It’s been the biggest piece of bad news to hit UK solar for some time. Buried under waves and waves of Brexit procrastination, name-calling, indecision and confusion which appear to leave the country’s people, media and businesses alike scratching their heads and wondering what it was that anyone actually voted for in 2016’s EU referendum, the government announced its decision to end export tariff payments for solar PV.

Our UK news site Solar Power Portal reported at the beginning of this week that the export tariff will close to new applicants at the same time as the generation tariff, despite some 90%+ of respondents to a consultation expressing their opposition to the plans.

Britain’s feed-in tariff scheme will therefore now close in full to new applicants from 31 March 2019. While the government has accepted that there’s now need for market-based solutions for small-scale generators to make a difference to the UK’s energy mix in an economically rewarding way, the end of the present scheme without an explicit next step laid out is more than troubling for many in the renewable energy industries and those that care about energy security and climate change.

A somewhat dismal festive spread
“To not be taking care of the small actors in the system, which is so important, that just does not bode well for smart energy, especially given that Europe is steaming ahead,” Leonie Greene, policy director for the national Solar Trade Association says.

You can read all about how the STA and others plan to continue the fight for solar on Solar Power Portal, but let’s take a minute to consider what it might mean for battery energy storage.

While there might be a natural assumption that in the absence of payments for energy exported to the grid, households will at least – if they install a battery, or indeed hot water diverters or smart EV charging and other kit – be able to electrically store or otherwise ‘self-consume’ or ‘prosume’ the solar energy generated on their rooftops. Perhaps, but the economic equation for that is not so simple and neither are the industry or market dynamics.

At the beginning of this year, two battery storage systems went into operation in England which add up to 50MW of energy storage and deliver a significant percentage of total enhanced frequency response (EFR) contracts awarded in the UK through tenders by the transmission operator, National Grid.

Solar Media is proud to have been asked by technology provider NEC to publish a guide in the form of a case study, which goes in-depth on the 10MW Cleator and 40MW Glassenbury projects the company’s Energy Solutions division worked on for customer VLC Energy.

VLC Energy’s leadership includes prolific UK renewables developer Low Carbon and you can hear directly from the customer what was needed, what the challenges were and why NEC was the perfect fit, bringing in equipment and cutting-edge technology – both hardware and software – and choosing the right contractors for the grid connection and civil works portions of the project.

NEC Energy Solutions CEO Steve Fludder takes you through why he believes the energy industry is rapidly, through digitalisation and the growth of renewables and distributed energy resources (DERs), becoming a service-led proposition.

“The transformation of the electric power infrastructure all around the world is really unprecedented, because it impacts everyone and everyone will be engaged. The future is about multiple constituents and multiple flows of energy and multiple ways of really delivering cleaner, more reliable electricity through technologies and digital platforms, managed as an enterprise as opposed to managing a one-way flow of electrons,” Fludder says in the guide.

“We’re focused on all of the new technologies and solutions that will make this transformed grid that’s going to be majority renewable, in some cases totally renewable…I see storage as a central part of many types of energy system that allow other things to happen.”

Enel, through its Enel X energy services division, has won a contract to deploy energy storage to cut energy costs for US packaging producer Berry Global.

The behind-the-meter lithium ion battery installations, totalling 5MW/10MWh, will provide the Berry Global with 20% to 30% energy bill savings annually.

Under the terms of the agreement, Enel X will purchase, install and operate four battery systems for Berry Global at its Ontario operations in Canada. The batteries will be operational by summer 2019.
The energy services provider will also provide peak prediction services and enrol the batteries in Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator’s (IESO) demand response programme.

The project will use Enel X’s distributed energy resources (DER) optimization software.

Enel X North America head Michael Storch said: “This agreement underscores the benefits our storage systems and software can bring to businesses, helping them improve their energy cost-savings potential and supporting their sustainability goals related to energy efficiency.

“Enel X collaborates with customers to unlock new opportunities and deliver even greater value, including by making energy storage systems more accessible through the availability of flexible financing options.”

Enel X’s DER platform will analyse Berry Global’s energy consumption patterns and optimise the battery use, with the aim to boost financial savings from managing Ontario’s system charges and to enhance Berry Global’s participation in IESO’s demand response programme.

An energy storage startup that found its footing at Alphabet’s X “moonshot” division announced last week that it will receive $26 million in funding from a group of investors led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that counts Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg as investors, and whose chairman is Bill Gates. The startup, called Malta, uses separate vats of molten salt and antifreeze-like liquid to store electricity as thermal energy and dispatch it to the grid when it’s needed.

Malta’s system stores electricity by taking that electricity, using a heat pump to convert the electricity to heat, and storing that heat in molten salt. Then, when electricity is needed again, the system reunites the molten salt with the cold fluid, using a heat engine to reconvert the thermal energy to electricity, which can be sent back to the grid.
The concept is outlined in a July 2017 paper in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, which states that “Round-trip efficiency…is found to be competitive with that of pumped hydroelectric storage.” Pumped hydroelectric storage is one of the oldest forms of electricity storage, using electricity when it’s cheap and plentiful to pump water up a hill, and then releasing that water through hydroelectric turbines when electricity is expensive and scarce.

In fact, lots of parallels can be drawn between Malta’s system and other forms of energy storage. A liquid-air energy storage system in the UK uses temperature differentials (like Malta does) to expand condensed air and put more electricity back on the grid when it’s needed. Solar thermal systems direct concentrated sunlight to a central tower to heat molten salt, which can store that heat for a long time before it’s used. This allows solar thermal systems to keep sending energy to the grid well after the sun goes down.

Malta’s business pitch is that its thermal pumped storage system can be located anywhere (unlike hydroelectric pumped storage, which requires elevation changes, or compressed air energy storage, which has been primarily deployed near natural underground caverns). It can be expanded easily, and unlike chemical batteries, such a system is made of common and cheap industrial materials that have 20-year lifespans.

Centrica has formally announced the completion of its 49MW Roosecote battery storage project, 18 months after construction started.

The energy major said construction of the project, one of Europe’s largest battery storage facilities, started in March 2017 and had now been fully unwrapped, just in time for Christmas.

The 49MW project is able to provide sub-second respond to fluctuations in demand and was among the 500MW of battery storage projects to have received a 15-year Capacity Market contract in December 2016 for the 2020/21 winter period.

Mark Futyan, distributed power systems director at Centrica Business Solutions, said: “The Roosecote site is truly unique, having been home to the latest technology of its time and is an exemplar of the transition we’ve made from dirty coal to cleaner, more flexible power. Christmas has indeed come early for our team!”

The site in Cumbria used to be home to a coal-fired power station that was later replaced by the country’s first combined cycle gas turbine.

It forms part of a £180 million (US$227.92 million) investment in flexible power on the part of Centrica, comprising a refurbishment and addition of a new gas turbine at the company’s King’s Lynn power station and two fast response gas-fired power stations.

Malta Inc., which started as “Project Malta” at the Moonshot Factory, but is now an independent company, announced Wednesday that it has raised $26 million in a round of funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from other investors including Concord New Energy Group, a wind and solar power developer,  and Alfa Laval, a Swedish industrial company.

Bloomberg, of Bloomberg News fame, and Bezos, the founder of Amazon, are among Breakthrough Energy Ventures investors.

Microsoft founder Gates is the chairman of the fund, which also counts Masayoshi Son, the Japanese business magnate, and Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, as investors.

In a statement, Ramya Swaminathan, CEO of Malta Inc., said “Our investors share our vision to create a scalable storage solution that will facilitate further expansion of renewable energy while improving grid stability and resilience across the globe.

“Beyond capital investment, they are truly partnering with us to build a first-of-a-kind product. We appreciate their confidence in our strategy and in our team’s ability to execute on it,” Swaminathan said.

The infusion of funds will allow Malta to further develop a system that uses large containers of molten salt and cooler liquid to store electricity generated from variable sources such as solar and wind.

The system is based on well-established principles in thermodynamics for a system that stores electricity as heat in high temperature molten salt and cold in a low temperature antifreeze liquid.

While incubated at Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory, the project underwent a rigorous evaluation and de-risking process.

Swaminathan, who previously ran Rye Development, a Boston-based developer of renewable energy projects, said Malta will now work with industry partners to turn the detailed designs developed and refined at X into industrial-grade machinery for its first pilot system.

As currently designed, Malta’s system can store electricity for days or even weeks, until it’s needed. The electricity can come from any source (i.e. wind, sun, or fossil fuels) in any location.

Rooftop solar communities may soon become the latest line of cybersecurity defense for America’s vulnerable electric utility industry, providing emergency power for local consumers while supporting the grid in the event of an attack-based outage. Indeed, a key recommendation in a recent President’s National Advisory Infrastructure Council report on cybersecurity and the grid is that solar and other renewable energy-based microgrids be developed for emergency preparedness.

At the same time that solar microgrids can provide refuge from electric grid hacking, the microgrids themselves need to implement security protocols to avoid the same sort of hacking, some experts point out.

In a draft version of the NAIC report, “Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage,” released in December, one recommendation is to “Support demonstrations of community enclaves design approaches, which may range from traditional hardening of infrastructure to microgrids that combine distributed energy resources, energy storage, and innovative consumer technologies.”

The NAIC report suggests that this can be achieved by “Deliver(ing) peer-reviewed results and lessons learned from demonstrations to provide utilities and communities with effective approaches to design, manage, operate, and fund microgrid and energy resilience capabilities.”

Some funding for such activity has already taken place. New Orleans, for example, won a grant from from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for $141 million in unused Hurricane Sandy recovery funds “to undertake the highest priority upgrades and implement advanced microgrid pilot projects in critical sections of the city.”

Rooftop solar and larger solar arrays are vulnerable to hacking through the inverter, which often has a web link to the equipment manufacturer, which provides a monitoring service to the customer, if not a link to a community solar or community aggregation operation center. This was recently highlighted in a November report by Ridge Global, a consulting firm founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

Alphabet’s X division has played host to a string of experimental ideas, and another one is spinning out as an independent business. Malta uses cheap, abundant materials including salt, anti-freeze and steel to store power at grid scale.

Malta taps into the laws of thermodynamics to store renewable and fossil energy as heat in molten salt and cold in low-temperature anti-freeze until it’s needed — you probably still need electricity at night, when the sun isn’t shining on your local solar farm. The company is working on a pilot plant, backed by $26 million from its first funding round, which was led by a fund Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg are involved with.

Power storage is often a cumbersome, expensive problem, particularly for the likes of wind and solar farms. Providing them with a reliable, inexpensive way to keep electricity in reserve could cut down on waste, while helping renewable energy companies find the bandwidth to generate more power.

MIT researchers have demonstrated a new way to store unused heat from car engines, industrial machinery, and even sunshine until it’s needed. Central to their system is what the researchers refer to as a “phase-change” material that absorbs a large amount of heat as it melts and releases it as it resolidifies.

Once melted and activated by ultraviolet light, the material stores the absorbed heat until a beam of visible light triggers solidification and heat release. Key to that control are added molecules that respond to light by changing shape from one that impedes solidification to one that permits it. In a proof-of-concept experiment, the researchers kept a sample mixture in liquid form down to room temperature—fully 10 degrees Celsius below where it should have solidified—and then, after 10 hours, used a light beam to trigger solidification and release the stored thermal energy.

More than half of all the energy used to power mechanical, chemical, and other processes is expelled into the environment as heat. Power plants, car engines, and industrial processes, for example, produce vast amounts of heat but use a relatively small fraction of it to actually do work. And while sunlight delivers abundant radiant energy, today’s photovoltaic devices convert only a fraction of it into electricity. The rest is either reflected or absorbed and converted into heat that goes unused.

The challenge is finding a way to store all that thermal energy until we want to use it. Jeffrey Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems and professor of materials science and engineering, has been working on that problem for more than a decade.

A good way to store thermal energy is by using a phase-change material (PCM) such as wax. Heat up a solid piece of wax, and it’ll gradually get warmer—until it begins to melt. As it transitions from the solid to the liquid phase, it will continue to absorb heat, but its temperature will remain essentially constant. Once it’s fully melted, its temperature will again start to rise as more heat is added. Then comes the benefit. As the liquid wax cools, it will solidify, and as it does, it will release all that stored phase-change heat—also called latent heat.

PCMs are now used in applications such as solar concentrators, building heating systems, and solar cookers for remote regions. But while PCMs can give off abundant heat, there’s no way to control exactly when they do it. The timing depends on the temperature of the air around them.

For a subject that many have dismissed as too far into the future or not yet commercially viable, it seems there’s been a sudden change of heart.

Of all the demand-side-response related queries we receive, it’s always around battery storage that customers show the most interest.

Dan Connor, DSR Development and Delivery Manager at Energy HQ, npower Business Solutions , tells you all you need to know if you are interested in – or considering – battery storage as part of your overall energy management strategy.

Why any flexible asset can be used as a battery

For example, did you know that a cold storage system could be classified as a battery?

You can ‘charge’ it up by using extra power to reduce temperatures, then ‘discharge’ that stored energy at peak times by turning down your supply and letting your cold store warm up to your maximum permitted temperature.

Despite drawing the same grid consumption, reducing import power at peak times will deliver significant savings on peak import costs –– so reducing your overall energy bill.

Necessity drives battery market

The reason battery storage is getting so much attention is necessity. As coal-fired power stations go off line, so we lose that inertia that allowed us to balance the energy system.

The growth in renewable generation is also increasing the need for greater flexibility in the grid.

So finding new ways to balance energy supply and demand is crucial, especially as traditional methods of energy storage – i.e. hydro power stations – are already at capacity for the UK’s topography.

Understanding the technical details

Before you consider investing in battery storage, however, it’s worth increasing your understanding of how batteries work.

For example, the difference between the cells (which store energy) and the invertors (which allow you to access that energy). Also, how the relationship between the two gives you a battery’s C-rating, and what this means to your business.

Understanding the different ways you can use battery storage is also key – from load shifting to cost avoidance, revenue generation to directly-connected utility scale applications.

Any investment should also be supported by a clear view of return on investment. So it’s important to understand the value that each battery solution can potentially deliver – not only now but in five and ten years’ time.