Wow, talk about the Deep State in action. President* Trump promised to bring back all the coal jobs, but meanwhile the Department of Energy has been busily laying plans for next generation, long duration energy storage systems. That translates into more opportunities for bringing wind and solar power into the nation’s electricity grid, and that pretty much slams the door on the idea of reviving the nation’s coal power sector.

US coal power plants were closing at a rapid clip before Trump came into office, and coal power has kept on bleeding out under his watch. The new R&D program practically guarantees that the hurt will continue for coal miners, their families and their communities long after Trump leaves office.

More And Longer (And Cheaper) Energy Storage

CleanTechnica has been following along with the Energy Department’s work on long duration battery systems since last May, when the agency announced it would provide $30 million in funding for R&D.

The agency envisions utility scale storage systems that can deliver power to 50,000 homes over a long period of time — and not just for a few hours. They want to see systems in the range of 10 to 100 hours, preferably 100.

As if that’s not enough, low cost is also a priority. In other words, the Energy Department wants you to have your energy storage cake and eat it, too.

That pretty much cuts out today’s go-to technologies for energy storage. Lithium-ion batteries would be too expensive to scale up. Pumped hydro fits the bill for duration and capacity, but suitable sites are few and far between.

So, what’s left?

The Long Duration Energy Storage Cake

For the record, the $30 million pot comes through a program called DAYS for Duration Addition to electricitY Storage (they kind of stretched the acronym but whatever). DAYS is under the umbrella of ARPA- E, the Energy Department’s office for high risk, high reward projects.

In the latest DAYS development, last week ARPA-E sealed the deal on an award to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of almost $2.8 million to lead an R&D team focusing on thermal energy storage.

The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) on Monday (Dec. 3) filed its official proposal with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that some experts say will determine the future of the emerging battery storage marketplace in the U.S.

MISO, a nonprofit grid operator based in Carmel, Ind., said it filed tariff changes that advance the future deeper integration of energy storage across its 15-state footprint. MISO officials said the proposal filed with FERC was crafted in consultation with its stakeholders and reflects feedback from multiple discussions, workshops and rounds of written comments.

“We can only achieve important milestones like this through significant stakeholder involvement and extensive effort from the multiple parties involved,” said MISO Executive Vice President Richard Doying. “We look forward to the construction and implementation phases in 2019 and continued collaboration as we enhance our market design to integrate future technologies.”

Under the landmark FERC Order 841 that was approved by agency commissioners in early February, regional transmission operators and independent system operators across the U.S. are required to come up with market rules for energy storage to participate in the wholesale energy, capacity and ancillary services markets that recognize the physical and operational characteristics of the resource.

According to MISO officials, battery and other storage resources have emerged as the nation’s electric fleet has undergone significant transformation, driven by energy policy, economic realities and consumer changes. Monday’s action addresses compliance needs for the FERC, which becomes effective Dec. 3, 2019. MISO’s proposal is technology neutral and includes all technologies and/or storage mediums, officials said, including but not limited to batteries, flywheels, compressed air and pumped-hydro.

“Allowing Electric Storage Resources to participate fully in MISO’s markets will enhance competition, promote greater market efficiency and help support the resilience of the bulk power system,” said Doying.

Neoen’s 6MW frequency balancing unit

Negotiations in New Hampshire produced a pivotal test case for how home energy devices can reduce overall grid costs.

Liberty Utilities proposed a groundbreaking home battery pilot last year, in which the company would own 1,000 Tesla Powerwalls in customer homes. The customers would get backup power and a time-based retail rate; the utility would aggregate the batteries to reduce its costs for monthly and annual system peaks and to offset wires upgrades.

That concept triggered a debate among New Hampshire stakeholders about the appropriate limits of utility ownership in a competitive marketplace. Companies like Sunrun wanted industry to have a chance to participate and get time-of-use rates for their customers. And questions remained about the utility’s ability to forecast peaks and respond to them.

A settlement has emerged from those negotiations, signed November 15. Regulators held a hearing on it Thursday and will finalize their decision in the coming weeks.

The consensus document scales down Liberty’s proposal and institutes granular checkpoints it must clear to scale up. It also creates a “bring your own device” program that other companies can compete for.

Sunrun didn’t sign on, but declined to oppose the outcome. It all turned out amicably, without the bloodletting that ensued from the net-metering battles of yore.

“It shows where we’re at in 2018: A small state [and] small utility can submit a proposal for residential batteries that really moves the entire industry forward,” said Chris Rauscher, Sunrun’s public policy director for the Northeast. “We’re no longer in a cost conversation, we’re in a value conversation, and that’s exactly where we should be.”

Assuming nothing derails regulatory approval, New Hampshire could become the proving ground for several of the hottest topics in distributed energy policy.

Austin Energy is looking holistically at how storage can serve customers and the grid across the city of Austin, Texas.

The Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar Photovoltaics (SHINES) program is harnessing utility-scale storage, distributed storage, smart inverters and data to help the local grid integrate more solar power.

How is it going since it launched earlier in the year?

We sit down with Jackie Sargent, the general manager of Austin Energy, ahead of her participation in Energy Storage Summit (San Francisco, December 11-12) to discuss early lessons from the first phase of the program.

“The value of experiencing these things firsthand cannot be overstated,” explained Sargent.

Earlier this year, the project was recognized by GTM as one of the winners of the 2018 Grid Edge Innovation Awards.

GTM: Can you reflect on learnings so far from the SHINES program?

Jackie Sargent: This project presents an opportunity to study battery storage at three levels along the utility value chain: grid-scale, commercial-scale and residential-scale. Though Austin SHINES is still in the early stages, we’ve already learned a lot about the interconnection process of putting battery storage on the distribution system. From protection system coordination for inverter-based resources to selecting the right interconnection transformer windings, and from custom battery container design to environmental controls, the value of experiencing these things firsthand cannot be overstated.

Regarding behind-the-meter (BTM) energy storage, it’s really about understanding customer value propositions. We have to ask ourselves what are the reasons a customer would want to install storage on their own and how will the proliferation of two-way resources at the grid edge impact distribution feeders. Which issues are hyper-local and which have broader grid implications? We’re eager to answer these questions as we move into future phases of the project.

This year, yet another billionaire took a big bet on energy storage – twice. First, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s company NantEnergy bought zinc-air battery manufacturer Fluidic and earlier this month, he added in Sharp’s SmartStorage division in the US.

Soon-Shiong is treading a well-worn path. Wang Chuanfu, the head of Chinese firm BYD, has seen his company become a major electric vehicle and stationary energy storage manufacturer. Elon Musk, of course, segued Tesla into stationary storage as well. And one of the solar industry’s self-made billionaires, Jifan Gao, has also moved into energy storage.

Billion-dollar companies like Aggrekko, Wartsilla and Total have all completed energy storage acquisitions in recent times.

The opportunity could hardly carry a stronger endorsement. As more territories take a leaf out of California’s book and issue a mandate for energy storage installation, the market will be transformed. California is clearly in the forefront of Soon-Shiong’s mind.

“The acquisition of Sharp’s energy systems business and the SmartStorage brand immediately creates a foothold for NantEnergy in the US, particularly in the important California market,” he said at the time of the deal.

WoodMac this week forecast that energy storage installations could hit 780GW by 2040. Back at the end of last year, one estimate of that figure was as low as 3.8GW. But Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s 2030 predictions are equally spectacular.

Wind, solar, even the ethanol industry, have all created at least one billionaire. The common denominator is scale.

EDF Energy, one of the UK’s ‘Big Six’ major energy suppliers, is seeking to build a portfolio of domestic batteries to take into energy services markets by offering discounted energy storage units to consumers via a new partnership with manufacturer Powervault.

The pair are offering existing solar PV owners as much as £2,000 (US$2,550) off the cost of a home battery system if they sign up to EDF Energy grid services. If taken up, this will allow the energy stored in a Powervault 3 battery to form part of an aggregated network that can be used to help balance the grid.

This pool of battery capacity will be used to support the grid at times of peak energy demand and to distribute excess energy to the batteries to store when there is more energy being generated than required.

Discounts of £1,560 and £2,060 will be available on Powervault’s 4.1kWh and 8.2kWh batteries respectively until 31 March 2019, although this date is subject to change in response to demand or changes in the market

Consumers will need to sign up to a 10-year contract with EDF Energy as part of this offer, however the supplier has stressed that the grid services contract is completely separate to an energy supply contract

“The customer does not have to buy their energy, or receive the feed in tariff payments from EDF Energy,” it told Current±.

On top of the savings available on these upfront costs, Powervault says customers who’ve installed a Powervault 3 to store solar energy can expect to save up to 50% on their energy bills.

Jean-Benoit Ritz, director of innovation and Blue Lab at EDF Energy, said: “As the UK transitions to a low carbon future, we are seeing fantastic opportunities for consumers to be involved in this journey.

CARMEL, Ind. — Storage is glaringly absent from MISO’s potential plans to manage a possible 40% renewable penetration on the grid, stakeholders told the RTO this week.

During a Nov. 28 workshop to discuss its ongoing findings on the impact of increased renewable integration, MISO suggested using computer-optimized transmission buildout and more pronounced ramping from remaining conventional generation to respond to a 40% renewable resource mix.

MISO last month said it would need to take significant steps to reinforce its grid to handle a 40% penetration comprising 75% wind and 25% solar. The RTO said it found a possible “inflection point” at 40% and that it would be difficult to operate within system limits at that point. (See Study: MISO Grid Needs Work at 40% Renewables.) Its multiyear study seeks to determine what the grid needs to maintain the planning reserve margin, operate within the physical limits of the system and support voltage and frequency.

MISO’s renewable penetration currently stands at about 10%. Findings issued last month indicate the RTO could reliably absorb a 20% renewable penetration without damaging frequency response. (See MISO: 20% Renewable Limit for Adequate Frequency Response.)

But at 40% renewables, MISO has found that renewable curtailment becomes more pronounced during shoulder months, though wind curtailment would occur in every hour during an average day, except in summer. It would also confront significant stability issues.

During the Nov. 28 workshop, MISO policy studies engineer Maire Boese said the RTO will likely need to rely on transmission solutions to keep the majority of the renewable energy deliverable to load at the 40% level.

“We want to make sure energy reaches load instead of seeing it be curtailed or not dispatched,” Boese said.

Transmission planning can also become more influenced by computing power and mathematic modeling, MISO concluded.

Yifan Li, of MISO’s policy studies group, said that even with the modeling process, “engineering judgment and human experience” are still the driving factors behind selecting transmission project candidates, although that is changing.

“We’re getting to a point where we can seek some help from computers … to find transmission solutions,” Li said.

Such an automated process led MISO to identify about 80 potential new transmission candidates, down from a pool of about 11,300, he said. The additional transmission would cut down on curtailments and make renewables more deliverable to load, MISO said last month.

A handful of billionaires have shaped and guided the cleantech industry’s development: Elon Musk through his chaotic but visionary leadership; Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos with their moonshot investments.

Now there’s a new billionaire in town.

In just a few months, surgeon and medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong announced his acquisitions of two energy storage companies: Fluidic, the exotic zinc-air battery company with 3,000 systems deployed in remote areas, and Sharp’s commercial storage development unit, dubbed SmartStorage. They are now reconstituted as NantEnergy.

An investor with billions of dollars at hand could look elsewhere for surefire profits. The storage industry remains small, and the long-duration sector has been marked by many failures and few outright successes.

“What I saw, frankly, was the impact this would make,” Soon-Shiong told GTM earlier this month. “It wasn’t a true business analysis, [like] ‘What’s the return?’ If it was successful, the return organically would be fantastic. If it weren’t successful, it’s binary, as most of these companies have shown.”

Now he will set about making his mark on the cleantech industry, which has long grappled with the “valley of death” that cleaves promising hardware from fully capitalized commercial deployment. Great personal wealth may succeed where venture capital largely has not.

Science-based business

Soon-Shiong intends to participate in NantEnergy beyond mere financial backing.

“I don’t see myself as a financier; I see myself as a partner in the scientific challenge to make a difference,” he explained.

In particular, Soon-Shiong wants to contribute to Fluidic’s battery technology based on his long and fruitful relationship with zinc. That’s not something one typically hears from investors on Wall Street or Sand Hill Road.