California’s SGIP program is the largest state-sponsored behind-the-meter storage incentive in the country, and the application process is exceedingly complicated.

The program recently re-opened after a nearly two year hiatus so that it could be reformulated in order to make the process more equitable. SGIP attracted controversy in previous years with reports that some companies were able to wind a lion’s share of the awards.

In revamping the process, the state also put a greater emphasis on energy storage and de-emphasized other renewable technologies, which are covered under other incentives. The program now has $448 million earmarked for storage, 79% of the total, spread over five rounds of allocations.

That funding could beget as much as 800 MW (1600 MWh) of storage, depending on how incentives are allocated, according to an analysis of the program from consultancy Strategen. That likely means hundreds of permit requests for installation and interconnection of small storage systems — a burden some local governments could find difficult.

AB 546 seeks to help, calling for a storage permitting handbook for government agencies. A similar guide already exists for applicants to the storage program, and the government handbook would be positioned as a model for other states. 

“The purpose here is to give cities and counties helpful tools,” Alex Morris, director of policy and regulatory affairs for the California Energy Storage Association, told Microgrid Knowledge. “The vast majority of projects are small behind-the-meter projects that have to connect with the utility and go through the permitting process.”

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A supply deal has been signed, for components made by Ideal Power to be integrated into NEXTracker’s solar-plus-storage offerings, including power conversion system and solar PV inverter.

NEXTracker, a leader in single-axis tracking systems for ground-mounted PV systems, launched NX Fusion and NX Fusion Plus, the two products that constitute its pre-wired, pre-assembled solar-plus-storage solutions, earlier this year in multiple regions.

NX Fusion and NX Fusion Plus allow users to create their own “renewable power plant”, the company claims, with the inclusion of battery energy storage from flow machine maker Avalon Battery, which won a competitive selection process to become NEXTracker’s exclusive battery supplier.

Now, NEXTracker and Ideal Power have announced the formalisation of their supply deal, signing a master purchase agreement, which was revealed o Monday morning. Ideal Power’s ‘SunDial’, a 30kW multi-port PV string inverter and ‘Stabiliti’, a 30kW power conversion system will be bundled with NX Fusion Plus. One or the other device, or both, will be fitted to systems as required by customers.

Ideal Power touted the advantages of SunDial: it is field-upgradable, with plug and play bidirectional current (DC) power port kit, and its DC-coupled configuration makes it simpler to work with than AC systems, the company claims.

“NEXTracker’s solar-plus-storage product helps safeguard against the reduction or elimination of net metering incentives for new solar installations happening across North America, while providing a higher return on investment than solar alone.

“Customers should also be able to access the 30% federal investment tax credit available for storage installed with new solar. We are pleased to partner with NEXTracker to deliver this superior product,” Ideal Power CEO Dan Brdar said.

Meanwhile Ideal Power chairman Lon Bell said the agreement with NEXTracker allowed Ideal to focus on energy storage markets which he said the company believed would “benefit from our proprietary multi-port and microgrid-capable products”.

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Back in March, Musk tweeted that he could solve South Australia’s power crisis in 100 days. Roughly four months later, he is getting his chance.

The 129 MWh project Tesla is building at Neoen’s wind farm is contracted to come online by Dec. 1.

South Australia earlier this year experienced rolling blackouts that attracted the interest of developers eager to demonstrate the capabilities of energy storage.

Tesla’s proposed storage facility will be used to reinforce South Australia’s grid and improve resiliency. The batteries will be charged by the wind farm and will discharge into the grid during times of peak and high demand. The batteries will also serve to smooth the integration of variable wind energy into the network and to provide backup power in the event of outages.

When completed, the 129 MWh facility would be the largest lithium-ion battery facility in operation, at least for a time. The title is currently held by San Diego Gas & Electric’s 120 MWh Escondido storage facility, though there are larger non-lithium batteries in operation, such as the Kyushu Electric Power Co​. 300 MWh sodium-sulfur battery facility.

All those batteries could soon be eclipsed by other planned facilities down under, however. Brisbane renewable energy firm Lyon group announced plans for a 100 MW, 400 MWh battery storage facility in March, slated for siting alongside a 330 MW solar farm. And Queensland’s SolarQ is planning a lithium storage facility of up to 4,000 MWh to be paired with a 350 MW solar facility.

Those batteries aren’t planned to be installed before the Tesla facility, however, giving the company the title of largest lithium-ion facility once again. Before SDG&E’s Escondido project came online, Tesla briefly held the distinction for its 80 MWh facility for Southern California Edison.

“Battery storage is the future of our national energy market, and the eyes of the world will be following our leadership in this space,” Weatherill said in a statement.

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Global and country-level dynamics

The energy storage industry needs better financing to break out of its early stages. So far, commercial project financing is becoming more widely available, but residential financing has barely gotten started.

The high upfront cost of storage makes it hard for behind-the-meter customers to purchase out of pocket, and they can’t call on the kind of capital available to utilities or large power producers. For financiers, meanwhile, energy storage poses several risks: It’s a relatively new technology with emerging business models and revenue streams, both of which are subject to the influence of shifting tariff structures.

“If the energy storage market is going to grow beyond the early adopters, there’s going to have to be more widely available, low-cost financing,” said Brett Simon, a behind-the-meter storage analyst at GTM Research, who recently published a report on storage financing.

Here are the key indicators of where storage financing stands today.

Grid reliability is a growing concern as the world transitions to renewable energy and existing infrastructure ages. To address these challenges, Toronto Hydro is testing a grid-scale energy storage system that can be attached to poles already present around the city. The system has been in place since August of last year, and it’s already displaying positive results.

Toronto Hydro is running a pilot program with the pole-mounted energy storage system in the city’s North York neighborhood. Drawing on eCAMION battery technology, the energy storage system was first developed at Ryerson University. According to the press release, the system completely lacks a footprint, because it can be attached to existing infrastructure

The energy storage system can be mounted 16 feet up on power poles, and can store as much energy as around 2,100 smartphone batteries could. During off-peak hours, it stores power and then releases it when there’s a demand. Energy storage technology could lengthen the lifespan of some of Toronto Hydro’s equipment, and offer reliability as a backup power source in case of an outage.

Bala Venkatesh, Academic Director at Ryerson University’s Center for Urban Energy, described this energy storage unit as the first of its kind in the world, saying in a statement, “This project showcases how the use of energy storage and smart grid technologies can enhance distribution system performance and reduce asset upgrade costs.”

The team monitoring the pole-mounted system is scrutinizing how it reacts to real-time data. So far they’ve found the system can indeed lower the burden on local transformers. Should the pilot project continue to go well, Toronto Hydro is considering implementing the technology on new installations on the more than 175,000 power poles in Toronto.

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Much has been made of the interoperability problem with home energy storage systems. Existing solar customers need battery systems that can connect easily with their legacy equipment. AC-coupled storage has proliferated to solve that problem.

When Maine-based Pika Energy got to work designing power electronics for a new residential storage platform, the team decided to go in a different direction.

“AC coupling is attractive because you can retrofit it. However, actually getting the new battery inverter to talk to the legacy PV inverter is not a simple thing to do,” said company President and co-founder Ben Polito. “Do you want to send your best technician to figure out how to interact with that 2011 inverter in an optimal way? It becomes more like a science project than a scalable solution.”

The desire for easily scalable deployment and reduced installation time led Polito to a plug-and-play platform approach. That product is now available for order as the Harbor Smart Battery, a collaboration with Panasonic Eco Solutions North America.

The system will ship later this year in 10- and 15-kilowatt-hour configurations, offering up to 6.7 kilowatts of instantaneous power. It integrates Panasonic lithium-ion battery modules and is designed for easy pairing with solar generation using the same inverter for both. It can handle islanded backup as well as solar self-supply.

The different elements link up through Pika’s REbus nanogrid platform, which Polito describes as “USB for clean power.” It provides a ready-made hookup so that different home energy assets can all communicate with each other, coordinating system performance based on market price signals. 

The Harbor system has built-in electronics to connect the Panasonic batteries into the REbus system. That makes it easy to slide the battery modules into place with minimal electrical work. The individual components weigh less than 75 pounds, so they don’t require large teams to carry.

“The whole 15 kilowatt-hour battery solution can be installed by one guy or gal in less than an hour,” said Polito, whose company recently raised $2 million.

The design concept reflects a theory of what the residential storage market will look like in the future. 

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The White House recently announced that $200 billion in tax cuts will be allocated through federal funds to incentive private companies to re-build US infrastructure. The expectation is that the resulting improvements will be ultimately valued at $1-trillion. While this is hardly a plan that states and cities can currently run with, a 50-slide document released in January offers at least a small amount of insight as to where these funds may go.

Fifty infrastructure projects that have potential to restore value to the economy are listed in the document. For each project, the document outlines estimated costs, potential number of jobs created, sources of funding (federal, public, and private), and a summary of a projects’ long-term value. Most projects in the document are related to the construction and maintenance of waterways and dams, mass public transit, highways, and pipelines. 50% are privately funded.

Out of the 50, seven projects focus on electricity, and five focus on “clean power”. Two projects led by private company, Anscuntz are covered in the report, with the TransWest Express Transmission line spanning 725 miles to transport electricity from 1000 wind turbines at the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farm in Wyoming. The transmission leads to distributed load centers in Las Vegas, southern California, and Arizona. Another transmission line project for transmitting renewable energy in mid and eastern southern states is listed in the report, along with two more projects aimed at restoring hydropower plants, one of which would supply power to the NYC metro (slide 21).

But only one project in the document addresses grid modernization and implementation of storage system for renewable energy. This is the grid modernization project in southern California, which was initiated to cut down on the use of fossil-fuel backup generators during grid failures, and expedited after a natural oil shortage in Aliso Canyon. 

The Energy Storage Association notes that there will be a higher demand for energy storage as buildings, HVAC, and transportation add more than 3,500 TWh in grid loading over the next 8 years. Aging grids will require upgrades, and adding automatic controls can help to meet the higher electricity demands of a growing population. Storage can also help mitigate grid disruptions that are likely to become more frequent and severe. The ESA predicts that 35 GW of energy storage will be installed to supply electricity the grid by 2025.

The U.S. needs storage to reap the benefits of its existing and future renewable energy infrastructure. In 2016 alone, more than 7.8 GW of U.S. wind energy was installed, and now exceeds 72 GW installed capacity. 15 GW solar energy infrastructure was installed in the U.S. in 2016. By 2022, corporate-procured renewables are expected to reach 60 GW, and businesses and states will continue to invest in renewable energy infrastructure.

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