Updated: Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) will trial the use of lithium batteries and redox flow energy storage to help integrate renewable energy onto its grid, delivering services both in-front and behind-the-meter.

EMA is the city state’s statutory body for operating power systems, proactively developing the energy industry and regulating energy markets. The body currently has an ongoing SG$25 million (US$18.34 million) programme to develop and test energy storage solutions that could enhance overall stability and resilience in Singapore’s power grids. In late 2016, US organisation Sandia National Laboratories signed an agreement with EMA to cooperate on R&D for various storage applications on the grid.

The intention is to support and enable Singapore’s goal of deploying 1GWp of solar PV generation capacity by 2020. In partnership with utility SP Group (Singapore Power), EMA has awarded contracts to two consortiums to trial a total of 4.4MWh of energy storage system resources. Key to the testing will be the ability of energy storage systems to cope with the hot and humid weather conditions Singapore experiences.

Engineering company CW Group will lead the lithium battery trial, while power engineering company Red Dot Power leads the flow battery programme. Both companies are Singapore-headquartered and together will receive around SGD$17.8 million in grants for the test bed projects.  

A test bed will be established for three years in two sites in north and north-eastern Singapore. The CW Group-led lithium-ion trial will test-bed 2.4MW / 2.4MWh of energy storage for delivering high power applications such as frequency regulation and other ancillary services, also being tested for its ability to provide energy reserves and in reducing peak demand. Nanyang Technological University will be involved with the tests.

CW Group has awarded the design, construction and installation of that lithium project to Nasdaq Helsinki-listed power company Wärtsilä and its recently acquired subsidiary, Greensmith Energy, a system integrator which specialises in software and control systems. The project will use Greensmith’s GEMS energy storage control software platform and will be Wärtsilä / Greensmith’s first project in Asia, although just this month Wärtsilä announced its intent to enter India’s energy storage market, describing the technology as the “only answer” to looming grid congestion problems in the country. 

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As renewable energy becomes a more prominent participant in grid energy generation, it is clear that the regulatory frameworks in place, in the EU as in the world, are currently unable to adequately address the question of energy storage.

The current framework, which has decades of history with few significant structural changes, was designed when energy storage was negligible compared to generation and transmission — so negligible it was largely ignored.

With large scale energy storage emerging as key to secure, flexible renewable power grids, overhauling these regulations is now a priority. Most significantly, the EU’s 2016 Clean Energy For all Europeans Directive (Winter Package) identifies the significance of energy storage as part of the wider green energy environment and addresses several regulatory challenges.

Defining Energy Storage

One key issue within the regulatory frameworks is that energy storage did not have a clear definition. As a previously negligible component of the energy grid — barring pumped hydro, which would generally be lumped into generation rather than storage —, it was easy to ignore. Now, across the member EU states, there is no consistent treatment of energy storage and even differing definitions of what energy storage means — or no definition at all.

This definition issue causes inconsistency across member states and difficulty in determining when fees and tariffs are applied. For example, energy storage resources can unfairly face double distribution costs for both charging and discharging.

To keep pace with developments in the field, the European Parliament’s committee for industry, research and energy (ITRE) proposed amendments to the Winter Package encouraging a technology neutral definition of energy storage as a “separate asset category”, allowing for developed technologies such as lithium-ion or flow batteries along with new innovations that may emerge. Describing energy storage using its functional characteristics (power, capacity, response time) rather than its technology allows space in the framework for future improvements.

The Winter Package addresses the question of defining energy storage, however, it does not go as far as classifying energy storage as a separate asset category within the energy market.

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Powin Energy, the Oregon-based energy storage developer, is expecting to see an uptick in non-recourse financing following a landmark project this month.

The company secured construction financing for an 8.8-megawatt/40.8-megawatt-hour battery plant in Stratford, Ontario, from Brookfield Renewable Partners, one of the largest independent renewable energy businesses in the world. 

“Securing non-recourse financing is a critical step for energy storage assets themselves, as well as the broader market,” said Geoffrey Brown, Powin Energy president, in a press release. “We believe that closing a deal of this nature with a well-respected group like Brookfield is indicative of market maturation and Powin’s future prospects.”

While the non-recourse funding model is commonplace in most renewable energy markets, the track record is more limited in energy storage. Only a handful of deals have made headlines.

Last year, for example, another Ontario project based on flywheels and lithium-ion batteries and built by Convergent Energy and Power was funded through a non-recourse finance package from CJF Capital and SUSI Partners’ Energy Storage Fund I.

“The facility reflects a non-recourse, third-party project financing structure for energy storage assets in a sector dominated by on-balance-sheet financing,” noted Convergent in a press statement.

Previously, non-recourse finance had helped fund Australia’s first utility-scale integrated solar and battery project, built by Conergy with backing from Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale.

And in 2015, half the money for the Jake and Elwood battery storage projects developed by Renewable Energy Systems Americas came from non-recourse senior secured project financing debt.

Brown said he thought many energy storage projects since had been difficult to fund through non-recourse debt because of the nature of their contracts.

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HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant of Four Seas (Suzhou) Food Co., Ltd. made by Narada has been put into operation recently. This is the first modular pre-installed energy storage station in China.

This Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant is located inside the factory of Four Seas in Suzhou, and the scale of the project is 250KW/1MWH, which covers 45m², and the expected life is 10 years.

Narada has been constantly exploring new models of energy storage power station construction, this modular pre-assemble energy storage station filled the gap at home and abroad. This Power Plant consists of prefabricated foundation module and prefabricated standard container. Some advantages of this Power Plant are short construction period, controllable construction quality, saving the required area and cost, high reliability, expandability, less service interface and being in harmony with environment.

The commissioning work have already been done in the factory. It can be operated while it is connected to the grid.

The 20–ft prefabricated standard container and prefabricated foundation module was, for the first time, carried out by the modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant. After completing the design of the power plant, the factory started simultaneous installation of prefabricated foundation module and construction of prefabricated standard container. The whole construction period, from the installation of pre-fabricated foundation to positioning and hoisting the container, is no more than a week.

The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant reduces the load of the main power network by discharging at peak periods and increasing power utilization rate at non-peak period through charging the system.

This Power Plant can improve power quality and be used as an emergency power back up to improve the reliability of power supply.

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The new National Facility for Pumped Heat Energy Storage will bring together the former Isentropic facility and Newcastle University’s Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research to create the world’s first grid-scale demonstration of pumped heat storage.

Coupled to the electricity grid, the demonstration facility is said to include a 150kW heat pump and uses a reversible heat pump engine which converts electrical energy to heat.

Taking excess electricity from the grid, the system turns the heat pump converting electricity to thermal energy.

On the hot side, a working argon gas is compressed until it reaches 500ºC. On the cold side, argon gas is allowed to expand until its temperature falls to -160ºC.

In both cases, the gas is then passed through so-called ‘thermal batteries’ – chambers containing rocks – and gives up its energy to the storage material. The gas then leaves the store at ambient temperature.  What is left behind is a ‘hot rock battery’ and a ‘cryogenic cold battery’, both of which are able to store their energy for up to eight hours.

According to Newcastle University, to release the energy stored in the rocks, the process is reversed; the argon gas flows in the opposite direction, providing heating or cooling, or it is used to generate electricity that can be returned to the grid.

Based in Fareham, Hampshire, the £15m facility is set to become a testbed for future energy solutions and sustainable development.

Dr Andrew Smallbone, based at Newcastle University’s Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research and leading the project, said: “There are lots of people around the world talking about…energy storage systems but ours will be the world’s first grid-scale demonstration of pumped heat energy storage.

“This technology works much like a battery but at grid-scale. It is much cheaper, more sustainable and more efficient than the chemical systems that are currently planned. It also does away with the need for the hazardous and scarce materials associated with most battery technologies.

“Additionally, heat and cold are what we use most of our energy for anyway, so users get to choose the form of the energy released from the battery depending on their needs.

“The next few months will be spent plugging it into the National Grid to demonstrate how a system like this could work in the real world.”

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Energy Secretary Rick Perry hailed energy storage Thursday, describing it as the “holy grail” of energy. The Trump administration, however, doesn’t share Perry’s enthusiasm for the technology, based on its budget request to Congress.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy storage program would see its budget cut by 61 percent — from $20.5 million to $8 million — under President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal. The administration’s lack of interest in funding energy storage, though, hasn’t stopped Perry from touting its value.

“The holy grail of energy … is about battery storage,” Perry said Thursday at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by Axios and NBC News. “Battery storage changes the world, I would suggest, the same way that hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling has changed the world.”

DOE’s energy storage program is housed in its Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, whose budget would plunge from $230 million to $120 million under Trump’s proposed budget. A House-passed appropriations bill, however, would set funding for the office at $219 million for the fiscal year.

DOE’s storage program performs research and development on a wide array of storage programs, including solid state batteries, flow batteries, flywheels, and compressed air. Gigawatt-scale grid storage would improve the transmission and distribution system, resulting in lower future investments necessary to ensure grid stability. One of the barriers to lowering the cost of energy storage is that public research and development spending in energy storage has slowed down, even as reliable electric power delivery has become a higher priority.

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HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant of Four Seas (Suzhou) Food Co., Ltd. made by Narada has been put into operation recently. This is the first modular pre-installed energy storage station in China.

This Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant is located inside the factory of Four Seas in Suzhou, and the scale of the project is 250KW/1MWH, which covers 45m², and the expected life is 10 years.

Narada has been constantly exploring new models of energy storage power station construction, this modular pre-assemble energy storage station filled the gap at home and abroad. This Power Plant consists of prefabricated foundation module and prefabricated standard container. Some advantages of this Power Plant are short construction period, controllable construction quality, saving the required area and cost, high reliability, expandability, less service interface and being in harmony with environment.

The commissioning work have already been done in the factory. It can be operated while it is connected to the grid.

The 20-ft prefabricated standard container and prefabricated foundation module was, for the first time, carried out by the modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant. After completing the design of the power plant, the factory started simultaneous installation of prefabricated foundation module and construction of prefabricated standard container. The whole construction period, from the installation of pre-fabricated foundation to positioning and hoisting the container, is no more than a week.

The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant reduces the load of the main power network by discharging at peak periods and increasing power utilization rate at non-peak period through charging the system.

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Duke Energy is planning to develop and install battery storage materials and PV panels that will serve as part of a microgrid system at the Indiana National Guard’s Camp Atterbury in Johnson County, Indiana.

As part of the development of the site, the North Carolina-headquartered utility and holding company will also install battery storage equipment at a substation in Nabb, Indiana.

Before work can begin, plans for the project must be approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. It would be the first microgrid installed at a National Guard facility in Indiana.

Melody Birmingham-Byrd, Duke Energy Indiana state president, said: “Given our recent success with the installation of a 17MW solar power plant at Naval Support Activity Crane, we were eager to find another opportunity to join with the US military to incorporate new technology into our grid operations. The project at Camp Atterbury will help us gain valuable operating experience and may help determine how best to expand the new technology to other areas.”

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While the overall volume of energy storage deployments in the United States remains relatively modest, the technology is gaining more and more traction with utilities and policymakers, as evidenced in North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center’s (NCCETC) latest 50 States of Grid Modernization report.

NCCETC found that among the 33 states that took legislative or regulatory action on grid modernization in Q3, 26 took some sort of action on energy storage. This includes not only the usual suspects of California, and the Northeastern states, but also an increasingly broad group of states in the South, the Mountain West and the Midwest.

In fact, among the top policy actions identified by NCCETC during the quarter is a move by regulators in both Washington State and New Mexico to require utilities to fully evaluate energy storage alongside other options in their integrated resource plans.

In many cases regulators are simply calling for utilities to deploy energy storage, and NCCETC found 14 policy actions related to storage deployment during Q3.

Utilities discover batteries

But far from having storage forced upon them, many utilities are seeking to deploy batteries and other forms of energy storage. During Q3, an administrative law judge in Texas has recommended that AEP be allowed to own battery storage, after the utility proposed deploying two battery storage systems to defer transmission and distribution investments.

NCCETC says that this trend goes beyond batteries. “Distributed energy resources are being increasingly viewed as a potential solution, rather than simply a challenge,” states Autumn Proudlove, the report’s author and manager of policy research at NCCETC.

A similar conclusion was reached by Smart Electric Power Association, which reported in September that the majority of utilities it surveyed planned to offer behind-the-meter storage programs for residential and/or commercial and industrial customers.

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