The 115th U.S. Congress has not even adjourned for the winter, and already a newly resurgent Democratic Party is making demands that reflect its majority status in the U.S. House come January.

Climate appears to be near the top of the list. Last Thursday, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Democratic Leader in the Senate, sent a letter to President Trump demanding that any infrastructure package taken up in 2019 include “policies and funding to transition to a clean energy economy and mitigate the risks that the United States is already facing due to climate change.”

And in a list of policies that Schumer says should be included, the top item is “permanent tax incentives for domestic production of clean electricity and storage, energy efficient homes and commercial buildings, electric vehicles, and modernizing the electric grid.”

In concrete terms, this could mean an extension of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar and energy storage, the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind and the federal electric vehicle (EV) tax credit.

Pressure from the Left

This strong statement on climate change, clean energy and infrastructure investment comes as at least 30 incoming members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed onto a call for the creation of a committee to explore a “Green New Deal” and to move the nation to 100% renewable energy by 2030.*

It also comes as Schumer has come under fire by activists for rumors that he plans to replace Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) with coal state Democrat Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) as the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

As such, one possible way to read these moves is that centrist leaders like Schumer are responding to pressure from an energized and newly elected Left wing of the Democratic Party. It is notable that Schumer’s program includes many of the aims of the Green New Deal, while avoiding any explicit use of that phrase.

2018 has been a big, yet bumpy, year for the U.S. energy storage market. We’ve seen huge increases in behind-the-meter installations in homes and businesses, but also supply bottlenecks and policy uncertainties that restrained larger-scale battery installations.

How are these trends likely to play out next year?

That’s the topic that Ravi Manghani, energy storage research director at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, took up in Tuesday’s opening presentation at Greentech Media’s annual Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco. Manghani sketched out the key developments of 2018, and made five “bold, and not so bold,” predictions for what will be different in 2019.

The first is that utility-scale energy storage installations, after seeing a drop in the first three quarters of 2018 compared to last year, will pick up again next year. As Manghani noted, the front-of-meter battery market is inherently a lumpy one, with one or two massive projects dominating annual figures.

But there’s also been a policy issue holding up utility-scale storage this year, Manghani said. The uncertainty over how the nation’s grid operators are going to implement Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 841, approved in February has stalled projects. Order 841 broadly directs grid operators to create market mechanisms that accommodate batteries’ unique abilities to both charge and discharge from the grid, and ramp up and down at speeds that traditional generators can’t match. But the details of how each ISO and RTO plans to implement FERC’s requirements has been the subject of much debate in the energy industry, as we’ve noted in ongoing coverage of the various straw proposals coming out over the past few months.

With grid operators finally filing their official Order 841 compliance plans with FERC this month, the energy storage industry now has a much more complete picture of how each grid operator is planning to move forward. While the Energy Storage Alliance (ESA) does have complaints about these final plans, indicating there’s more debate ahead, opening up Order 841-mandated market changes this year is still expected to open a massive new set of opportunities to serve in wholesale energy and ancillary services markets.

8minutenergy Renewables, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and an affiliate of Upper Bay Infrastructure Partners have entered into a joint venture that will provide equity capital for 8minutenergy’s 10.7GW portfolio of utility PV and storage projects.

This joint venture, along with investment from 8minutenergy CEO, Tom Buttgenbach, provides over US$200 million in capital commitments.

8minutenergy is wholly owned by Buttgenbach and his management team as of 6 December 2018. Buttgenbach, who co-founded 8minutenergy in 2009, led a management buyout of the shares of fellow co-founder Martin Hermann last week.

Buttgenbach noted: “We thank J.P. Morgan and Upper Bay for bringing the long-term focus and financial resources to enable us to unleash the full potential of our pipeline and incredibly talented team.

“We have been the largest and most successful solar developer in California, and have expanded our cost leadership across the US, developing a solar and storage project pipeline of 10.7GW. A testament to our low-cost leadership is the 420MW Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar plant in Nevada, which at 2.3 cents/kWh fixed for 25 years, holds the record for lowest-price solar PPA in the nation. In Texas, which is a purely price-driven competitive market, we will start construction of our 280MW Holstein 1 power plant in the second quarter of 2019.”

Michael Lehman, managing director and portfolio manager of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, said: “We’ve been very impressed with the 8minutenergy team and their ability to deliver sustainable returns through their utility-scale solar projects. 8minutenergy has a premier development process that consistently delivers attractive solar projects with long-term, contracted cash flows.”

KATOWICE, Poland, Dec. 11, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — The combination of photovoltaics (PV) and energy storage will become the ultimate energy solution for mankind, said Li Zhenguo, president of LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd, a world-leading manufacturer of monocrystalline silicon PV products. Li made the remarks on Tuesday at a sideline event during the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Katowice, Poland.

“The most effective way to get global warming under control is to install a power system entirely based on renewable energy,” said Li, predicting that PV will be the cheapest power source in most parts of the world in the next two or three years, due to the rapid development of PV technologies and the continuous fall in production costs.

He added that electricity storage can help offset solar fluctuations, making the combination of PV and energy storage the major energy solution within ten years. “Energy storage technologies such as pumped hydroelectric storage (PHS), chemical energy storage, and electric vehicle-to-grid energy storage have been advancing rapidly. In addition, power will be better shared as a result of the global energy internet,” Li added.

In an effort to create the least carbon footprint, LONGi is using hydropower to produce monocrystalline silicon ingots and wafers in its bases in Yunnan Province of China and Kuching of Malaysia, where this type of clean energy is abundant.

Speaking of future plans, Li said LONGi will implement the “solar for solar” strategy, a business mode to power PV production entirely by solar energy. The company plans to build PV and PHS power plants in coastal areas with abundant sunlight and topographic drop to supply electricity for its solar product plants.

The sideline event was held to call for international cooperation in promoting the use of clean energy to tackle climate change.

Making stand-alone energy storage systems eligible for a federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) would create jobs and help modernize the U.S. electricity grid, according to over 150 companies and industry groups representing storage, wind, solar, hydro, manufacturing and other sectors.

Today, these businesses issued a letter to Congressional leadership in support of The Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act (S. 1868 & H.R. 4649), which would ensure a level playing field for energy storage to compete with all other energy resources currently eligible for the ITC.

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) signed onto the letter and issued the following statement in support:

“Energy storage technology will play an important role as we build an even more affordable and reliable electricity grid for the 21st Century,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of AWEA. “We’re asking Congress to reduce uncertainty for investors by creating a stand-alone energy storage ITC for which all storage technologies can qualify. A level playing field for the full range of storage technologies will ensure consumers benefit from competition and will boost job-creating investment in infrastructure projects, including new opportunities for wind farm development.”

Energy storage technologies — including batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, thermal storage, compressed air, and others — are a source of reliability services and flexibility when connected to the grid as an independent resource or when paired with any energy source. Current law only allows energy storage to qualify for an ITC when paired with a solar project under certain circumstances.

Storage is a foundational component of a more robust electric grid, helping to balance power supply and demand instantaneously by storing electricity from low-cost energy sources and releasing that power during periods of high demand. When emergencies strike, energy storage can provide invaluable storm resiliency and backup power.

Energy storage will not only help North Carolina replace coal-powered electricity in the state in the coming decades but may also offset the need for new natural gas plants as well.

A study of the energy storage landscape was submitted to the state’s General Assembly in early December that will serve as a roadmap to help lawmakers and regulators fully develop the technology. North Carolina is currently in the initial phases of deploying energy storage facilities; however, the report authored by the team of university experts concluded that storing electricity could not only smooth out peak demand periods, but would also become a reliable everyday piece of the region’s fuel mix.

“In the moderate range of capacity, like the 300 megawatts (MW) of energy storage capacity that Duke Energy has proposed to build over the next 15 years, power storage could offset the construction of a gas power plant altogether,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a member of the report’s team of authors and an associate professor at North Carolina State University. “At the high end, more than a gigawatt (GW), you can offset the need for multiple power plants.”

The report notes that North Carolina is facing an increasing penetration of renewable energy amid pressure to decrease coal-fired electricity production. “We believe that now is the appropriate time to consider the role that energy storage may play in the state’s future power system. Energy storage can help ensure reliable service, decrease costs to rate payers, and reduce the environmental impacts of electricity production,” the report said.

A team of experts from North Carolina State and North Carolina Central University was given the task by the legislature of assessing the potential for energy storage in the state under a bill signed in 2017. The study team looked at a wide range of potential benefits and challenges to energy storage in a state where the technology is just getting off the ground.

The group was dubbed the NC Policy Collaboratory and looked at battery, stored hydropower, and ice thermal storage. Because of the ability needed to store electricity for literally a rainy day, the group focused on three issues: identifying regulatory steps needed to allow energy storage expansion to proceed, including assisting local governments with decisions on zoning and other land-use permitting; determining what policies are necessary to make energy storage cost effective; and recommending steps that will increase the pace of energy storage deployment.

In the quest for conserving energy, researchers are leaving no stone unturned. As far as recent efforts go, the most highly-publicized development has been the Tesla-created giant battery — the Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR) in South Australia — which recently reported savings of $40 million in its first year. However, the Neoen-owned HPR is still just a giant lithium-ion battery, and lithium is not in unlimited supply.

Fortunately, researchers at MIT have come up with a concept for what is being referred to as the “sun in a box.” Officially given the far less catchy name, of the Thermal Energy Grid Storage-Multi-Junction Photovoltaics (TEGS-MPV), the concept involves harvesting energy from heated silicon.

Sun in a Box

The Sun in a Box would consist of two storage tanks, one with comparatively cool silicon, kept at 1,920° Celsius (3,500° Fahrenheit), and the other with molten silicon kept at 2,370° Celsius (4,300° Fahrenheit). The silicon is kept at those temperatures using excess renewable energy from solar panels or wind farms.

When more energy is needed, the white-hot molten silicon is pumped through special tubes, causing them to emit light. The light is then picked up by multijunction photovoltaics — a type of solar cells — and converted into energy. As light is emitted, the silicon is cooled and ready to be passed back into the cooler storage tank, where it waits until more energy is needed and it is heated again to restart the process.

The Storage Units

Of course, the 33-foot wide tanks need to be incredibly insulated to store silicon at such high temperatures. As such, they are made of graphite, some of which reacts with the silicon to form silicon carbide, creating a thin protective layer ion the inside of the tank that keeps it lukewarm to the touch outside.

According to a statement issued by MIT, the researchers believe that each unit could be able to power a community of 100,000 homes solely on renewable energy. Asegun Henry of the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering explains that the sun in a box units are “geographically unlimited” and offer a more affordable version of renewable energy than hydroelectric which is currently the most inexpensive form of clean energy.

In discussing the potential for the TEGS-MPV, Henry posits, “We’re developing a new technology that, if successful, would solve this most important and critical problem in energy and climate change, namely, the storage problem.”

The solar power pipeline is already popping, now the batteries needed to get us to 80% with wind+solar are starting to get down to the mad and exponential growth we’re told to expect.

Per the US Energy Storage Monitor, from Wood Mackenzie Renewables & Power along with the Energy Storage Association (ESA), total energy storage deployed expanded by 60% in terms of energy and 300% on a power basis in the third quarter of 2018 versus the prior year. However, given a strong Q2 both volumes as measured by energy and power were flat or declining in Q3 ’18 versus the previous quarter.

In total, 61.3 MW / 136.3 MWh of energy storage was installed during Q3 2018. California continued to achor the market, while Hawaii and New York had strong quarters. Behind the meter installations accounted for around 57-60% of the volume on a power basis deployed.

Going out mostly until 2023, the report noted that the front of the meter pipeline expanded to approximately 33 GW of power. This pipeline more than doubled from just over 15 GW reported at the end of the second quarter.

This pipeline does not include behind the meter deployments, and as noted in this report these represented approximately 60% of the volume this quarter. Future growth is expected to heavily expand on the utility scale.

For instance, PG&E recently approved four energy storage projects totalling 567 MW / 2.64 GWh. These include a 300 MW / 1200 MWh system by Vistra Energy, and a 182.5 MW / 1,095 MWh six hour system by Tesla, which are the largest battery projects seen by pv magazine USA staff in the United States to date.

The report estimates that $474 million worth of energy storage will be installed in 2018, and that by 2023, it will break $4.5 billion, representing 10X revenue growth over five years.

The report also suggested that the start of Massachusetts’ SMART program represents a “massive near term opportunity for solar-plus-storage”. The report forecasts that the program will lead toward 80 MW of energy storage installed in total, with Massachusetts’ installed storage expected to grow from 5.4 MW in 2018 to 54 MW in 2019.

A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has proposed a new energy storage concept, which they claim is far cheaper than current energy storage technologies. The MIT team points to the scalability of its so-called ‘sun in a box’ concept, saying that a single large system could power a small city of 100,000 households around the clock.

The new MIT storage concept taps renewable energy to produce heat, which is then stored as white-hot molten silicon. The U.S. researchers have dubbed the technology Thermal Energy Grid Storage – Multi-Junction Photovoltaics.

The technology uses two large 10-meter wide graphite tanks, which are heavily insulated and filled with liquid silicon. One tank stores silicon at a temperature of 1926°C. The “cold” tank is connected via a bank of tubes and heating elements to a “hot” tank in which liquid silicon at a temperature of 2370°C is stored.

Excess energy from an adjacent PV system, for example, is used to generate heat, via Joule heating – a process by which an electric current passes through a heating element – to bring up the temperature of the “cold” silicon and move it to the hot tank.

When electricity is needed, the molten white-glowing liquid silicon is pumped through an array of tubes that emit light. The tubes are routed past high-efficiency solar cells, called multi-junction photovoltaics, with the light from the molten silicon then being turned back into electricity. Through that process the silicon cools down and flows back into the “cold” tank, to be used again.

“One of the affectionate names people have started calling our concept is ‘sun in a box,’ which was coined by my colleague Shannon Yee at Georgia Tech,” Asegun Henry, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering says. “It’s basically an extremely intense light source that’s all contained in a box that traps the heat.”

In the conceptual stages of the technology’s development, which material to make the storage tanks out of was a concern. Potentially using graphite was thought to be a risk due to the possibility that graphite and silicon could react at these high temperatures.

When the team built a miniature tank for testing purposes, they found that while the silicon did react with the graphite to form silicon carbide, the new material stuck to the tank’s inner walls, to create a protective layer. After that thin layer was formed no further reaction occurred, proving that the use of graphite tanks is viable.

A team of experts from NC State University and N.C. Central University has released a report detailing energy storage options that the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) can use to inform energy policy. The report has short- and long-term implications for both power grid and renewable energy development in North Carolina.

The report stems from language in House Bill 589, which was signed into law in July 2017. The legislation called for a study to “address how energy storage technologies may or may not provide value to North Carolina consumers based on factors that may include capital investment, value to the electric grid, net utility savings, net job creation, impact on consumer rates and service quality, or any other factors related to deploying one or more of these technologies. The study shall also address the feasibility of energy storage in North Carolina, including services energy storage can provide that are not being performed currently, the economic potential or impact of energy storage deployment in North Carolina, and the identification of existing policies and recommended policy changes that may be considered to address a statewide coordinated energy storage policy.”

The NCGA assigned the study to the NC Policy Collaboratory, which was previously established by the state legislature to utilize and disseminate the environmental research expertise of the University of North Carolina system for practical use by state and local government. The Collaboratory delegated the report to a team of more than a dozen experts, primarily based at NC State, and the final version was submitted to the NCGA on Dec. 3.

The expert panel drew on a wide range of research, and solicited stakeholder input, to assess the benefits and costs associated with a range of energy storage technologies – from lithium-ion batteries to pumped hydro.

“The stakeholder input process was important to capture the views of the more than 200 interested organizations and companies that participated at some level in our research discussions and had a desire to understand how storage could impact North Carolina’s energy future,” says Steve Kalland, executive director of the NC Clean Energy Technology Center at NC State.

In terms of costs, the panel evaluated each of the available technologies based on current data. However, given the rapid – and ongoing – decline in lithium-ion battery costs, the team also included projected costs for that technology in 2030.