We have been hearing concerns that moving to a regional transmission operator to connect the Western U.S. somehow harms the prospects for greater development of distributed energy resources, especially localsolarand storage, and could lead to an increase in the use of fossil fuels elsewhere in the region. A careful analysis of the facts shows these concerns are unfounded and that in fact, the opposite is true. A regional grid operator will be beneficial for renewable energy development, including distributed generation, for multiple reasons.

Replacing a highly balkanized and inefficient group of grid operators (see the WECC balancing area map below), many of which rely on outdated and highly polluting power plants, with a fully coordinated regional system operator will make better use of the existing interconnected grid, more efficiently share electricity reserves allowing for the accelerated retirement of unneeded facilities, and give more value to cleaner, renewable power sources.

Renewable energy benefits

A regional grid operator makes managing each renewable energy generator’s variable output easier to coordinate and creates more value that can be shared by utility customers and renewable energy developers. It does this by blending renewable power from across the West, including the output from many smaller customer-owned or community-based systems located on dispersed distribution systems. This widespread diversity of resources can be used to meet energy demand at times when fossil fuel generators that are part of local systems would otherwise have to be switched on to fill in the gap.

Solar energy ramps up and down in a quite predictable manner, but varies by longitude and latitude. The availability of other renewable resources can now be forecast with ever-increasing accuracy. A regional grid operator can use renewable power resources across a much wider geography that experiences different weather patterns and energy loads to better meet both systemwide and local needs. This wider area coordination can reduce not only greenhouse gas emissions but also local air pollutants that harm public health, particularly for the most vulnerable.

NEC Energy Solutions (NEC ES), a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, is supplying Ørsted UK with a 20-MW GSS Grid Storage Solution.

“The future energy system will be completely transformed from what it is today, with a smarter, more flexible grid, balancing supply and demand with new technology and cleaner energy generation,” said Matthew Wright, Managing Director of Ørsted UK. “We want to continue to be at the forefront of this exciting shift towards a decarbonized energy system. Acquiring the Carnegie Road plant is an important step forward as it’s our first commercial-scale battery storage project. We’re investing billions of pounds in the UK’s energy infrastructure and this is another significant investment that puts the UK at the heart of the global energy transition.”

Once completed and operational by the end of 2018, the system will be used to provide services to the UK’s National Grid to help manage grid stability during changes between peak and low power demand.

“We could not be more thrilled to be working again with NEC Energy Solutions who have a strong presence in Massachusetts and are recognized as a global leader in battery storage technology and products,” said Thomas Brostrøm, President of Ørsted North America. “NEC Energy Solutions will serve as a partner on our Bay State Wind project in Massachusetts and will now work with us in the UK, which is an exciting step as we develop our energy storage solutions in the U.S.”

The Carnegie Road battery storage project was originally developed by Shaw Energi, which will support Ørsted in the execution of the project. The grid connection agreement and permits are already in place and construction is expected to start in May, with the project operational by the end of the year.

Tucked away in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s April 19 revision of its large generator interconnection agreement are easily overlooked provisions that could benefit energy storage providers.

Order 845 revises the commission’s large generator interconnection agreement in several ways. It’s the conclusion of a process that began with a notice of proposed rulemaking in 2016 that was prompted by a complaint filed by the American Wind Energy Association.

For energy storage, the most obvious change in Order 845 is that it revises the definition of generating facility to explicitly include electricity storage. But the scope of 845 is much wider than energy storage. It revises interconnection rules and protocols for any generator larger than 20 MW.

One of the main changes FERC is putting in place with Order 845 is to allow interconnection customers to request a level of interconnection service that is lower than the capacity of their generating facility.

That is an issue that has become increasingly prevalent with the rise of renewable resources such as wind and solar power for which electrical output seldom equals nameplate capacity.

Improving the interconnection process

FERC says that changes such as more closely aligning output and nameplate capacity will help improve the interconnection process. Many interconnection customers experience delays and some interconnection queues have significant backlogs, according to FERC. As a result, there is also a recurring problem of late interconnection request withdrawals that can lead to interconnection restudies that can increase costs and timelines for other participants in the interconnection queue, FERC says.

Among the other changes brought about by Order 845 is that it requires transmission providers to allow for provisional interconnection agreements for limited operation of a generating facility prior to completion of the full interconnection process. The order also requires transmission providers to create a process for interconnection customers to use surplus interconnection service at existing points of interconnection.

A signing ceremony was held on Monday in Tullamore, County Offaly, where Hanwha Energy Corporation and Lumcloon sealed an agreement, with local politician Marcella Corcoran Kennedy among those in attendance.

Lumcloon, a locally headquartered company fronted by Nigel Reams, a local entrepreneur with a background in engineering projects for the energy industry, said the partnership would develop two 100MW projects in Lumcloon – the ‘townland’ the company is named after – and Shannonbridge. The pair will work with LSIS, a South Korean supplier of smart power solutions in transmission, distribution and automation including switchgear and smart grids.

Yesterday, a Lumcloon representative confirmed to Energy-Storage.News that the 200MW of battery systems would be for “frequency response”, helping to balance the grid through matching supply with demand to maintain reliable operation of the network. Timelines were not given for development or commissioning of either project as yet. Ireland’s reliance on variable renewable energy is growing, while network operator EirGrid is planning a 300MW flexibility services tender process.

The projects would involve €150 million (US$182.64 million) combined investment, Lumcloon said, creating 240 jobs in total during construction and 10 subsequent to the systems going into operation. The company did not give details of the technology being proposed, besides that it would be “based on state-of-the-art battery storage technology”.

“Hanwha would expect to support the energy policy in Ireland by taking the opportunity to develop and install Battery Energy Storage Solutions (BESS), enhancing the stability and reliability of power system in Ireland,” Hanwha Energy Corporation executive director Ji Ho Shin said.

BOSTON — Energy storage deployment will likely grow to 35 GW by 2025 as consumers, businesses and government agencies increasingly support the technology, industry experts said last week.

“Our industry created the momentum for the unanimous support to unleash the benefits of storage through FERC Order 841,” Energy Storage Association CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman said at her organization’s 28th annual conference. “This is a watershed moment, friends, this is our moment.” (See FERC Rules to Boost Storage Role in Markets.)

The industry’s growth will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, result in $4 billion in cumulative operational savings and avoid 3.6 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions and 1,000 metric tons of CO₂equivalents, including nitrogen and sulfur oxide, Speakes-Backman said.

“On a regular basis, our teams are in contact with ISOs and RTOs who are seeking guidance in how to create markets and support rules that enable more storage on the transmission level, distribution level, in businesses and in homes,” she said.

Clean Peak Shaving

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker opened the conference April 18 by saying that energy storage’s ability to shave peak demand “may be greater than anything else.”

Baker mentioned the “very unusual winter here in New England and in Massachusetts … where we had subzero temperatures for almost two weeks,” during which the region’s generators burned through nearly 2 million barrels of oil, more than twice the amount used during all of 2016. (See Van Welie: ISO-NE in ‘Race’ to Replace Retirements.)

“If you push storage all the way … you could be in a situation where you store during off-peak so that when you have a period like that, you’ve got enough capacity available to draw the storage and you don’t have to pay those huge prices during peak; you don’t have to use those far dirtier sources of energy,” Baker said.

Global investment in energy storage and smart grid firms soared during the first three months of the year, according to a new report from consultancy Mercom Capital Group that underlines the growing interest in smart technologies deemed critical to the deep decarbonisation of power grids.

The report on venture capital (VC) investment, corporate funding, and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity revealed a surge in investment across much of the sector.

Corporate funding in battery storage hit $299m across 12 deals during the first three months of the year, compared to $154m across six deals during the last quarter of 2017 and $80m of investment in the first quarter of 2017.

VC funding, including private equity and corporate venture capital, raised by battery storage companies jumped to $299m across 12 deals, a more than five-fold increase on the $58m raised in eight deals during the first three months of 2017.

Smart grid companies saw a similar surge in investment with corporate funding soaring from $164m in the first quarter of 2017 to $1.3bn across just nine deals this year.

VC funding for smart grid companies also increased 79 per cent quarter-on-quarter to $75m, although investment levels fell year-on-year.

A gravity-fed energy storage system under development by Gravitricity may be more cost effective in the long term than batteries, according to a report by Imperial College London (ICL).

The Gravitricity technology could be particularly well suited to provide grid balancing and rapid frequency response services to grid operators, the report said.

The technology has high operational expenditure, but this is offset by a long project lifespan of up to 50 years, high power availability and zero percent degradation, ICL said.

Gravitricity technology will use a weight of up to 2000 tonnes suspended in mine shafts by cables attached to winches.

The weight is winched to the top of the shaft to capture renewable power and then dropped to release it when needed, with the winches acting as generators.

Gravitricity managing director Charlie Blair (pictured) said: “This independent report clearly shows that Gravitricity can be a very strong competitor in the frequency response market, where its low specific power cost and high cyclability sets it apart from other technologies.”