A new pilot project from Illinois’ largest utility is bringing energy storage out from behind the substation and into the neighborhood.

Last month, ComEd deployed a 25-kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion battery in Beecher, Illinois, about 40 miles south of Chicago. In the event of a power outage, the battery can supply about an hour of backup power to three houses selected for the project.

It’s part of a broader experiment in Community Energy Storage (CES), or the deployment of medium-sized batteries in between those found in utility-scale applications and the kind of personal, home-battery systems offered by Tesla and others. Taken together, distributed CES units can start to match the scale of larger, more centralized energy-storage systems.

ComEd says the Beecher pilot will run for a year, and that similar pilot projects are in the works. The Beecher CES system is aimed primarily at mitigating reliability issues — the area experiences an unusually high amount of outages due to challenges with a nearby medium voltage line that serves it, according to Manuel Avendano, manager of emerging technology in ComEd’s distribution planning and smart grid group.

Down the road, CES could provide other benefits, such as the integration of more solar energy and reductions in the peak demand periods that strain the grid, Avendano says.

“Through grid modernization and smart grid investments, our reliability performance has been best on record for five years running, and we’re committed to continuous improvement,” Michelle Blaise, ComEd’s senior vice president of technical Services, said in a statement. “We want all ComEd customers to experience great reliability and that’s why we’re innovating and piloting emerging technologies such as energy storage to bring new value to communities and help improve service for our customers.”

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The energy storage market will expand dramatically in the coming years from an annual installation size of 6 GW in 2017 to more than 40 GW by 2021. In addition, an IMS Research report predicts that the market for storing energy from solar panels will go from $200 million in 2012 to nearly $19 billion by the end of this year. This is especially impactful for residential solar, which has seen consistent growth in the past few years and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

According to McKinsey, energy storage could be the “missing link” that makes intermittent renewables such as solar and wind power totally accessible and reliable all the time. That’s because it allows energy that’s stored while the sun is shining and the wind is blowing to be used later when the wind isn’t blowing or when it’s dark outside. McKinsey also indicates that there’s significant near-term potential for energy storage, and that this is largely due to the fact that prices are dropping dramatically and could be as low as $160 per kilowatt-hour by 2025.

Clearly, there is a mutually beneficial relationship between solar and energy storage. Particularly, long tail (i.e., small regional) solar companies will see greater opportunities as the industry moves away from consolidation and being dominated to a handful of large companies. This remains to be true despite the recent U.S. government policy shifts that deemphasize climate change. In fact, several companies as well as state and local governments have responded that this new policy won’t impede their efforts to support the development and implementation of clean energy including renewables.

New Opportunities for Long Tail Solar Companies with Energy Storage

Now, with solar financing options becoming simpler and more democratized, smaller and more agile solar providers will experience growth right along with the burgeoning energy storage industry. In fact, data show that residential energy storage will grow to 660 MW by 2021, and that most of it will be paired with solar. Solar paired with energy storage will drive growth in both industries.

This implies that partnerships need to be formed between solar and energy storage companies. That’s because long tail installers will need energy storage solutions to meet residential customer demand. However, one of the caveats is that not all energy storage solutions are the same because energy storage isn’t commoditized.

An example is the difference between a simple energy storage system versus an intelligent energy storage system. A simple system will allow customers to store energy from the grid or renewables and that’s pretty much it. For many people, this will be enough to satisfy their energy storage needs. An intelligent system will do this as well, but it will also facilitate energy optimization, home automation, and integration with the Internet of Things (IoT). 

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An ambitious retrofit process

North America has well over 20 GW of utility-scale PV with hundreds of MWs coming on yearly. Energy storage can help maximize the production of both existing and new utility-scale PV installations. In this free guide, Dynapower — the leading manufacturer of utility-scale inverters with over 350 MWs installed worldwide — provides a comprehensive overview of the three systems for coupling solar with storage — AC-coupled, hybrid plus storage, and a new approach DC-coupled with a converter. In addition to a system overview of each solution, Dynapower provides an analysis of the value streams each system type can bring online for installation owners to boost production and revenues.

All told Dynapower provides an overview of six energy storage enabled value streams — Clipping Recapture, Curtailment & Outage Recapture, Low Voltage Harvesting, Capacity Firming, Energy Time Shifting, and Ramp Rate Control.

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Arguing that energy storage is “critical to ensuring a resilient, reliable, cost-effective and sustainable grid”, the Energy Storage Association joined with 52 other organisations to plead the place of storage in the Trump’s administration’s infrastructure priorities.

Penning a letter to Congress, the coalition of energy storage advocates asserted that any dialogue on enhancing and rebuilding infrastructure and modernising the grid must involve energy storage systems. Signing the letter alongside ESA’s leadership were companies and groups including Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin, 24m Technologies, AES Energy Storage, LG Chem, Enel Green Power North America, Green Charge, Greensmith, National Electrical Contractors Association, Panasonic, Parker Hannifin, Siemens, Stem, Sunverge, UL and several others.

“If you want to talk about grid resiliency, energy storage is part of that conversation. If you want to talk about load modulation, demand response, storage is a part of that conversation,” Matt Roberts, executive director of ESA, told Energy-Storage.News back in February, noting the significant opportunity for storage in the federal government’s expressed priorities.

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“Energy storage systems are critical to ensuring a resilient, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable grid,” a letter sent on April 3 by the Energy Storage Association and 52 industry organizations admonished the leaders of the U.S. Congress – asking the lawmakers to see energy storage as a policy priority when they discuss infrastructure projects in the coming months.

Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin-1^st District), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California-12^th District) , the correspondence emphasized that energy storage systems are “fuel neutral” – and therefore, would support any generation resource connected to the grid, whether fossil fuel or renewable.

What’s more, the signatories said, the U.S. has a leading global industry position to protect. Indeed, in the fourth quarter of 2016, alone, the nation deployed 141 MW of energy storage – and experts expect the market to grow by tenfold over the next several years.

As costs of the technology decline and adoption rates climb, the global industry is expected to surge to more than $240 billion annually by 2040, “and if the U.S. competes to stay at the forefront, it can employ and support hundreds of thousands of Americans,” the letter said.

But it is not just about dollars and cents, the association and the industry principals stated. Energy storage deployment enjoys bipartisan support because of the direct and tangible benefits that it delivers on the grid. They pointed out that both Republican and Democratic governors have implemented programs supporting early storage deployments.

“For example, utilities in Texas, Utah, and New York have proposed energy storage as a smart, cost-effective complement to their wires and substations,” the letter detailed, providing the following other examples:

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Since the invention of electricity there is always a challenge to store it for future use. With the technological advancement, battery storage has offered a way to store energy chemically-especially renewable energy, so that it can be used at the point of demand or to balance grid. Amid surge in solar and wind power generation and their intermittent nature, the battery storage demand has increased manifold, and now batteries are big enough to give power backup to mega cities.

As the renewable energy share rises in the energy mix, there is an increased focus on energy storage projects in recent years. They are expected to play a key in the global transition to renewable energy.

In a report by GlobalData estimated the installed capacity of global battery energy storage system (BESS) from 1.5 Gigawatts (GW) in 2015 to over 14 GW by 2020, as many projects are scheduled to be commissioned over the period.

The report projected the US to continue to lead the BESS market over the next five years, reaching a market value of approximately $1.7bn by 2020.

BESS prices are also forecast to decline by about 50% over the 2015 to 2020 period, due to technological innovations, improvement in manufacturing processes, and increase in competitiveness.

Here are the biggest battery storage projects across the globe:

1. The Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System

AES is planning to build the Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System in Long Beach, California. It will have 300 MW of interconnected and 600 MW of flexible, zero-emission battery energy storage.

The company claims it as the world’s biggest storage resource, which is expected to enable efficient use of renewable energy resources, lowers costs and emissions, and offer increased reliability to the electrical grid.

The company is already developing a 100MW battery storage facility at the Alamitos Power Center. In November 2014, AES Southland was awarded a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) by Southern California Edison (SCE) for the storage plant.

2. EDF Energy Renewables West Burton 49MW Battery Storage Project

In August last year, EDF Energy Renewables has secured a contract from the UK’s National Grid to build 49 MW of battery storage project at its West Burton Combined Cycle Gas power station in Nottinghamshire.

The contract was part of a new 200 MW frequency response system to improve the reliability of the UK grid. EDF Group has applied for planning permission for the battery storage units at EDF Energy’s West Burton.

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Researchers from the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are making available the most detailed component and system-level cost breakdowns to date for residential photovoltaic (PV) solar systems equipped with energy storage-and quantifying previously unknown soft costs for the first time.

The report, titled “Installed Cost Benchmarks and Deployment Barriers for Residential Solar Photovoltaics with Energy Storage: Q1 2016,” was written by researchers from NREL, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Energy Department.

“There is rapidly growing interest in pairing distributed PV with storage, but there’s a lack of publicly available cost data and analysis,” said Kristen Ardani, lead author of the report and a solar technology markets and policy analyst at NREL. “By expanding NREL’s well-established component- and system-level cost modeling methodology for solar PV technologies to PV-plus-storage systems, this report is the first in a series of benchmark reports that will document progress in cost reductions for the emerging PV-plus-storage market over time.”

Declining costs in customer-side energy-storage products have opened the door for batteries to improve the value and flexibility of residential PV systems while falling costs in PV technologies have been driving the growing adoption of combined PV and storage solutions. However, gaps remain in developing an in-depth understanding of the costs of combined PV and battery systems and in effectively communicating their value proposition.

Through in-depth analysis of those costs and barriers to adoption, the report’s authors provide technology manufacturers, installers, and other stakeholders with invaluable information to help guide their efforts to identify cost reduction opportunities. In addition, the analysis informs decision makers on market factors that are headwinds to further growth.

The analysis covers alternating current (AC)- and direct current (DC)-coupled systems for residential use, as well as retrofitting batteries to installed arrays, and the costs of enhancing the resiliency benefits of the combined system by switching to a battery with greater capacity. Both systems are designed to provide back-up power for critical loads in the event of a grid outage, and they enable a typical customer to optimize self-consumption of PV electricity-including peak-demand shaving and time-of-use shifting.

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PUNE, India — According to a new market research report, “The Thermal Energy Storage Market, By Technology, Storage Material, Application, End-User, and Region – Global Forecast To 2022,” published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from an estimated $3.67 billion in 2017 to $6.20 billion by 2022, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11 percent from 2017 to 2022.

The global market is witnessing a significant growth due to rising impetus on renewable energy generation such as concentrated solar power, increasing demand for thermal energy storage systems in HVAC, and government incentives for thermal energy storage systems.

The sensible heat storage segment is expected to hold the largest share of the thermal energy storage market, by technology, during the forecast period. 

The sensible heat storage segment led the overall thermal energy storage market in 2016. Sensible heat storage of thermal energy has a number of residential and industrial applications. Underground storage of sensible heat in both liquid and solid storage medium is also used for typically large-scale applications such as district heating and cooling systems. Increased applications of sensible heat based thermal storage in the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific is projected to drive the market during the forecast period.

Molten salt is expected to hold the largest market share of the thermal energy storage market, by storage material, during the forecast period. 

Molten salts have high boiling points, low viscosity, low vapor pressure, and high volumetric heat capacities. A higher heat capacity corresponds to a smaller storage tank volume. Molten salt can function as a large-scale thermal storage method that would allow other energy sources, such as solar, to become more feasible by smoothing out the fluctuations in demand and weather. Looking to the future after depleting carbon-based fuel, the successful demonstration of molten salt storage for solar power, provides an edge for tapping into the desert areas to meet power demands. The Middle East and Africa market is driven by the implementation of concentrating solar projects based on molten salt storage material.

The Middle East and Africa is the largest market for thermal energy storage. 

In this report, the thermal energy storage market has been analyzed with respect to four regions, namely, the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. The Middle East and Africa is estimated to be the largest market for thermal energy storage by 2022. Heat thermal storage and molten salt thermal storage are major technology types employed in South Africa. The majority of thermal storage projects are present in Northern Cape in the country. South Africa is endowed with enormous solar and wind resources. This will drive the thermal energy storage market in the country during the forecast period.

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