The China Energy Storage Market is set to grow from its current market value of more than $700 million to over $6 billion by 2024; as reported in the latest study by Global Market Insights, Inc.

China energy storage market size is set to witness robust growth on account of rapidly growing ancillary service industry coupled with ongoing investments toward smart-grid infrastructure development. Furthermore, rising deployment of energy storage devices aimed toward enhancing the grid stability as a countermeasure to the effects of extensive penetration of intermittent power from renewables will augment the industry size.

Declining technology costs in conjunction with development of new technologies and advancement of existing systems will positively influence China energy storage market size. Lithium ion batteries has witnessed a drop of over 50% in per unit cost in last few years and will continue to follow the trend. Reformative business scenario along with improving economies of scale across battery manufacturing industry will further stimulate the industry size.

Shifting focus toward limiting carbon emission to curb the consequence of global warming coupled with rising implementation of supportive legislative endeavors will boost China energy storage market growth. Nonetheless, ongoing reduction in government subsidy on renewables may impact the industry, but the subsidy benefits losses may be compensated by reducing technology prices.

China flow vanadium energy storage market is projected to exceed USD 3 billion by 2024. Ability to offer virtually unlimited storage capacity, long scale duration, rapid response time, and negligible self-discharge are some of the key features which make the technology suitable for large scale renewable integration applications over its available alternatives. Furthermore, vast reserves of vanadium in the country may imply lower prices, minimal currency risks and ease of availability for the manufacturers, which will propel the industry growth.

Eversource Energy is working out a lease agreement with Provincetown, Mass. to site a 25-megawatt energy storage facility at the town’s transfer station. The energy will be used to “increase reliability and supplement the electric infrastructure for Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard,” according to the Cape Cod Times.

The newspaper reports that the 7,600-square-foot facility would help build more redundancy in the Outer Cape’s electric system, where there currently is little room for expansion. In other areas where there are back-up systems, Eversource can re-route power when lines are down. But in places like Provincetown, which is prone to blackouts during bad storms, that isn’t possible because of its location at the tip of a peninsula.

According to Eversource, the new battery storage system could help reduce power outages from Wellfleet to Provincetown by 50%.

Eversource is also planning a 5-megawatt energy storage project to help Martha’s Vineyard handle high peak loads in the summer.

The two Eversource projects approved by the state will be its first storage facilities. The company has been authorized to recover $55 million to pay for them through rates in the future

Energy Initiatives on the Massachusetts Islands

In September, the Otis Microgrid project, the first of such a broad scope for a Department of Defense installation, announced it will provide electrical capabilities almost exclusively based on renewable energy while ensuring a high-level of grid security. The energy security and resiliency provided by the microgrid is critical to the 24/7 mission of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, a military intelligence unit located at Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod.

A transformation in the energy sector has begun. The momentum toward low-carbon energy generation — driven by our need for secure, affordable and sustainable energy supply — will see the days of fossil fuel domination fade into obscurity. As natural gas and renewables continue to dominate new capacity additions, one of the components that has kept renewables from becoming the dominant technology to date has been intermittency. The intermittency of solar and wind has always been a challenge for grids, especially ones with high renewable penetration levels. At Sonnedix, where we build, acquire and operate solar power plants, we are aware of this challenge. But this is changing, and energy storage has a major role to play.

Energy storage has many forms and technologies such as pumped hydroelectric (gravitational), batteries (electrochemical), flywheels (kinetic), compressed air (mechanical) and thermal. The dominant form of energy storage today is pumped hydroelectric storage, with around 96% of global installed energy storage capacity, but this has an inherent weakness — it needs to be located near a water source. Given this constraint, the market demand for other technologies is ever increasing, with batteries most likely to be the next major technology.

The traditional challenge facing energy storage has been cost. The expansion of the electric vehicle and consumer electronics sectors has driven down lithium-ion battery prices by as much as 20% year on year, with a corresponding increase in the number of battery deployments. The U.S. alone saw a 46% uplift in energy storage deployment from 2016 to 2017. As costs continue to decrease and regulatory policy barriers diminish, I think we can expect to see a wave of energy storage applications being deployed in the near future.

Challenges aside, energy storage is discussed so frequently in the context of renewable energy due to the synergy the two technologies have. While renewable energy (specifically wind and solar) are non-dispatchable intermittent sources, their penetration levels on public grids will be curtailed. Energy storage allows intermittent renewable energy to compete on a level playing field with traditional power resources and allows renewables to be a major component of utilities’ future integration plans. There are estimates that as much as 45% of all new capacity additions will be renewables between 2016 and 2040. Looking to 2050, as much as 65% of the global generation will be via renewables, with solar and wind accounting for 48% of the global mix.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric has won a contract from global engineering company Chiyoda Corporation for its BLEnDer RE energy storage system.

The energy storage system, along with power conditioners (PCS), will be installed at Kita-Toyotomi substation in Hokkaido, Japan.

The substation is owned by North Hokkaido Wind Energy Transmission company.

Claimed to be the largest in the world, the energy storage system will have a maximum output of nearly 240MW and 720MWh storage capacity. It is expected to become operational by March 2023.

In October this year, Chiyoda was awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for the battery energy storage system project.

The company is responsible for the design, engineering, and construction for the grid reinforcement pilot project for wind turbines.

The project is led by North Hokkaido and backed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

North Hokkaido has plans to introduce transmission facilities and high-capacity energy storage systems for the project.

This will connect groups of large-scale wind turbines totalling more than 500MW to the grid in northern Hokkaido.

The booming renewables industry in Texas should, in theory, create a role for energy storage plants to manage its variability.

Years into the Lone Star State’s wind and solar deployment, though, little grid storage has arrived, and future prospects look bleak.

Early projects have delivered some 89 megawatts of storage into ERCOT’s grid, said Cheryl Mele, chief operating officer of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator. Another 1,800 megawatts have entered the interconnection queue, which by no means guarantees they will ever be built.

Lack of a winning business model makes it unlikely mass deployments will begin anytime soon. That could leave significant value on the table for Texas ratepayers.

“When you look at the amount of renewables we do have, certainly storage would have some value in being able to respond quickly,” said Mele, speaking at Wood Mackenzie’s Power & Renewables Summit in Austin Wednesday.

“If we start to see a gap between our forecasted load and our forecasted intermittent renewables, the batteries can respond very quickly,” Mele added. “They can cover a bit of that gap while you’re waiting for other resources to ramp up.”

Here are the major obstacles facing the young energy storage market in Texas, with some provisional solutions to get this technology into play.

Utilities can’t own it

Texas power market deregulation separated competitive generation from regulated wires utilities.

That implicates storage because it qualifies as generation in this market; that means it has to compete with gas generators, and wires utilities are not allowed to own it, lest their ownership undermine the bedrock of competitive markets.

That said, batteries don’t actually generate; they store electricity generated elsewhere and release it at useful times. The discharge of power resembles generation, but batteries can readily function as transmission or distribution assets.

November 19 (Renewables Now) – Gresham House Energy Storage Fund plc (LON:GRID), launched recently by UK asset management firm Gresham House Plc (LON:GHE), announced on Friday that it has wrapped up the acquisition of its 70-MW seed portfolio.

The fund has paid a total of GBP 57.22 million (USD 73.6m/EUR 64.4m) for five operational energy storage systems, namely Staunch in Staffordshire, Lockleaze in Bristol, Littlebrook in Kent, Rufford in Nottinghamshire and Roundponds in Wiltshire. The particular assets were developed by Gresham House and Noriker Power Ltd.

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund has closed the transaction on November 13, using proceeds from its GBP-100-million initial public offering (IPO), conducted earlier this month. It noted that these assets support its targets for a dividend and total return.

The fund’s goal is to invest in an exclusive pipeline of utility-scale energy storage systems in Great Britain.

(GBP 1 = USD 1.29/EUR 1.13)

Stem Inc, is the market leader in behind-the-meter energy storage, delivering turnkey solutions to customers as a means of bringing meaningful reductions in demand charges to customers.

CleanTechnica connected with Stem’s SVP of global sales and marketing, Alan Russo, at Solar Power International this year to get the inside scoop on what makes Stem tick today and how that’s changing now that it is folding solar into its catalog of turnkey solutions.

Stem’s bread and butter is bringing its technical expertise to customers being hit with large demand charges, time of use rates, high electric bills, or just looking to save some money month to month on their utility bills. They work with customers to custom design a solution that Stem then brings to the customer to ultimately deliver on the value proposition identified.

Energy storage by itself isn’t that exciting. In fact, just bolting batteries onto an electrical system might not have any noticeable effect. The transformative aspect of any stationary energy storage installation is the intelligence that controls the energy storage system and uses the storage capacity to optimize the overall profile of energy consumption to meet the needs of the consumer.

The prospect of rolling its mastery of C&I energy storage solutions together with solar brought Stem to Solar Power International this year to broaden its reach into the solar industry. The solar industry is well aware of the symbiotic nature of solar and storage.

“They’ve largely determined that to preserve the value of solar, it’s very desirable to attach storage,” Alan said. “The customer saves more money because now they’re able to get more utilization from those free electrons that they produce during the day when it’s no longer valuable to produce cheap electricity during the day and everyone wins as a result.”

Stem Inc, which offers commercial and industrial (C&I) customers battery storage systems to lower their energy costs, has partnered with Canadian state-owned utility Ontario Power Generation to offer Ontario businesses ‘no-money-down’ energy storage solutions.

US-headquartered Stem, which describes itself as an ‘Artificial Intelligence for energy storage company’, has a track record in its home country, particularly in California, of delivering battery and software solutions to C&I customers that reduce the host business’ need to draw energy from the grid at peak times.

The batteries can also be used to provide other services that could accrue revenues or make savings, such as ancillary grid services, or integrating onsite solar self-consumption. Provider and customer effectively ‘share’ the net savings on energy bills that Stem guarantees, enabling the company to offer its solutions on a ‘no-money-down’, long-term contract basis. Essentially, Stem and rivals including Green Charge (now ENGIE Storage) and Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) have made their name through creating a market for ‘energy storage as a service’.

As well as making limited expansion moves into other territories and markets, including a virtual power plant (VPP) project in Japan and a recent launch for a solar-plus-storage offering in Arizona, the company has been active in Ontario for some time. The company has a number of projects executed or in the pipeline in the province and in late July announced it had netted CA$200 million (US$151 million) in project finance from institutional investor group Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

The Canadian province has been identified as a hot market in C&I energy storage, not least because of the Global Adjustment Charge (GAC) policy mechanism, which uses peak electricity pricing tariffs to pay for grid upkeep and clean energy policies, with commercial customers levied the highest rates. Recent developments include a 42MWh deal between developer NRStor – another big recipient of project finance from institutional investors – and solutions provider IHI Inc and a single 48MW / 144MWh energy storage system provided by Fluence to PUC Distribution, a designated electricity distribution provider in the Ontario city of Sault Ste. Marie. The largest single C&I project already up and running in the province is a 10MW / 20MWh battery system installed by Convergent Energy + Power and made by IHI Inc.