Enel subsidiary Enel Green Power North America in August closed on the acquisition of EnerNOC, paying about $250 million for the energy management company. Earlier this year, Enel Green Power bought Demand Energy Networks, showing an appetite for energy management sector. Now it appears the utility is eyeing energy storage. 

Speaking at a conference in Moscow, Starace told Bloomberg that Enel is looking for acquisitions in energy storage as the technology becomes more widespread and important in balancing the intermittency of the growing amount of renewables on grids in Europe and North America. Starace said there are already regions where batteries are commercially attractive, including the U.S., Europe and Latin America. 

European utilities are showing an increasing interest in energy storage. In July, French oil company Total completed the $1 billion acquisition of battery maker Saft. In December 2015, Germany’s E.on invested in energy storage software company Greensmith Energy Management. Greensmith was later acquired by Finnish power system manufacturer Wartsila in a $170 million deal.

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Grid operators around the world continue to recognize the benefits of energy storage technologies, and one of the most intriguing applications is the ability to defer investments in conventional transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure.

Energy storage systems (ESSs) providing T&D upgrade deferral can be a disruptive force in the industry as they allow for a more efficient deployment of capital to meet evolving grid needs and can enable the development of new business models. T&D upgrade deferral ensures that electricity lines, substations and other equipment have enough bandwidth to handle peak demand. Navigant Research’s recent report, Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Upgrade Deferral, takes an in-depth look at both the opportunities and challenges in this market.

T&D systems adapt to end-user needs and the placement of generation assets. This is becoming increasingly complex because of changing demand patterns, congestion due to the development of renewable generation in remote areas, and the desire to improve the reliability of electricity supply for customers that have a growing number of alternative options to meet their electricity needs. At the same time, developing T&D systems is becoming more expensive and challenging in much of the world, leading to the demand for ESSs as an alternative to the traditional investments utilities have relied on for decades.

Falling costs, faster build times, and a smaller physical footprint make energy storage an attractive option for utilities facing the need for T&D upgrades. The table below summarizes the challenges facing T&D investments and the benefits provided by ESSs.

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Enel SpA is seeking acquisitions in the energy storage business, as developments in battery technology are set to play a key role for the wider adoption of renewable sources.

Europe’s biggest utility by market capitalization sees the U.S., Europe and Latin America as the markets with the most potential, Chief Executive Officer Francesco Starace said in an interview.

“Technologies are fast approaching the point where batteries will be commercially attractive,” Starace said on Oct. 17 on the sidelines of the Open Innovations forum in Moscow. “There are parts of the world where it’s already convenient.”

While green power sources are increasingly seen as alternatives to traditional electricity, the challenge for utilities is to develop sufficient storage capacity to minimize “intermittency” and storage issues associated with solar panels and wind plants. Global storage capacity will then need to triple to 15.7 terawatt-hours by 2030 from around 4.7 this year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Rome-based Enel, which made a string of acquisitions in the sector this year, is expected to close a new deal this month in the energy management business, according to a person close to the company who asked not to be named because discussions are private.

Enel has already announced a number of deals this year, including the acquisition of software provider EnerNOC in August and of the Tynemouth standalone battery energy storage system project in Newcastle, U.K. in May.

A number of the company’s investors have said they approve of the approach, citing further growth potential.

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Today, supercapacitors are found in many electronic applications. In automotive applications alone, they are used in startup systems, energy recovery solutions, and fast charge-discharge systems, to name a few. Supercapacitors can charge/discharge quickly without losing energy storage capacity over time. They also have very high power density. In contrast, batteries can store larger amounts of energy but they have a defined cycle life. A combination of batteries and supercapacitors results in a hybrid energy storage system that could help meet the needs of myriad renewable energy applications.

Supercapacitors can assist in delivering peak power while improving the performance of batteries in energy storage systems. Many supercapacitor manufacturers, utility companies, and researchers are developing hybrid capacitor-battery energy storage systems for future projects. Some are already using them in case studies and pilot projects, such as the one built by Duke Energy at its Rankin Substation in Gaston County, N.C.

Duke Energy partnered with Aquion Energy, Maxwell Technologies, and others to build a hybrid energy storage system (HESS) project. The hybrid system uses Maxwell’s UCAPs to help manage solar smoothing events in real-time—particularly when the solar power on the grid fluctuates due to cloud cover or other weather circumstances. The Aquion batteries are used to shift solar load to a time that better benefits the utility. The hybrid energy storage system integrates patented energy management algorithms.

The Maxwell UCAPs used in this program discharge and recharge power in a subsecond-to-minutes timeframe. They also boast long operational life in a wide operating temperature window. This is ideal for stabilizing short-term PV power output fluctuation in large-scale deployments, ensuring reliable access to solar power on the grid. In addition, a 100-kilowatt/ 300-Kwh battery uses a unique Aqueous Hybrid Ion chemistry (including a saltwater electrolyte and synthetic cotton separator). These materials should result in lower costs, while the water-based chemistry will provide a non-toxic and non-combustible product that is safe to handle and environmentally friendly.

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The installed capacity of energy storage for microgrids is expected to increase dramatically over the next decade, with nearly 15 gigawatts of new cumulative capacity and revenue worth $22.3 billion, according to a new report from Navigant Research.

Navigant Research published a new report earlier this month investigating energy storage for microgrids (ESMG), providing an analysis of expected trends and market dynamics through the next decade, until 2026. Unsurprisingly, the report concludes that interest in ESMG technology is increasing alongside the interest in solar PV and wind deployments. While energy storage systems are not inherently required for a microgrid to operate, Navigant concludes that storage systems have nevertheless emerged “as an increasingly valuable component to distributed energy networks because of their ability to effectively integrate renewable generation.”

The report’s key highlight predicts that through 2026 there will be a cumulative installation of 14,850.7 MW (megawatts) of new ESMG capacity with revenue of approximately $22.3 billion in revenue.

“There are several key drivers resulting in the growth of energy storage-enabled microgrids globally, including the desire to improve the resilience of power supply both for individual customers and the entire grid, the need to expand reliable electricity service to new areas, rising electricity prices, and innovations in business models and financing,” explained Alex Eller, research analyst with Navigant Research. “Innovations in business models and financing will likely play a key role in the expansion of the ESMG market during the coming years.”

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System deployed at Dutch centre for sustainability and innovation

Renewable energy sources are only as reliable as the natural world that fuels them. A cloud passing overhead cuts off solar power; the wind stops blowing and windmills stop working. In order for us to depend on undependable power sources, we need a grid-sized backup to acts of God.

In 2012, president Barack Obama’s energy secretary Stephen Chu issued a “5-5-5” challenge to those in the energy storage field, bring us a 5% reduction of cost, a five times increase in capacity, and do it in five years or less. Yet-Ming Chiang, MIT’s department of material science and engineering and founder of multiple battery-research startups, was the lead author on a study published earlier this week in the journal, Joule, that described a battery conceived and designed with a wary eye on that first five in Chu’s challenge. “We said, ‘If we want energy storage at the terawatt scale, we have to use truly abundant materials,’” Chiang told MIT News.

Chiang’s team knew from jump they wanted to use sulfur as the cathode, or negative terminal, and water as the electrolyte solution that holds the energy. After some false starts, the researchers fell upon oxygen as an anode, or the positive terminal, completely by accident when an incomplete seal in a prototype allowed for air to get in to the system. The final step was finding that adding salt to the water could help carry the charge back and forth between the two terminals more efficiently. All told, the total chemical cost of Chiang’s battery, comes to about $1 per kilowatt hour (kWh).

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If you live in Frankfurt, Germany and have solar panels on your roof, you might be able to generate enough energy to power your whole home throughout the day. But if you pull in too much energy for your needs, or not enough, you can trade power with another solar-powered home in Hamburg, or Berlin, or anywhere in the country. That’s the principle behind sonnenCommunity, a nationwide, cloud-based virtual power plant launched around three years ago and made up of around 8,000 homes equipped with solar panels and an interconnected SonnenBatterie—an energy storage unit developed in 2010 by the German company Sonnen. “What’s happening in Germany with peer-to-peer power-sharing is something that’s talked about in the U.S. as a great idea for future energy-storage solutions,” says Blake Richetta, VP of sales for Sonnen U.S.

The sonnenCommunitie facilitates its energy transfers using the grid infrastructure that already exists in the country, “What we do in Germany is we essentially cut out the middleman—the utility–and we work directly with the grid operator,” Richetta says. Generally, regional utility companies manage the sale, distribution, and flow of energy through the grid and into homes throughout the region in which it operates. But because Germany has just one interconnected grid system, Sonnen is able to bypass the various regional utilities and work with the grid operator to manage the energy flow into and out of homes connected in the sonnenCommunitie, essentially acting as a nationwide utility for its customers.

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Conductive metal-organic frameworks could form basis of storage systems for renewable energy, says US team

The biggest drawback to larger utilisation of renewable energy generation has always been their intermittency. The weather conditions that can be harnessed to generate electricity are, by their nature, transient, and unless energy can be stored and  put onto distribution grids when generation is not possible, renewables will struggle to displace power stations that are available around the clock, day in and day out. The search for materials that can effectively store the large amounts of energy necessary and discharge it efficiently has become more intense in recent years.

One promising candidate is the group of materials known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). These highly-porous materials have been used in many applications in recent years, from storing gases to catalysing reactions that convert carbon dioxide into fuels. The one barrier to their use in energy storage has been their inability to conduct electricity. The new discovery from chemists at the University of Southern California (USC) may change that.

A group from the USC’s Dornsife College in Los Angeles has published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society describing a MOF containing cobalt and sulphur that, they claim, conducts electricity both like a semiconductor and a metal, with the greatest conductivity occurring at very high and very low temperatures (the semiconducting properties are most pronounced at around 180K (-93°C). This band-like conduction behaviour has never before been observed in a MOF, they state. The compound has a two-dimensional structure somewhat similar to graphene.

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Now MIT researchers have developed an “air-breathing” battery that could store electricity for very long durations for about one-fifth the cost of current technologies, with minimal location restraints and zero emissions. The battery could be used to make sporadic renewable power a more reliable source of electricity for the grid.

For its anode, the rechargeable flow battery uses cheap, abundant sulfur dissolved in water. An aerated liquid salt solution in the cathode continuously takes in and releases oxygen that balances charge as ions shuttle between the electrodes. Oxygen flowing into the cathode causes the anode to discharge electrons to an external circuit. Oxygen flowing out sends electrons back to the anode, recharging the battery.

“This battery literally inhales and exhales air, but it doesn’t exhale carbon dioxide, like humans—it exhales oxygen,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT and co-author of a paper describing the battery. The research appears today in the journal Joule.

The battery’s total chemical cost—the combined price of the cathode, anode, and electrolyte materials—is about 1/30th the cost of competing batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries. Scaled-up systems could be used to store electricity from wind or solar power, for multiple days to entire seasons, for about $20 to $30 per kilowatt hour.

Co-authors with Chiang on the paper are: first author Zheng Li, who was a postdoc at MIT during the research and is now a professor at Virginia Tech; Fikile R. Brushett, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering; research scientist Liang Su; graduate students Menghsuan Pan and Kai Xiang; and undergraduate students Andres Badel, Joseph M. Valle, and Stephanie L. Eiler.

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