In the early months of the coronavirus outbreak, the energy storage industry saw production delays in China and South Korea, but as manufacturing restarts there, social distancing and work restrictions in the United States have prompted delays of their own. And industry officials and experts warn that if those disruptions persist over the next few months, storage project deployment and climate change efforts could take a hit in the coming years.

According to internal industry polling from the U.S. Energy Storage Association, 2 in 3 major energy storage companies have experienced delays in project deployment as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. These delays range from pauses of under one month to indefinite suspensions.

The survey of 173 ESA members and nonmembers was conducted March 11-20, as social distancing measures began to take full force in the United States.

Andy Klump, chief executive officer of the China-based and North American-owned Clean Energy Associates, said present supply chain dynamics are “quite a stark contrast to where utilization stood in late January or early February, when factories were shut down post-Chinese New Year.”

“Now we see factories back up and running and fully utilized within China, but then we’re also seeing certain end markets like Germany or the U.S., which are being impacted by the spread of the virus,” Klump said.

According to Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of ESA, the spread of the virus has caused evolving disruptions for the industry.

At first, project delays were due to disruptions in the manufacturing of batteries and other infrastructure in China and South Korea. But now, as China revives its production facilities, Speakes-Backman said concern has “shifted to the domestic impacts of social distancing and work restrictions on the permitting, installation and commissioning of facilities here in the U.S., which has had an immediate impact on projects currently under construction or planned to commence construction soon.”

Rarely has such a crucial enterprise for the future of human civilization led to such little commercial success.

Long-duration energy storage holds great potential for a world in which wind and solar power dominate new power plant additions and gradually overtake other sources of electricity. Wind and solar only produce at certain times, so they need a complementary technology to help fill the gaps. And the lithium-ion batteries that supply 99 percent of new storage capacity today get very expensive if you try to stretch them out over many hours.

The problem is, no clear winner has emerged to play that long-duration role. Here at Greentech Media, we’ve spent years covering the contenders, which range from quixotic defiers of the laws of physics to understated, scientifically minded strivers. The makeup of this roster has fluctuated to the rhythm of bankruptcies and new investments.

Plenty of options technically “work.” The question is, do they work with an acceptable price point and development cycle, and can the businesses providing them stay afloat long enough to actually prove that? That last step has been hard for companies to fulfill, insofar as in previous years there were practically no places to actually sell this stuff.

That’s finally starting to change, thanks to two connected trends. First, wind and solar are now competing very effectively for capacity additions in the U.S. and other developed countries. The proliferation of these resources creates its own push for long-duration storage in places with high concentrations of wind and solar farms. A particularly appealing early market is in remote or island grids, where renewables-plus-storage already outcompete imported diesel fuel on price.

Second, spurred by this success, many utility companies, states and nations are upping their targets for clean energy. Once a jurisdiction officially commits to 100 percent carbon-free power, it has to start thinking in earnest about how to replace the gas plants that currently provide the flexible counterpart to renewables’ ups and downs. These policies typically give prime billing to the clean energy sources, but they just as well could be considered market-creation tools for the long-duration storage asset class.

Sustainable energy storage is in great demand. Researchers at Uppsala University have therefore developed an all-organic proton battery that can be charged in a matter of seconds. The battery can be charged and discharged over 500 times without any significant loss of capacity. Their work has been published in the scientific journal Angewandte Chemie.

The researchers have been able to demonstrate that their battery can be easily charged using a solar cell. Charging can also be accomplished without the aid of the advanced electronics that, for example, lithium batteries require. Another advantage of the battery is that it is unaffected by ambient temperature.

“I’m sure that many people are aware that the performance of standard batteries declines at low temperatures. We have demonstrated that this organic proton battery retains properties such as capacity down to as low as -24°C,” says Christian Strietzel of Uppsala University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

A great many of the batteries manufactured today have a major environmental impact, not least due to the mining of the metals used in them.

“The point of departure for our research has therefore been to develop a battery built from elements commonly found in nature and that can be used to create organic battery materials,” explains Christian Strietzel.

For this reason, the research team has chosen quinones as the active material in their battery. These organic carbon compounds are plentiful in nature, among other things occurring in photosynthesis. The characteristic of quinones that researchers have utilised is their ability to absorb or emit hydrogen ions, which of course only contain protons, during charging and discharging.

An acidic aqueous solution has been used as an electrolyte, the vital component that transports ions inside the battery. As well as being environmentally friendly, this also provides a safe battery free from the hazard of explosion or fire.

“There remains a great deal of further development to be done on the battery before it becomes a household item; however, the proton battery we have developed is a large stride towards being able to manufacture sustainable organic batteries in future,” says Christian Strietzel.

When three scientists won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for their work on lithium-ion batteries, The New York Times was one of many outlets that drew the connection between improved energy storage and the fate of our planet: “By storing electricity generated when sunlight and wind are at their peak, lithium-ion batteries can reduce dependence on fossil fuel energy sources and help lessen the impact of climate change.”

This perfectly articulates the gauntlet we face today. How can we transition to using solar and wind to power the world when the sun isn’t shining and the air is still? The answer is to improve energy storage technology, which requires time, careful research, and expert engineering that goes beyond the scope of most other challenges we face today. Because of this, the path to meeting this objective cannot rely on uncertain venture capital raises or traditional fundraising models. As public awareness around the challenge of energy storage grows, we need public funding and support to help this sector of the energy industry rise with it.

The State of Green Energy
Today, many individuals, homes, and businesses benefit from wind and solar energy, and innovations and improvements in these fields are promising. Furthermore, interest in climate change has grown in the past several years, and I’m not just talking about Greta Thunberg’s voyage across the Atlantic. Research by Pew found that concerns about climate change have broadly increased since 2013.

In this rapidly evolving environment, it’s hard not to feel like we’re on the brink of making a huge breakthrough, if only we can innovate and execute fast enough. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s July 2019 report, “Operating utility-scale battery storage power capacity has more than quadrupled from the end of 2014 (214 MW) through March 2019 (899 MW). Assuming currently planned additions are completed and no current operating capacity is retired, utility-scale battery storage power capacity could exceed 2,500 MW by 2023.”

These numbers herald major developments in the energy storage industry, and much of this is driven by the need to get better batteries into consumers’ hands faster. But that doesn’t mean the pace of research has changed. Consumer products from AirPods to pacemakers have set a new high bar for wireless charging and electric battery life. And that is where we find our current limit.

Electric Vehicles Have Gone Mainstream
One of the most exciting changes in the past decade is the arrival of affordable electric vehicles (EVs) in the consumer market. Prius drivers and early Tesla adopters have ushered in a new age in which cities and towns have to think about their charging infrastructure for EVs.

In 2018 alone, EV sales exceeded two million units globally—an increase of 63% year-over-year—but there are still significant barriers to EV adoption. On the road, EVs remain limited by the energy they can store and where the next available charging station is located. And this significantly hurts their appeal to drivers who are used to traveling with the assurance that there will be a gas station waiting for them at the next exit. As major corporations such as Amazon work with EV manufacturers including Rivian to develop new fleets of electric delivery vehicles, it’s reasonable to hope that these fleets will bring increased incentives for public investment in charging infrastructure for EVs across the country.

A new conveyor-based system offers an alternative energy storage technology. The heart of the system is a reversible conveyor belt that converts between electrical energy and gravitational potential energy by transporting bulk granular materials between two stockpiles at different elevations.

The U.S. Department of Energy reported that the total solar energy production in the U.S. increased from 28,924 GWh in 2014 to 96,147 GWh in 2018. During the same time period, it said the total energy produced by wind in the U.S. increased from 181,655 GWh to 274,952 GWh. Grid operators must keep the supply and demand for energy in balance. Traditionally, operators balanced supply and demand for electricity by modifying the supply to match demand. However, wind and solar generators cannot change the energy they supply as easily as conventional coal and gas power plants. To balance the supply and demand for power, many grid operators with large solar and wind assets are utilizing energy storage facilities to increase the demand for power when the supply would otherwise outstrip demand.

Currently, there are four commercialized energy storage technologies deployed in the U.S. They are pumped hydro storage (PHS), compressed air energy storage (CAES), advanced battery energy storage (ABES), and flywheel energy storage (FES). As of June 2018, 94% of U.S. energy storage assets were PHS. PHS commands a huge market share because unlike ABES its lifetime is measured in decades instead of years. PHS technology was proven more than a century ago, and the cost per MWh stored and dispatched are lower than all its competitors.

PHS systems require large volumes of water that are not readily available in all regions of the world. Conveyor Dynamics Inc. (CDI) has developed a new energy storage system analogous to PHS, but instead of transporting water between reservoirs, the conveyor energy storage (CES) system stores and releases energy by moving bulk granular material between stockpiles. Like PHS, CDI’s system utilizes low-cost and proven equipment that has been deployed for decades. The company expects the CES system to provide a competitive alternative to PHS in arid regions of the world.

1. The conveyor energy storage system utilizes a motor-generator scheme similar to technology employed at a pumped hydro storage facility. When energy is to be stored, the motor-generator drives a conveyor to move bulk granular material from a lower stockpile to an upper stockpile. When energy is to be supplied by the system, the motor-generator is driven by the conveyor as the bulk granular material is transported from the upper stockpile back to the lower stockpile through gravitational force. Courtesy: Conveyor Dynamics Inc. (CDI)

Figure 1 shows the operating principle of the CES system. The heart of the system is a reversible conveyor belt that converts between electrical energy and gravitational potential energy by transporting bulk granular materials between two stockpiles at different elevations. The reversible conveyor is driven by an electric motor-generator controlled with a four-quadrant inverter drive.

To store energy the reversible conveyor receives ore from feeder conveyors below the low-elevation stockpile and discharges the material onto the high-elevation stockpile. To release energy, the conveyor reverses direction, receives material from feeder conveyors under the high-elevation stockpile, and discharges this material onto the lower-elevation stockpile.

California, the world’s fifth largest economy and a global innovation engine, is confronting ambitious clean energy and GHG reduction goals. California must achieve 60% renewable energy and 5 million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, and a fully decarbonised power sector by 2045.

Energy storage solutions will be required to support the state in its decarbonisation efforts for renewables integration, grid reliability, local area support, fire resiliency, microgrids, and more. Indeed, the state’s utility regulator, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), modelled the need for at least 10,000MW of deployed energy storage over the next 10 years – a staggering amount.

With so much energy storage procurement coming, our relatively young industry is entering a new phase in its market development arc, moving from project development to long term operations. In February 2020, prior to the global response to the COVID-19 epidemic, the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) held its annual convening of CESA members, policy makers, regulators, environmental advocates, utilities and load serving entities, grid operators to take a headline view of the future, and specifically, “The Next 10 Years.”

What would the energy storage headline be for 2030?

Will it be: “California faces rolling blackouts and record prices as state flubs climate goals?” or “California Achieves 60% Carbon-Free Grid with 11,000+ MW of deployed energy storage and spurs economic boom”?

‘What you focus on is what you get’
As the industry matures over the next decade, CESA is striving for the latter, and there is a lot of work to do. Financing and contracting mechanisms will require certainty. Owners and operators will have to contend with and master vital functions including long-term operations, ongoing market participation, scheduling, maintenance. From a safety perspective, the state has work to do on streamlining the process for safe siting and permitting of these systems, as well as training first responders in how to deal with systems designed to hold very large quantities of energy.

In the Netherlands, the Wageningen University & Research is partnering with NEC Energy Storage and GIGA Storage to deploy a 12MW energy storage project.

The $4 million energy storage system is claimed to be the most powerful in the Netherlands and the world’s largest-ever developed primarily using crowdfunding.

The GIGA Rhino energy storage system will provide grid resiliency to 5,000 homes on a local grid owned by Windnet and was crowdfunded on DuurzaamInvesteren.nl.

The project is also the recipient of a subsidy from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) within the framework of the “Demonstration Energy and Climate Innovation”

The plant will be part of the Test Centre for Renewable Resources which is located in Lelystad next to the Neushoorntocht wind farm and will also be used for Frequency Containment Reserve and imbalance and curtailment services.

Ruud Nijs, the CEO of GIGA Storage, said: “Storage and control of electricity is crucial for a reliable and affordable energy system. The GIGA Rhino energy storage system is the first step in making it possible to close down coal-fired power stations.”

An auction for 700MW of grid energy capacity in Portugal is being configured to allow bids from solar and also solar-plus-storage projects to participate on a competitive basis, with guaranteed payments for energy storage co-located projects to use a capping mechanism in the event of ‘price spikes’.

The Portuguese government directorate general of energy and geology last week issued its competitive procedure guidelines for a tender that is to be conducted electronically online and in a process that it said will be “competitive, simple, open, transparent and swift”. The inclusion of energy storage options was reported in January by sister site PV Tech. A previous auction for 1.15GW of solar in 2019 set record-breaking low prices of €14.76/MWh (US$16.44/MWh).

While the government issued various guidance documents for the process, PV Tech reported on Friday that the auction is now to be postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis. Energy state secretary João Galamba told PV Tech’s Jose Rojo Martin that it will be “paused”.

“I don’t know if it will be a month or two months. The only thing I can say clearly is we are ready to go, we are just pausing for the general situation to calm down a bit. As soon as we sense the market is ready to participate in a full-fledged auction we will launch it,” Galamba said.

“We want the auction to be as successful as the one last year so we will wait a little bit. It doesn’t make sense to launch it in the middle of this mess, especially since we are introducing the storage modality, which adds complexity”.

The auction is in line with the government’s Integrated National Energy Climate Plan (PNEC), which is Portugal’s “main instrument of energy and climate policy for the 2021-2030 decade,” according to the national energy ministry and meeting requirements determined by the country’s EU member state obligations. With placing an emphasis on the competitiveness of renewable energy up to 2030 as an interim goal, Portugal is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050.