium, lithium and cobalt, it renders Africa a key player in the battery manufacturing industry globally.”

2018 has been a good year so far for battery storage. Not only is the U.S. residential storage market booming, but an extension of the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) in California is paving the way for ongoing growth over the next five years.

But even before the SGIP extension passed, the dollars were flowing into energy storage. According to Mercom Capital’s 9M & Q3 2018 Funding and M&A report for Storage, Smart Grid and Efficiency, in the first nine months of 2018 funding increased in two key categories for battery storage.

According to the report, venture capital funding for battery storage increased 39% during the first nine months of 2018 to $469 million in 23 deals, while debt and public market financing grew 156% to $446 million.

By contrast the volume in project funding deals fell sharply, however Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu says that this likely reflects the limited information about funding levels for battery projects more than anything else.

“Not everybody goes out and discloses information,” Prabhu told pv magazine.

The top five VC deals for battery storage in the first nine months of 2018 were all above $60 million each:

• $100 million raised by QuantumScape
• $80 million raised by Stem
• $71 million raised by sonnen
• $70 million raised by Sila Technologies
• $65 million raised by Ionic Materials

Battery storage is already showing market momentum, and this is only expected to increase when wholesale markets begin to open to the technology via FERC Order 841.

Chinese EV, stationary battery company and PV panel maker BYD has announced the commissioning of Poland’s first large-scale solar power-linked storage project.

The company said the storage system is being operated in cooperation with Polish BIPV cell and module manufacturer, ML System.

The storage unit is linked to a 1 MW PV plant developed under Poland’s auction scheme for solar projects up to 1 MW in scale.

“The newly launched energy storage project will be combined with a 1 MW solar power plant also produced and sold by BYD, enabling peak shaving and [the creation of] a more balanced power network,” the Chinese company said.

BYD’s numbers add up

The storage units were shipped by BYD in May.

“We believe that this project will be able to provide valuable lessons for power market reform and at the same time further consolidate our position in the Polish energy storage market,” said BYD Renewable Energy Business Development Director, Guo Bin.

In 2017, the solar and battery divisions of BYD enjoyed a relatively positive year, with revenue increasing 18.85% on 2016, to reach RMB8.44 billion ($1.34 billion). Last year, batteries and PV accounted for 8% of BYD’s revenue, up from 7% in 2016.

The Chinese group entered an energy storage partnership with German inverter maker Kostal in September.

Among innovative technology providers developing a thermal energy storage system, Norway-based cleantech company EnergyNest is currently one of the partners selected by multinational energy provider Enel for the analysis of the benefits and impacts of the integration of its technology in one of Enel’s numerous power generation assets. According to EnergyNest, impressive economic and climate-relevant figures could be achieved by the company’s latest thermal energy storage technology when integrated in full-scale: annual CO₂reduction of up to 45,000 tons, 14 million liters of fuel oil saved per year and project payback in less than three years.

The collaboration launched with EnergyNest gives Enel the chance to evaluate EnergyNest’s Thermal Energy Battery solution in real-life conditions and identify full-scale business-applications for the technology integrated into thermal power plants. The objective of the innovative project is to demonstrate how waste heat recovery in Thermal Energy Storage can increase flexibility and sustainability of thermal power plants. This activity will allow Enel to assess technology robustness, its potential contribution to increasing efficiency and its positive environmental impact.

Last week, EnergyNest officially unveiled its first Thermal Battery Module, produced in its new manufacturing hub in Europoort, Rotterdam, on the site of partner Mebin. Manufacturing for two commercial projects is now expected to start at the end of the year. EnergyNest’s innovative battery modules consist of locally-sourced, recyclable materials – framed steel pipes set with Heatcrete, a high-performance thermal-energy-storing concrete developed in partnership with HeidelbergCement, Germany’s multinational buildings material company.

San Diego Zoo Global has chosen a unit of EDF Renewables North America to provide a 1 MW/4 MWh energy storage system that is designed to reduce energy costs while limiting emissions at the zoo.

The zoo will use the storage project to smooth spikes in energy usage, thereby, lowering demand charges. The system will also minimize energy costs by recharging the battery when wholesale electricity prices are low and discharging power to the zoo when costs are high.

EDF Renewables North America Distributed Solutions structured the 12-year contract for the energy storage system as a shared savings agreement.

“We operate the battery and split the savings achieved based on performance,” said Michael Robinson, senior business development manager at EDF Renewables.

EDF also financed and installed the storage project.

The zoo used a $1 million rebate from the Center for Sustainable Energy to help cover project costs. Savings achieved from the system will pay for the project on an ongoing basis, said Adam Ringler, director of performance improvement at San Diego Zoo Global.

The zoo is a direct access customer, which means it buys its power at wholesale rates directly from the California Independent System Operator. The only rates it pays to the utility are demand charges. The energy storage system, which is expected to enter service in May or July 2019, avoids demand charges by cutting the zoo’s energy use during periods of peak demand. The storage system will also be used for some energy arbitrage by taking advantage of wholesale power price volatility.

The energy storage project is one of the larger investments in the zoo’s sustainability program and its “first foray into potential new technology we might deploy going forward,” Ringler said. “We have to see what the results are.”

Australia is to trial using solar and wind power to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, with the hydrogen then being used for long-term energy storage in the Sydney gas network.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has committed AU$7.5 million (US$5.3 million) in funding for Australian energy firm Jemena to build a demonstration scale 500kW electrolyser, known as Project H2GO, at its facility in western Sydney.

The AU$15 million, two-year trial project will connect to Jemena’s existing gas network, which delivers gas to 1.3 million customers in New South Wales. In a release, ARENA noted that hydrogen can be safely added to the natural gas mains at concentrations of up to 10% without affecting pipelines, appliances or regulations.

Most of the hydrogen produced will be injected into the local gas network for domestic use and will go towards demonstrating the potential for renewable hydrogen storage in Australia’s gas networks.

Jemena MD Frank Tudor said: “In the future Australians will need to decide what to do with excess renewable energy on very windy or very sunny days. Jemena’s Project H2GO will demonstrate how existing gas pipeline technology can store excess renewable energy for weeks and months, making it more efficient than batteries which can only store excess renewable energy for minutes or hours.”

Some of the hydrogen will be used in a gas engine generator for electricity generation back into the grid with the remaining stored for use in an onsite Hydrogen Refuelling Station for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said: “As Australia transitions to renewable energy, hydrogen could play an important role as energy storage and also has the effect of decarbonising the gas network with ‘green’ gas. There is significant potential in the power-to-gas value chain including the ability to stabilise the grid as well as pairing renewable energy with electrolysers to soak up and store surplus electricity.”

In the longer term, hydrogen also has the potential to be a major Australian export opportunity. Earlier this month, ARENA announced AU$22 million in R&D funding into exporting hydrogen, supporting 16 research projects across nine Australian universities and research organisations, as hydrogen is seen as potentially a major export opportunity.

All over California, school districts are beginning to install energy storage. Mountain View Los Altos (MVLA) High School District was the first district in the state to combine energy storage with solar power generation and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. At ENGIE Storage, we have years of experience helping K-12 school districts generate cost savings and improve the economics of sustainability measures with our GridSynergy® energy storage systems and software platform. We recently sat down with Mike Mathiesen, associate superintendent of business services at MVLA, to talk about how school districts can benefit from energy storage.

Q: The MVLA school district is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. What makes it unique in terms of the community’s willingness to embrace new technologies for a more sustainable future?

A: Our community expects sustainability measures. Students and parents advocate for it. At our campuses we see electric vehicles, recycling, rainwater harvesting, and other green initiatives, so there is a lot of support for anything we do to supplement those efforts. The community really pays attention to how we’re using our resources, and we try to make those choices wisely and responsibly.

Q: How did you find out about energy storage, and how did the project start?

A: Sybil Cramer, a community advocate and member of MVLA’s Go Green Sustainability Committee, found ENGIE Storage through the Green California Schools Summit when she was researching EV charging. At the time, they were known as Green Charge. They held a workshop that showed us the basics of energy storage and how it mitigates the demand charge impact of EV charging. They also helped us acquire funding to install charging stations coupled with energy storage at both our campuses at no cost to the district.

Q: Why did you decide to couple the energy storage with EV charging and solar power generation?

A: Once we started to understand the mechanics of energy storage, we realized it was a great fit for supporting green initiatives. We already had solar panels installed, and energy storage was a way to pull everything together. By storing energy from the grid at night, when energy is less expensive, and when solar panels are productive during the day, and then discharging it from the GridSynergy system during peak demand times, we reduce demand charges and lower our bill from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) without adjusting our usage patterns. It’s also more sustainable, because we reduce the amount of energy drawn from the grid during peak times when less clean sources of energy are in use.

It’s likely a strong indication of the way the world is adopting renewable energy rapidly that just under a month ago, one of the best-established trade shows for solar in the US featured what seemed like almost as much space dedicated to national and international energy storage companies and technologies, as it did for solar.

Solar Power International, which was held this year in Anaheim, California, is co-located with Energy Storage International, but you could almost say that the show as a whole is almost like a solar-plus-storage show in many ways. Sure, the module manufacturers you read about on PV Tech were there, and there’s still clearly markets for ‘standalone solar’ all over the US. But it has become so inevitable that storage – mainly in the form of batteries – will play a huge role coupled with renewables that several conference speakers and sources I spoke to said that it could even be just a handful of years before we no longer talk of solar without storage at all in the US, perhaps excepting a few specific applications or business cases.

“Storage has always been on the horizon for the solar industry but today with time-of-use shifts, the movement of the more valuable electricity to later in the day, makes storage able to provide a uniquely attractive value proposition to the solar industry, to the solar customer, now,” Alan Russo of Stem Inc says.

One of the leaders in providing smart storage systems to commercial and industrial (C&I) operations that want to lower their peak energy costs, Stem has made its first-ever foray into adding solar to its offerings in a rare example of storage industry folk coming to solar rather than the other way around. Russo said Stem believes the combined offering can provide value in several directions too.

“The solar only marketplace is becoming more competitive, the value of solar is dropping as rates are shifting to later in the day,” Russo says.

“When you add storage you increase the gross margin for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner, you increase customer returns and then you provide utilities with the value they’re seeking by shifting those rates. Rate shifts are designed to change consumer behaviour, [but] we allow customers to operate how they want to, and everyone benefits from the improved economics.”

California recently joined other leading states, provinces, cities, and corporations around the world by setting an ambitious 100 percent carbon-free electricity target

. It’s a landmark, not because California was the first, but because it is the biggest. The state ranks as the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity means lots of wind and solar. Alongside more-flexible demand, balancing such renewable energy will involve bringing more energy storage onto California’s grid, to store surplus clean generation, which is where the state’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) comes in.

SGIP has spurred record-breaking levels of energy storage, all intended to lower California’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. But is it working? It turns out: not so well.

Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) released an answer in the form of its 2017 SGIP Advanced Energy Storage Impact Evaluation, and the results were sobering.

The 2017 edition of the report, like the 2016 edition, found that energy storage systems in California are actually increasing emissions across residential and non-residential projects alike. This is not just a California problem. It adds to the growing consensus that, as of today, the operation of energy storage increases emissions.

For Energy Storage Emissions, The Devil Is in the Charge / Discharge Details

The 2017 SGIP impact evaluation evaluated GHG impacts using marginal emissions for each hour of the year. That’s because each time batteries charge, they’re increasing the total amount of demand on the grid; each time they discharge, they’re decreasing overall grid demand.