Australia’s strong and ongoing potential for energy storage paired with solar PV has seen international and domestically-headquartered companies race to gain market share.

China-headquartered global solar inverter supplier Sungrow and domestically-headquartered battery storage company RedEarth Renewables have been among those sending releases and announcements to international press to coincide with the All-Energy Australia trade show taking place last week.

Targeting further residential gains, Sungrow struck a 100MW distribution partnership agreement with Australian distributor Prosun Solar, with the deal apparently signed and confirmed at the show last week.

The inverter company claims to already have more than a 10% share of the Australian residential market and is looking to deliver products that include user-friendly residential hybrid inverters, and all-in solutions that include battery as well as hybrid inverter. This enables “not only maximum yields but also optimum charging and discharging capabilities,” the company, which showed off a range of PV inverters from 2kW for 10kW for household use at the show, claimed.

On top of that, in addition to its range of commercial PV inverters including the 1500Vdc string inverter SG250HX, Sungrow also showcased the ST556kWh-200UD energy storage system (ESS) solution, developed through its joint venture (JV) company, Sungrow-Samsung SDI.

Meanwhile, locally-headquartered company RedEarth Energy Storage said a few days ago that it has attained approval for its product the SunRise Home Battery system, from the country’s national Clean Energy Council.

This makes it the first product on the Council’s approved list of all-in-one battery energy storage system (BESS) inverters to be made by an Australia headquartered company and manufactured within the country. This makes the outdoor-rated plug ‘n’ play battery system eligible for “all government grant and subsidy programmes,” RedEarth said in a release.

The global energy transition is happening faster than the models predicted, according to a report released today by the Rocky Mountain Institute, thanks to massive investments in the advanced-battery technology ecosystem.

Previous and planned investments total $150 billion through 2023, RMI calculates—the equivalent of every person in the world chipping in $20. In the first half of 2019 alone, venture-capital firms contributed $1.4 billion to energy storage technology companies.

“These investments will push both Li-ion and new battery technologies across competitive thresholds for new applications more quickly than anticipated,” according to RMI. “This, in turn, will reduce the costs of decarbonization in key sectors and speed the global energy transition beyond the expectations of mainstream global energy models.”

RMI’s “Breakthrough Batteries” report anticipates “self-reinforcing feedback loops” between public policy, manufacturing, research and development, and economies of scale. Those loops will drive battery performance higher while pushing costs as low as $87/kWh by 2025. (Bloomberg put the current cost at $187/kwh earlier this year.)

“These changes are already contributing to cancellations of planned natural-gas power generation,” states the report. “The need for these new natural-gas plants can be offset through clean-energy portfolios (CEPs) of energy storage, efficiency, renewable energy, and demand response.”

New natural-gas plants risk becoming stranded assets (unable to compete with renewables+storage before they’ve paid off their capital cost), while existing natural-gas plants cease to be competitive as soon as 2021, RMI predicts.

RMI analysts expect lithium-ion to remain the dominant battery technology through 2023, steadily improving in performance, but then they anticipate a suite of advanced battery technologies coming online to cater to specific uses:

Heavier transport will use solid-state batteries such as rechargeable zinc alkaline, Li-metal, and Li- sulfur. The electric grid will adopt low-cost and long-duration batteries such as zinc-based, flow, and high-temperature batteries. And when EVs become ubiquitous—raising the demand for fast charging—high-power batteries will proliferate.

Singapore has targeted 200MW of energy storage beyond 2025 and 2GW of solar by 2030, but will continue to rely on natural gas for the next 50 years, according to a government official.

This morning, minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing spoke about the country’s energy focus over the next five decades at the opening of the Singapore International Energy Week. The island nation currently obtains 95% of its electricity supply from natural gas delivered through pipelines from neighbouring counties and global supplies of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) through its ports. While Chun Sing aimed to diversify this gas supply, he also put forward a vision for alternative energy supply.

The goal of 200MW of energy storage beyond 2025 comes under a vision of having a network of energy storage solutions across the entire island to manage the stability and resilience of the grid, as well as offering peak shaving services.

Singapore’s difference between peak and trough within the daily cycle can be as much as 30%, requiring extra infrastructure capacity to meet peak demand. The use of storage to balance peak and trough demand, however, could save on such infrastructure costs.

Chun Sing said: “if we can do that well, I believe that the solutions will not only benefit Singapore but will also benefit many other countries beyond Singapore. Today, in order to cater to peak demand, most countries have to spend a lot to build the infrastructure just for that few hours of the day. So energy storage solutions are something that we would certainly like to develop further, with our partners both in the private sector and in other countries.”

The energy storage vision is partly driven by the expected push for solar energy installations in the coming years. Lacking in geothermal, wind and tidal resources, Singapore’s future clean energy plans rest largely on solar power, despite having overcast skies for roughly 80% of the time due to its tropical climate.

The 2GW of PV by 2030 goal – described by Chun Sing as a “stretch target” – would account for the equivalent of 10% of Singapore’s peak daily electricity demand today. It would require collaboration between the public and private sectors as well as breakthroughs in solar module efficiencies and vertical solar installations, given that Singapore lacks available land and relies heavily on rooftop-based solar deployment.

The global annual energy storage market is at risk of contracting in 2019, following a bumper year of growth in 2018, according to new research by Wood Mackenzie.

The report – ‘Global energy storage outlook, Q3 2019’ – said the global market has slowed down in key regions that saw 2018’s boom, namely South Korea and China.

These countries have been plagued with fire incidences, as well as policy and regulatory changes, Wood Mackenzie said.

The US and European markets are also struggling to get capacity on the ground in 2019, with capacity being pushed to 2020, 2021 and, in some cases, even further out, it said.

However, beyond 2019, the global storage outlook is on the up.

Wood Mackenzie expects 4GW of energy storage to be deployed globally in 2019, with these numbers increasing to 15GW in 2024.

Wood Mackenzie senior analyst Rory McCarthy said: “The energy storage industry in the Asia-Pacific region is still at an early stage of development.

“China’s storage market slowed in the first three quarters of 2019, primarily due to policy change.

“South Korea’s storage market continues to stagnate due to continuous fire incidents. However, Australia’s storage market is on track to hit targets in 2019 and is expected to grow three-fold in 2020.

“The rest of the Asia-Pacific market is beginning to pick up.

“In the US market, hidden beyond the overall surge in forecasted five-year deployments is an industry hitting growing pains, as the reality of supply chain constraints, regulatory hurdles and performance and safety concerns are set to push back some 2019 and 2020 projects.

“The market is expected to bounce back quickly from this near-term slowdown by accelerating in 2021, driven by large-scale utility procurements targeting GWs of storage – often paired with renewables – over the next three to five years.

“We are at a crossroads in the UK and Germany. Frequency markets have saturated. Now players are looking for other opportunities.

ENERGY Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) has developed a scalable lithium extraction process using metal organic framework (MOF) membranes to extract lithium from brines, which is a faster, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly method than conventional processes.

The technology is known as Lithium Ion Transport and Separation (LiTAS) and is the result of research from the University of Texas at Austin, Monash University, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia. EnergyX has secured the rights to the technology and is commercialising it.

LiTAS uses mixed matrix membranes (MMM), which are an interconnected network of MOFs held together by polymers. MOFs have large internal surface areas and small pore sizes, which makes them suitable for separation, and polymers have robust mechanical properties. The MMM is made into a thin film using a proprietary casting method created by Kevin Reimund, the Director of Membrane Engineering at EnergyX. The film is then rolled into a module and then thousands of modules can be linked together to create a scaled-up version at a lithium extraction facility.

Disruptive technology

Typically, lithium is produced from brine evaporation or hard rock mining. Producing lithium from brine evaporation takes an average of 18 months but can take up to 24 months. It also uses a significant amount of freshwater, requiring around 2,270 L/t of lithium produced. In contrast, EnergyX’s technology is a continuous process that takes one to two days and it doesn’t require any fresh water. The MOF also ensures that the lithium is separated from all other salts in the brine. LiTAS has a low power consumption, reduced operating costs, and has a lithium recovery rate of 90% compared to 30–50% from conventional processes,

According to Teague Egan, founder and CEO of EnergyX, the technology will be extremely disruptive to the industry. “It is an absolutely transformative step-change in the way lithium is sourced today. Traditional lithium mining is done through either hard rock or brine evaporation. We are looking to replace the brine evaporation side, which will drastically undercut the economics of hard rock mining as well. We are confident our new method will completely replace traditional mining. It’s a horse vs car comparison.”

Senate legislators, energy investors and utilities are looking to the next generation of energy storage to achieve “deep decarbonization,” but few researchers are confident that today’s experimental technologies will ensure wind and solar become the dominant sources of power.

Over the past decade, power companies have cultivated a taste for lithium-ion storage, stringing together battery packs into a giant sponge that soaks up electricity and later delivers it for four- to eight-hour increments.

Markets for that kind of short-term battery storage are modest, but they’ve grown eighteenfold since 2009, according to a count by Environment America, a green advocacy group.

Some believe that with sufficient resources, scientists and entrepreneurs could pioneer a kind of storage that multiplies the current four-to-eight-hour period of power delivery several times over. States, cities and companies have put out a flood of 100% renewable or zero-emission plans, which count on development of technology that can store electricity for days or weeks.

“There’s a sense that this is coming,” said Scott Litzelman, a program director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Yet energy storage could hit a wall if power companies aren’t already moving to replace most nonrenewable generation with wind and solar. Few energy analysts say they believe long-term storage would serve the same purpose as nuclear, gas or coal plants that produce a constant stream of “baseload” power.

On a highly renewable grid, power companies would still have to encourage consumers to use less power at certain hours. And expanding transmission connections between regions could, in some cases, improve reliability in ways similar to storage, they say.

Tim Grejtak, an analyst at the New York-based market research firm Lux Research Inc., noted in a presentation last year that the applications for long-duration systems were so far “vaguely defined.”

Early deployments might take place on island grids or remote areas, he predicted. But “in our minds, it’s sort of a solution of last resort. And as such, we don’t think it will see a huge deployment, in terms of pure numbers of projects.”