Global energy markets have been in flux for the past decade. Prices of solar and wind power are at record lows, natural gas is trading well below its historical average and oil prices are a fraction of where they were just a few years ago. Today’s low-cost environment is opening up new options for electricity generation, just as energy storage technology is coming of age.

Solar and wind power has its limitations for the Middle East and North Africa as it only generates electricity when the sun is shining or wind is blowing – falling short at peak demand times in the evenings. In order to provide 24/7 service, renewable energy needs to be paired with a back-up supply, from baseload fuel sources such as natural gas, or from batteries.

Large companies are already investing heavily in energy storage batteries to meet growing demand for reinforcement of renewable energy supplies, in developed and emerging markets. Energy storage is also a growing area of focus for entrepreneurs, including in this region. At the World Economic Forum’s regional meeting in Jordan from May 19-21, we will hear from a number of small businesses who are at the crest of this critical market change.

For example, Energy24, based in Lebanon, has developed technology that can store and manage electrical power that provides 60 per cent savings over conventional generators, without the noise, pollution or carbon emissions. In Morocco, eLum has developed software that uses artificial intelligence to manage on-grid and off-grid energy costs for large industry.

For governments across Mena, including the UAE, the emergence of an energy storage market opens up a new set of decisions about how best to generate and distribute electricity. Critically, it offers the chance to lock in low-cost, emissions-free renewable energy for domestic consumption while reserving oil and natural gas for export.

Several Mena countries have already begun exploring energy storage as a way to integrate new renewable generation resources and improve the stability and reliability of national grids. The outcome of a recent solar photovoltaic tender in Jordan that included battery storage indicates that dependable electricity supply using solar power can be achieved at extremely cost-competitive pricing compared to fossil fuels.

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Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe signed 11 bills earlier this week that promote solar and other renewable energy resources such as pumped hydro.

The bills include proposals for establishing a community solar pilot project, include energy storage in the mission of the state solar development authority and increase the size of clean energy projects eligible for permit from 100MW to 125MW.

The legislation indicated that the legislature is making a concerted effort to promote renewables and energy efficiency in the state; a move which was propounded by local utility Dominion Virginia Power – which recently has called for the integration of 5.2GW of new solar capacity over 25 years.

In this spirit, the state has increased clean energy investment from US$500 million to US$2 billion since 2014, with officials underscoring the associated job creation as an incentive for approving these bills. 

Key bills

Virginia is relatively demure when it comes to renewable energy, actually falling in rankings this year for installed capacity – going from 17th in 2016 to 20th this year – with 238.3MW of installed solar, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

But things are starting to get moving, thanks to this legislative effort by the state.

“It is clear that Virginia is moving in the right direction, especially with the recent announcement of record growth in our solar industry, but there is still work to do,” governor McAuliffe said Monday.

“[The] bill signing highlights the commitment we have to reducing energy consumption and providing more sustainable energy options in the Commonwealth,” added secretary of Commerce and Trade, Todd Haymore.

One key measure, SB 1393, authorises community solar pilot programmes to be run by the Appalachian Power Company, Dominion, and the Electric Cooperatives. Each utility will develop its own territory-specific programme that allows citizens and businesses the ability to subscribe to receive electricity generated by a small centrally-located solar generation system.

HB 1565 develops green zones giving special taxing and zoning exemptions for energy efficient buildings, and HB 1760/SB 1418 secures a rate approval for pumped hydro storage projects in the south-western area of the state. 

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Mumbai-based ION Energy, an energy storage startup, has received an undisclosed amount of angel funding from a clutch of investors. Sushil Jiwarajka, chairman of OMC Power, Aakrit Vaish and Swapan Rajdev, cofounders of Haptik, and executives from Times Internet, Dentsu Aegis, Salesforce and Credit Suisse, among others who participated in this funding round.

ION Energy specialises in creating a layer of infrastructure to enable the adoption of electric vehicles in India.

It leverages proprietary enhancements to the Lithiumion tech in its energy storage systems.

The funds will be used for product development and taking the product towards its formal manufacturing.

“We are an energy storage company working on two bro ad principles ­­ first is decoupling of energy storage systems from their applications and the other being standardisation of design such that energy storage systems can be used across a variety of applications interchangeably,“ said Akhil Aryan, founder of ION Energy.

ION is looking to deliver a better price per kilometre, five-six times better acceleration, 10-12 times longer life and faster charging time, compared to existing options, according to a release from the startup.

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The terminology might seem diminutive, but there is no doubt that the future for microgrids is anything but small.

In fact, in future, microgrids themselves won’t necessarily be that small physically in their own right either. Misconceptions about the isolation of microgrids also abound.

They don’t have to work in full isolation, they may in fact be made up of several small grids and via the legacy grid, they may well be connected in the future to series of similar microgrids. It’s not easy to find a catch-all term that encompasses all of these characteristics. So with the objective of scaling up the benefits of microgrids to larger and larger systems, is the name misleading?

“Possibly, yes,” says Troy Miller, director of grid solutions at S&C Electric. “We’ve got some exciting projects in the pipeline that are much larger. People have used the term microgrid generically to mean a system, whatever the size, that can be separated from, islanded from. The overall larger grid is measured in GWs and TWs, microgrids can be tens or hundreds of MW. I haven’t heard a name for them as they get bigger but people have coined new terms for them as they got smaller, nano- grids and pico-grids.”

S&C played a key role in the development of an ambitious micro-grid project completed in 2015 for the Texas utility firm Oncor. The site is part of a large Oncor testing facility that had been operating with diesel back-up. The motivation for the project was two-fold, one financial and one strategic.

“They originally wanted to build a microgrid from the ground up, greenfield, with all new sources of generation. To save on some of the capex they decided to integrate the existing generation assets. So they hired S&C to create a dynamic microgrid to combine the sources they had on-site with some newer assets, a microturbine, some battery storage as well as PV,” explains Miller. “It was a fairly complex problem. They were looking to reduce the amount of energy they used and use the most energy efficient sources first, the PV, followed by the energy storage, followed by the microturbine and lastly the diesel, to reduce their need for additional generation. Then they were trying to match the critical loads with the available and existing generation.”

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Mission statement

Santiago, Chile, Westborough, Massachusetts, USA and Tokyo, Japan (PRWEB) May 09, 2017

Competing under a demanding process against a robust group of other leading energy storage companies, NEC Chile was awarded and signed the contract with ENGIE Energía Chile last week. This project is the first smart energy project for NEC Chile and will be the first energy storage system which will be operated by the ENGIE group in the region.

“This energy storage project is the first step by ENGIE Energía Chile to establish a new energy storage business, in line with the change of the business strategy of the ENGIE group to invest less in traditional generating technologies and focus mainly on renewable energy. This project aims precisely in that direction and for its development we have chosen one of the most experienced companies in the world,” said Axel Leveque, general manager of ENGIE Energía Chile.

The energy storage system will be installed in the second half of 2017 in the city of Arica, in the north of Chile. The system will be designed to offer ancillary services such as spinning reserve and time-shifting, helping the integration of PV and wind projects. It will be connected to an existing substation. This will mark the third project in Chile for NEC Energy Solutions since 2009, which had under previous ownership installed 32 MW of grid energy storage solutions in the country.

In cooperation with NEC Energy Solutions, NEC Chile will provide a GSS® grid storage solution including containerized lithium ion batteries, power conversion system, and NEC Energy Solutions proprietary AEROS® controls system, as well as service and maintenance packages to ENGIE.

“We are very pleased that ENGIE selected NEC as partner for its first energy storage project in Latin America and hope that this is a first step for a long lasting cooperation for the development of energy storage projects,” said Herwig Ragossnig, Head of Business Development for Smart Energy in Latin America, NEC Chile.

About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company’s experience and global resources, NEC’s advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society. For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com.

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CAISO is moving forward with an initiative meant to ease the integration of distributed resources into its markets.

The main goal of the program: to make it easier for grid-connected resources such as rooftop solar, energy storage, plug-in electric vehicles and demand response to participate in the ISO’s market operations, creating more system flexibility and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

“The number and diversity of these resources are growing and represent an increasingly important part of the resource mix,” CAISO said in its revised proposal.

On May 4, CAISO provided an update on phase two of its Energy Storage and DER initiative, which will propose changes that are due to be reviewed by the Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) Governing Body on July 13 and submitted to the ISO’s Board of Governors for approval during its July 26-27 meeting.

The proposals involve improving the accuracy of DR contributions through alternative energy usage baselines, distinguishing between charging energy and station power for storage resources, and developing a net benefits test for DR resources that participate in the EIM.

Expanded Baseline Options

According to CAISO, a majority of market participants support a set of baselines to assess the performance of proxy demand resources — DR aggregations of retail customers — that was developed by a stakeholder working group.

While the current “10-in-10” baseline methodology is considered accurate for many large commercial and industrial customers, stakeholders don’t think it is appropriate for all customer types, prompting the working group to propose additional baselines. Using the 10-in-10 methodology, the ISO calculates a baseline by examining the 45 days prior to a trade date and finding 10 “like” days in which no DR was required. The ISO then uses hourly average meter data to create a baseline representing a typical load profile, and the resource is paid for reducing usage below the baseline.

Under the new proposal, baselines for residential resources would be based on a four-day weather match that estimates what electricity use would have been in absence of DR dispatch under similar weather and on similar days, and using a control group of similar users.

Commercial baselines would be based on the 10-in-10 method with a 20% adjustment cap, an average of the previous five days and a control group. Baselines are adjusted using actual load data in the hours preceding a DR event to better reflect variables that might not be present in the historical data.

“Stakeholders who supported the proposal stated that the use of additional baselines for residential and commercial customers would improve the accuracy and reduce bias when compared to the 10-in-10 baseline,” CAISO said.

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A new report from Navigant Research concluded the global market for distributed solar plus energy storage is expected to reach 27.4 GW and $49.1 billion by 2026.

“An emerging confluence of technical, economic, and regulatory factors is beginning to drive growth in the residential, C&I, and remote, off-grid DSES markets,” said William Tokash, senior research analyst with Navigant Research. “Beyond this, coupling battery energy storage technology with solar PV and virtual power plant software technology will allow this class of DER to be dispatchable from a grid operator standpoint to address intermittency and provide grid services as well.”

Navigant said distributed solar plus energy has the potential to grow quickly for residents in remote locations without access to electricity or reliable grid electricity services. 

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Mercedes-Benz is bringing energy storage to home and business owners in the United Kingdom.

Homeowners in the UK can have up to eight 2.5 kWh storage modules installed for a total of 20 kWh of back-up power. Commercial customers will have access to even more power.

The lithium-ion batteries are based on the same technology that’s gone into over 80,000 plug-in hybrid and all-electric Daimler vehicles since 2012.

Homes and commercial properties with their own solar power panels can store the surplus power without a loss, says Mercedes-Benz. Households will be able to increase consumption of that generated energy by as much as 65 percent.

Parent company Daimler started the energy storage division in 2015 soon after Tesla Energy was launched. BMW and Nissan have also started up energy storage businesses.

Users can bring in a customized pack of components for energy storage system. These include a photovoltaic system generating solar power, a battery inverter, an energy management system, the Mercedes-Benz energy storage unit, and the cost of installation.

The photo gallery below shows the range of storage size and capacity available to end users.

The German automaker’s energy storage unit is working with UK distributors including Alternergy, Innasol, and Wind & Sun. Other companies, such as Solar Frontier, can provide complete system installations. These types of stationary battery storage systems are often installed together with solar panels, Mercedes-Benz said.

Market demand for clean energy and storage is building up in the UK.

“There is tremendous interest in our energy storage units in the UK. We’re very pleased to be able to offer Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage Home to customers here,” said Marc Thomas, managing director of Mercedes-Benz Energy.

Mercedes-Benz Energy has its eyes set on two more growth markets beyond sales in the UK: large-scale industrial projects in the ‘primary reserve’ market; and the founding of Mercedes-Benz Energy Americas.

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