The Tennessee Valley Authority will acquire its own grid-scale, battery energy storage system for the first time.

TVA announced it was installing the battery storage facility near an industrial complex in Vonore, Tenn. The Vonore Battery Energy Storage System will use lithium-ion capacity to store 40 MWh of energy.

The battery capacity could be deployed to provide electricity up to three hours for more than 10,600 customers, according to the authority.

“TVA is building the energy grid of the future,” said Senior Manager Dale Harris, who leads research and development for TVA. “This pilot project will help us to innovate and adopt new technologies that will provide businesses clean, low-cost, reliable electricity while helping them meet their sustainability goals.”

The Vonore facility is expected to be operational in 2022. The location will be near industrial customers served by Loudoun Utilities Board and doesn’t require the addition of new transmission lines.

“TVA’s battery will provide premium power for the industrial complex customers we serve,” said Ty Ross, Loudon City Manager and Utilities Board general manager, in a statement. It also will save the municipal utility on expenses needed to deal with peak demand challenges.

The Vonore BESS will be TVA’s first battery storage system to go online, but not the only grid-scale battery storage system that TVA will use. In February, TVA announced a solar project in Lowndes County, Mississippi, for its Green Invest programs that will include 200 MWh of battery energy storage.

Distributed energy resources (DERs) will be able to participate in US wholesale energy markets following a “landmark” new ruling from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

FERC Order 2222, approved late last week, enables DERs to participate in regional organised wholesale capacity, energy and ancillary services markets, competing against more traditional power resources.

Numerous installations of DERs, such as residential solar and battery storage systems, will be able to aggregate together to reach minimum size and performance requirements, with FERC commissioner Neil Chatterjee commenting that there was “no doubt” that investment in DERs would accelerate in the coming years.

“By relying on simple market principles and unleashing the power of innovation, this order will allow us to build a smarter, more dynamic grid that can help America keep pace with our ever-evolving energy demands,” he said.

The latest ruling builds on FERC Order 841, which states that barriers to distributed and behind-the-meter energy storage participating in wholesale electricity markets should be removed. It orders regional transmission operators (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to reconfigure wholesale markets to accommodate storage resources to allow them to provide capacity, energy and ancillary services.

While that order ruled that states cannot opt-out, Order 2222 establishes a small utility opt-in whereby grid operators are prohibited from accepting bids from the aggregation of customers of small utilities whose electric output was 4 million MWhs or less in the preceding fiscal year. It also allows retail regulators to continue prohibitions against distributed energy aggregators bidding the demand response of retail customers into the regional markets.

Whatever technology or strategy announcements come from Tesla’s Battery Day, speculation that the company will reduce purchases of battery cells from partners as a consequence is incorrect, CEO Elon Musk has said.

With Battery Day postponed from Q1 of this year, the company will be hosting its latest ‘big reveal’ later today. Industry and media commentators have posited their own predictions on what will be shown off by Tesla.

These guesses have included an electric vehicle (EV) battery pack with a million miles of range on a full charge to improved ways to control and manage batteries and let them play into electricity markets using the company’s proprietary energy trading software-driven platform, AutoBidder.

Others have stated that Tesla’s purchase in 2019 of supercapacitor maker Maxwell Technologies could be key, with Maxwell also behind a proprietary ‘dry cell’ process for making batteries without the need for the expensive and tricky drying step, which could improve battery production quality and aid even higher volume manufacturing.

What Musk appeared to allude to was speculation that Tesla will take to higher levels vertical integration for battery manufacturing i.e. making battery cells as well as packs and other equipment itself. Media outlets and analysts have posited that this could mean that terms of partnerships with major suppliers – some of which have only recently been fully signed off on – might change radically and suddenly.

Oh the irony, it burns! Texas powered the US into position as a global oil and gas powerhouse, but now the Lone Star State is leading in wind power and its solar sector is coming on strong. If all goes according to plans laid out by the startup EnergyX, Texas will also lay claim to birthing disruptive solid state energy storage technology that shepherds more renewables onto the grid while making electric vehicles go farther, charge faster, and cost less. In an interesting coincidence, the EnergyX news coincides with news that the departments of Energy, Commerce, Defense, and State have all joined forces in support of the domestic lithium battery industry. Interesting!

A Texas-Sized Disruptive Energy Storage Plan Takes Shape
EnergyX has been sailing under the CleanTechnica radar, but the Texas angle involves someone who is a familiar face around here. That would be Dr. John Goodenough, widely credited with inventing the lithium-ion battery 40 years ago. At age 98, the Nobel Prize winner is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, in the Cockrell School of Engineering, where his research includes pesky Li-ion battery problems.

One area involves dendrites, the feathery growths that occur over time in conventional Li-ion batteries with liquid electrolytes. They can also form in other energy storage chemistries. Dendrites can interfere with the efficiency of the battery and shorten its lifespan. Solving that problem once and for all could expand the field of next-generation batteries into new materials that are cheap, abundant, and non-toxic.

Though much progress has been made in preventing dendrite formation in liquid electrolytes, researchers have been zeroing in on solid-state electrolytes as a more effective and holistic approach that also cuts costs and boosts efficiency.

Last spring CleanTechnica took a look at the burgeoning interest in solid-state batteries, and noted that “a dramatic improvement in energy density combined with a drop in costs is the energy storage unicorn sought by researchers in the solid state lithium-metal field.”

In 2015, Eric Clifton envisioned a home energy storage appliance that simply plugged into the wall. He founded Orison Inc and in 2016, launched a Kickstarter campaign to let customers lock in an order for the 2.2 kWh wall-mounted appliance.

Fast forward a few years, and Orison has perfected the design of the product. The company has secured a contract with Octillion Power Systems to supply batteries for the devices and the self-installable home battery he envisioned is now on the cusp of becoming a reality. “This is an ideal energy-storage solution for homeowners or small businesses, because the system is simple to install, lightweight and scalable to optimize your energy and to ensure power is where you need it during an outage,” said Eric Clifton, founder and CEO of Orison.

To make the systems capable of being a plug and play device, installable by homeowners, Orison broke the unit down into smaller subassemblies. The batteries supplied by Octillion, for example, are cut into 1.1 kWh modules weighing in at 22 pounds. The result is a modular home energy storage system that not only makes installation a breeze, it makes building a system sized exactly to the needs of the home practical. These 1.1 kWh battery modules were the result of a joint effort between Orison and Octillion. They had to develop a custom battery pack that not only met their performance needs, but fit in their slim form factor.

“Octillion was our vendor of choice because of their ability to provide customizable solutions based on our needs, while still being able to scale to meet our mass-production throughput and pricing requirements,” Clifton said. “This unique battery design, while challenging to develop and certify, is compact enough that it allows for home or business owners to do their own installations, a first for the industry.”

The intelligent energy storage system harvests and stores excess generation from an on site renewable resource for later use. Stored power can be used to stretch daytime solar generation to cover the home’s evening energy consumption or serve as a backup power source for critical loads in the event of a grid failure. The slick 2.2 kWh Orison Panel comes with a starting price tag of $2,200 and boasts a maximum power output of 1.8 kW.