Over the last decade, the renewable energy industry has boomed due to the proliferation of new technology that is reducing the cost of construction and long-term operability. However, one critical problem still remains: storing renewable energy during lulls in wind speed or sun exposure is often prohibitively expensive. In response to this issue, Energy Vault, a subsidiary of California’s IdeaLab, has recently announced a straightforward mechanism for the conservation of renewable sources using kinetic forces.

The mechanism proposed by Energy Vault is a nearly 400-foot tall, six-armed steel crane. Using proprietary software, the towering structure orchestrates the placement of 35-ton blocks of concrete in response to drop-offs in demand and fluctuations in environmental conditions.

How does it work? As power demand decreases, the cranes surround themselves with concentric rings of the concrete bricks lifted by the leftover power from surrounding wind and solar farms. Once demand increases, the cranes begin lowering the bricks, which powers turbines that transform the kinetic energy into electricity that gets pumped back into the grid.

Energy Vault’s team looked toward preexisting renewable energy sources that rely on gravitational forces. According to Energy Vault, the technology was influenced by energy retention strategies of hydroelectric power dams that pump water into a series of cisterns on higher ground that ultimately flow downwards into energy turbines once demand rises.

Unlike conventional resources used for the retention of renewable energy, such as Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack lithium-ion stationary batteries, the system developed by Energy Vault does not rely on chemical storage solutions or high-cost materials. Recycled debris from preexisting construction sites can be used for the fabrication of the bricks, which are viable for up to four decades without a decrease in storage capacity.

Currently, Energy Vault is partnering with India’s Tata Power Company Limited to construct an initial 35 MWh system with an expected date of completion in 2019.

Venture capital funding for energy storage, efficiency and smart grid projects rose for the first three quarters of this year, even if overall corporate funding fell by 11 percent, according to Mercom Capital Group’s nine-month market report.

The overall funding—which includes venture capital, public market and debt financing—raised $3.3 billion for battery, smart grid and efficiency deals for the period January through September. This is an 11 percent drop from the $3.7 billion raised in the same period of 2017.

Global venture capital alone, however, topped $1.3 billion. This is close to $100 million higher than for the first nine months last year.

Some publicly announced storage-sector mergers became known just after the fourth quarter began. NantEnergy is buying the energy storage and management solutions business of Sharp Electronics Corp.

In October, energy storage startup Volta announced it was investing in battery developer Solid Power. Duke Energy also revealed plans to invest about $500 million in energy storage projects in the Carolinas.

Energy Storage will be the subject both of sessions upstairs and the Knowledge Hubs on the exhibit floor at POWER-GEN International happening December 4-6 in Orlando. Integrating large-scale battery technology into the electric grid is the subject of at least 12 sessions at POWER-GEN.

Large-scale energy storage used to be part of the future of energy. But it’s here now, and it’s going to become increasingly important in the years to come.

Clean energy researchers at Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) find that more than $1 trillion will be invested in the sector between now and 2040. The group’s latest Long-Term Energy Storage Outlook says that the “tumbling costs of utility-scale lithium-ion battery storage systems will transform the economic case for batteries in both the vehicle and the electricity sector”, predicting that prices will fall by 52% between 2018 and 2030, adding to the steep declines already experienced this decade.

This will lead to $1.2 trillion of investment flowing to the sector in the next 22 years, creating a cumulative capacity of 942GW, BNEF said. In the near term, the market will be dominated by South Korea and the US, but China will be the driving force from the 2020s onward.

Energy storage is key to helping governments decarbonize their economies by using more renewable energy because the dominant sources, wind and solar, are intermittent and do not provide constant power. “ Cheap batteries mean that wind and solar will increasingly be able to run when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining ,” the report says.

Yayoi Sekine, energy storage analyst for BNEF and co-author of the report, said: “We have become much more bullish about storage deployments since our last forecast a year ago. This is partly due to faster-than-expected falls in storage system costs, and partly to a greater focus on two emerging applications for the technology – electric vehicle charging, and energy access in remote regions.”

Logan Goldie-Scot, head of energy storage at BNEF, added: “We see energy storage growing to a point where it is equivalent to 7% of the total installed power capacity globally in 2040. The majority of storage capacity will be utility-scale until the mid-2030s, when behind the meter applications overtake.”

The energy storage industry is all about incremental improvements, so it’s rare to see a product come to market that does something radically different.

That happened last week when the stealthy Swiss/Southern Californian startup Energy Vault went public with an unusually creative grid storage concept. It devised a six-armed crane that stacks concrete blocks with cheap and abundant grid power, and drops them down to retrieve electricity when needed.

The company pitches this as a durable, trustworthy solution for the thorny problem of storing electricity for long periods of time.

The lithium-ion batteries that account for almost all of new grid storage deployments make economic sense for 4-hour duration, even 6-hour, but they get too expensive for super-long durations. Meanwhile, longer-term storage is getting more valuable as cheap but intermittent wind and solar power continue their rise on the grid.

That mismatch has inspired a cohort of lithium-ion challengers taking aim at the dominant technology’s safety concerns, degradation and duration limitations. So far, this wing of the industry has numerous bankruptcies to show for its labor, with a few survivors that could prove durable.

Energy Vault dispensed with the lengthy lab research required to commercialize new battery tech and drew inspiration instead from the granddaddy of grid storage, pumped hydro.

The shifting of water between higher and lower reservoirs still delivers the vast majority of global grid storage capacity. The problem, at least in the U.S., is that the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers have already dammed all the most auspicious sites, and modern regulations to prevent environmental devastation make new siting difficult, if not impossible.

Gravity has many uses, though. Energy Vault elevates giant bricks that eventually come down, releasing potential energy to the grid.

The concept is simple enough, although it depends on intellectual property in materials science, physics and software. The outcome, if it works as described, would be significant.

The system operates at about 90 percent efficiency, and delivers long-duration storage at half the prevailing price on the market today, said CEO and co-founder Robert Piconi.

New York is crafting one of the most ambitious energy storage targets in the nation, but major barriers could make it difficult to meet the target, according to a recent filing with state regulators by storage developer GI Energy.

The affiliate of Shell New Energies US argues that energy storage developers face “massive uncertainty” regarding undefined delivery service rates for energy storage placed in front of the meter. The company made the argument within a docket that the Public Service Commission opened seeking comments on the state’s energy storage roadmap (Case 18-E-0130).

Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Democratic governor, has called for a 1,500 MW energy storage target, but state agencies in June released an energy storage roadmap that cites the potential for as much as 3,000 MW.

The commission, along with other state agencies, is in the process of drawing up the target and the rules that will govern energy storage.

The rates that would apply to those projects, however, remain “to be determined” for most New York utilities, the GI Energy filing states, leading to ambiguity and “costly, protracted debate and negotiation on a case-by-case, territory-by-territory basis, inflating project delivery times, legal fees and related soft costs.”

Uneven playing field

Because third parties are unable to price their projects properly, they face an uneven playing field, GI Energy argues.

And, “perhaps most confounding of all,” GI Energy writes, utilities can deem their own energy storage projects as grid assets subject to no delivery bills while third party projects are treated as new retail accounts that are billed for delivery” — as if they were any other commercial behind the meter service.

As a result, what could be the single biggest operating expense for energy storage developers remains undefined in New York, the filing states.

“Other developers are just becoming more and more aware of this,” said Pete Falcier, vice president of analytics and regulatory affairs at GI Energy.

MidAmerican Energy Company has announced plans to install a utility-scale battery energy storage system, enabling a utility to store electricity for later use. The battery project provides four megawatt-hours of storage capacity and can supply 1 MW of power for up to four hours. One megawatt of electricity is enough to power about 900 average Iowa homes.

Chicago-based Invenergy will install the lithium-iron phosphate battery system, housed in two truck-sized steel containers, at a MidAmerican Energy substation in Knoxville. The new system is expected to begin operating by the end of next month.

“This innovative project will help us learn how best to use an energy storage system, and how it can serve our customers in the future,” Mike Fehr, MidAmerican Energy vice president of resource development, said. “Energy storage has the potential to allow us to retain energy when customer demand is low and release it during peak usage times. That would give us new options to manage peak loads, enhance overall reliability and help keep electric costs low and affordable for our customers.”

Large-scale energy storage has the potential to provide several benefits, including:

• Flattening peaks and valleys of electric generation by enabling energy companies to generate and store electricity at times of low demand and release it when demand is high.
• Reducing the operating time of peaking generators, which generally run only when there is a high demand and are a relatively expensive form of generation.
• Enhancing renewable energy’s reliability by storing energy produced when wind speeds and sun exposure are high and using it later.
• Improving power quality and prolonging transformer life.

“Energy storage is still in the development stages and the economic feasibility on a larger scale is being assessed as well; however, prices are trending downward,” Fehr said. “MidAmerican Energy wants first-hand experience with the technology so we’re positioned t

Two reports released within days of one another have highlighted the increasing value of the energy storage market as a necessary tandem to a low-carbon society, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicting the market will grow to attract $1.2 trillion in investment and boast 942 gigawatts (GW) by 2040, while in the UK the current pipeline already sits at an impressive 6,874 megawatts (MW).

It is of little surprise that the energy storage market around the globe has expanded so quickly, given the explosive growth of intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Simply put, energy storage evens out what is otherwise intermittent electricity generation, meaning that solar can continue to provide electricity at night and wind can continue to provide electricity when the winds are still.

This is vitally apparent in the United Kingdom which, according to a report published by renewable energy trade body RenewableUK and the country’s Solar Trade Association, has all but exploded in size over the past seven years. Specifically, the report shows that planning applications in the UK have soared from 2 MW in 2012 to 6,874 MW in 2018.

The news of the UK’s 6.9 GW energy storage pipeline was part of an announcement which will see RenewableUK launch a new database of energy storage projects across the UK, with comprehensive information on nearly 400 UK projects. The database reveals that the average capacity of applications for new battery storage projects in the UK has increased from 10 MW in 2016 to 27 MW in 2018.

Currently, the UK boasts 3.3 GW of storage capacity and there is a further 5.4 GW that have already received planning consent — including 4.8 GW worth of battery storage.

“The energy sector is breaking new ground by making an unprecedented transition to a clean, flexible system which will power our country in the future,” said RenewableUK’s Executive Director Emma Pinchbeck. “Energy storage is already playing a key part in that, from small local projects to grid-scale schemes. We’re decentralising the way the power system works and, at our conference, we’ll hear how an increased share of wind, solar and storage on the grid could transform UK energy markets.”

A proposal by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), one of California’s three main investor-owned utilities (IOUs) to deploy large-scale energy storage to replace peaking natural gas plants has been approved by the state’s regulator.

Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued its approval of three capacity contracts and one power purchase agreement (PPA) for 567.5MW of energy storage capacity to be built across four large-scale battery storage systems. Significantly, each will store energy for four hours, making them viable capacity resources to replace gas plants.

PG&E submitted its proposal to the commission in late June and said the selected projects had been awarded from more than 100 options from around 30 submitted proposals with the solicitation launched to address local voltage issues as well as capacity deficiencies in specific sub-areas of the utility’s service area.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news at that time, the winning projects will be delivered by Dynegy-Vistra Energy, Hummingbird Energy Storage LLC, Micronoc Inc and Tesla.

The two largest are the Dynegy-Vistra project (300MW / 1,200MWh) and the Tesla (182.5MW / 730MWh). PG&E will own and operate the Tesla system, while capacity from the other three will be purchased by the utility through the aforementioned capacity agreements.

CPUC had authorised PG&E to conduct its solicitation of projects in February this year through Resolution E-4909. CPUC said last week that the approved projects meet the aims of that resolution, addressing local voltage and capacity concerns which could arise as a result of three gas plants, Metcalf Energy Center, Yuba City Energy Center and Feather River Energy Center.

Two community energy suppliers in California followed up an agreement to buy power from a large-scale solar-plus-storage farm with another, project developer EDF Renewables has announced.

Energy-Storage.news reported at the end of October that Monterey Bay Community Energy (MBCE) and Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SCVE) had agreed 15-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Recurrent Energy, the US developer owned by Canadian Solar.

Through that deal, MBCE and SCVE will buy 45% and 55% respectively of output from Slate, a 150MW solar farm in Kern County, paired with 45MW / 150MWh of lithium battery storage which enables four hours of dispatchable solar energy, helping mitigate late afternoon and evening peaks in demand as solar production tails off.

At around the same time, but not announced by EDF Renewables until a few days ago, the pair also brokered a PPA deal with EDF Renewables, the international clean energy development arm of European utility company EDF, again for a Kern County solar project.

Big Beau Solar + Storage Project is 40MW / 160MWh of battery energy storage and 40MW of solar generation capacity, expected to reach commercial operation by the end of 2021. SVCE and MBCE will once again buy 55% and 45% of the power each in the same split as for the Slate project PPA.

“The inclusion of storage provides the agencies with a 100% clean and partially dispatchable product, allowing them to mitigate the ‘duck curve’ risk and monetise price spikes,” EDF Renewables product development director for renewables and energy storage Valeri Barros said.

Already a prolific adopter of solar and other distributed energy resources and technologies including electric vehicles (EVs), California now has in place a target to meet 100% of retail electricity sales with renewable sources by 2045.