Clean tech giant Tesla has delivered its Powerpack battery storage system to a tidal power station off the coast of the Shetland Islands in the UK.

Tesla’s Powerpack can store excess energy generated at the tidal power station, which is operated by Scottish firm Nova Innovation, to be used when the turbines stop producing electricity.

Nova Innovation CEO Simon Forrest said: “By storing the clean energy generated by the natural ebb and flow of the tide, we can control the supply of electricity to the grid to match demand. This creates a consistent source of completely predictable power from a clean, sustainable resource.

“Nova’s expertise in smart grid control, renewable generation and energy storage has delivered this game-changing innovation. We now look forward to expanding our services to other markets and renewable projects.”

The scale of the project, said to create “the world’s first grid-connected ‘baseload’ tidal power station”, has not been confirmed. However, the 600kW tidal system has now been connected to the national grid.

The delivery of Powerpack battery storage system was backed by the Scottish Government, which donated £272,606 in funds to the project.

Scotland’s Energy Minister Paul Wheelhouse commented: “This project will utilise both renewable tidal technology and battery storage from one of the world’s pioneers of battery storage, Tesla, to overcome the challenges of current grid constraints and to enable the improved, uninterrupted, provision of low carbon energy not only in Shetland but in other small island communities across Scotland.

“Crucially, however, by undertaking this work in Scotland, we can also play a key role in helping inform the sustainable decarbonisation of energy for communities across the world.”

Tesla has already deployed its Powerpack battery storage system for several renewable solar and wind projects, but this is the first tidal power station using the technology.

Sembcorp has signed an agreement to build 6.2MW of rooftop solar projects on top of two Singapore facilities owned by a major energy industry service provider, including one of Singapore’s largest rooftop projects, standing at 4.7MW.

Both systems together are expected to produce around 7,435MWh of power annually. The solar farm will help power the on-site operations of the customer, with surplus power channelled to the grid. One of the two locations, located in the Tuas area, is also said to be the largest solar installation on a single rooftop in Singapore to date, with more than 12,700 solar panels amounting to over 4.7MW.

Sembcorp Group president and CEO Neil McGregor said: “We are very pleased to sign this 25-year deal and welcome another new client for our solar power solutions that help companies save money and cut their carbon footprint. With this newest project, Sembcorp now has over 115MW peak of solar power assets in operation and under development. As we grow our solar portfolio here, Sembcorp is actively supporting Singapore in its goal of achieving 350MW peak of solar power capacity by 2020.”

Sembcorp also unveiled a range of affordable power plans for residential customers yesterday with a range of options.

Energy storage collaboration

In related news, Sembcorp will collaborate with Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) as part of a pilot programme to support the deployment of energy storage in the country and they will partner on piloting storage systems. EMA will also help Sembcorp explore business models for energy storage systems, and facilitate regulatory and market approvals for Sembcorp’s operation of such systems in Singapore.

The initiative, also known as ACCESS (ACCelerating Energy Storage for Singapore), aims to make storage more common in Singapore as it can help counter the intermittency of renewable power sources and enhance the overall stability of the grid. It can also potentially allow consumers to save on their energy bills by storing power for use at peak times.

ISO New England, joined by the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL), has filed revisions with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to codify a new design that would enable batteries and other storage technologies to more fully participate in the New England wholesale electricity markets.

According to ISO New England, the revisions would allow emerging storage technologies to be dispatched in the Real-Time Energy Market in a manner that more fully recognizes their ability to transition continuously and rapidly between a charging state and a discharging state. The revisions would also provide a means for their simultaneous participation in the energy, reserves and regulation markets.

The ISO and NEPOOL filed the changes on Oct. 10 and have requested FERC respond by Dec. 10 so that the changes can become effective on April 1, 2019.

In early 2016, in response to growing interest in storage participation, the ISO began working to build a platform that would enable batteries and other similar technologies to participate more fully in the wholesale markets. When FERC issued Order No. 841 in early 2018, the ISO had already completed the internal design work on the new storage design, and the process of vetting those revisions with NEPOOL was already scheduled.

The new storage design brings the region a long way toward compliance with Order No. 841, according to ISO. The new storage revisions, if approved, will become effective eight months before the effective date contemplated in Order No. 841.

Arlington Energy, a clean energy investment group, has announced plans to build out a 1GW portfolio of energy storage and gas peaker projects across the UK after securing initial funding of £200 million (US$255 million) from an offshore fund of institutional investment.

The sites, ranging from 5-50MW, will be developed over the next three years with the first aiming for completion in July 2019 as part of 250MW slated for completion by October.

Around 40% of the portfolio will be made up of standalone battery storage, with over 100MW anticipated to be in the ground under the first tranche of projects.

While the company has yet to reveal where its projects will be, a 20MW gas site in Chesterfield and a developed 40MW energy storage site in Bedford was recently sold to Arlington Infrastructure, the company set up in May 2018 to build out the portfolio.

Matt Clare, director of Arlington Energy, said: “Securing this level of funding has been a fantastic achievement for us, and for the UK energy sector. We are extremely pleased to be able to deploy so many assets in the UK to support the grid network.”

The company has yet to select its technology partners for the storage projects, and is working with advisory services firm DNV GL to provide technical assistance on procuring and deploying the most suitable assets for the portfolio.

“They will be tendering every top manufacturer and system provider with experience in energy storage globally,” Clare said.

The projects will rely on Capacity Market contracts it hopes in to win in February 2019’s T-4 auction to support a merchant trading strategy in what it sees as a distributed energy market susceptible to system volatility.

This approach was recently called for by a panel of energy storage providers at the UK trade event Solar & Storage Live, which claimed that investors needed to “come to grips” with merchant risk following years of subsidy-backed opportunities.

South Korea’s government is planning for 100MW of battery storage as part of a nearly 3GW hub of solar PV and wind on reclaimed land in Saemangeum, which is an estuarine tidal flat on the coast of the Yellow Sea.

A spokesperson from Saemangeum Development and Investment Agency (SDIA), an agency run under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, told Energy-Storage.News that the agency will oversee 2.6GW of projects. This will include 2.4GW of solar, 100MW of wind and 100MW of battery storage.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) will oversee 400MW of solar PV.

The project overview was announced this week, but this vision is very much in the early stages and detailed plans are only likely to be brought out at a later date. The projects would be located on reclaimed land at Saemangeum, which the Korean Government is hoping to turn into a global business hub and free trade hub of Northeast Asia, after a major damming operation known as the Saemangeum Seawall Project, completed in 2010, said to be the largest dyke in the world.

Separately, a release from the Jeonbuk Province government announced plans for up to 1GW of offshore windfarms off the coast of the city of Gunsan, as well as plans to build a port behind the offshore wind farm to attract manufacturing companies.

Back in September SDIA issued a release notifying that it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rena International, a foreign investment company established by Korean company, Geumgang ENG, jointly with China-based PV firm Renesola, for them to invest around KRW55.5 billion (US$49 million) in the Saemangeum Industrial Complex from 2018 to 2020, for assembling PV modules and manufacturing energy storage systems, while creating 120 jobs in the process.

Under another MoU, NemoENG would also invest KRW47.5 billion in Saemangeum Industrial Complex (lot 2) to produce floating and mooring systems for solar PV as well as energy storage devices from 2018 to 2022. South Korean state-utility Korea East-West Power Co. (EWP) recently completed a 3.5MW floating solar project at a coal-fired power plant.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given every grid operator in the country a December deadline for submitting plans for integrating energy storage into capacity, energy and ancillary services markets.

We’ve been covering some of the details of this momentous grid policy development at GTM Squared, including a deep dive into PJM’s latest straw proposal for meeting this mandate.

At the same time, FERC has also given each independent system operator (ISO) and regional transmission organization (RTO) leeway to meet Order 841’s requirements in ways that build on energy storage integration work already in progress. And in some cases, ISOs and RTOs are making big changes in energy storage-market integration well ahead of Order 841’s schedule.

That description fits the ISO New England’s recently filed proposal for integrating batteries and other fast-acting storage assets into its energy markets. While the “Storage Revisions” plan filed with FERC earlier this month doesn’t take ISO-NE all the way to full Order 841 compliance, it does contemplate important and valuable changes in market rules for batteries and other “continuous storage facilities” coming as early as April 2019, eight months before Order 841’s implementation deadline.

Much of the energy storage industry’s focus has been on mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM, which holds nearly 40 percent of the country’s existing large-scale battery storage power capacity, and has been updating its straw proposal for Order 841 compliance ahead of a December filing deadline.

The $2 million contract is part of the DoE’s FY2018 SETO funding programme and will develop a best-in-class next generation heliostat design, optimised for CSP technology projections of the next decade.

SolarReserve is partnering with South Africa’s Stellenbosch University and New Mexico based Sandia National Laboratories to conduct research and development.

The aim is to be able to use storage to store solar energy to meet peak demand periods, even at night.

Heliostats are the dual-axis solar tracking mirrors that concentrate and focus the sun’s energy onto an energy collection receiver atop a central tower.

Within the receiver, fluid flows through piping that forms external walls; this fluid absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight. In SolarReserve’s technology, the fluid utilised is molten salt, which is used both as a heat transfer fluid, as well as a thermal energy storage medium.

Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s CEO, said: “We are excited to participate in this initiative and aggressively drive innovation that will lower delivered cost of solar electricity that has the added benefit of round-the-clock availability through energy storage.

“Through this award, we can develop breakthrough solutions for cost-effective sustainable energy now and for the generations to come – with the goal of fostering new industries and creating thousands of U.S. jobs.”

The heliostat field can account for up to 50% of a CSP project’s capital cost, hence it is a critical component in any cost reduction initiatives.

‘Europe’s largest’ energy storage pilot project at an industrial site, combining 2MWp of rooftop solar with a total of 4.2MWh of energy storage across a lithium-ion battery system and two flow batteries has been inaugurated in Belgium.

The distributed resources have been integrated into the microgrid ‘MiRIS’ (‘Micro Réseau Intégré Seraing’), a project “demonstrating the advanced integration of intermittent renewable energy resources” with batteries, producing a dispatchable energy resource, at the headquarters of CMI Group, a manufacturer of steam heat recovery systems, boilers and other thermal equipment for industry. CMI claims it is the largest project of its type so far in the continent.

Located in Seraing, Belgium, CMI subsidiary CMI Energy’s president said the project can help “eradicate the major flaw” of renewable energy, namely it’s intermittency of production. When the project was first announced, Jean-Michel Gheeraerdts also acknowledged that energy storage has other benefits that could increase its value even further.

“Energy storage and management can be applied in a number of fields as an alternative to diesel generators for unconnected regions, as a way of deferring investment in parts of the network, as a means of optimising existing photovoltaic or wind systems, and as an enabler of participation in the primary or secondary reserve markets,” Gheeraerdts said.

• BYD has supplied the lithium-ion battery system.
• VIZn Energy supplied one of the two flow battery systems: 400kW / 1200kWh (2.5 hours duration)
• Sumitomo supplied the other flow battery system: 500kW / 1750kWh (3.5 hours duration)

CMI integrated the lithium-ion battery system, while other partners included other CMI subdivisions which worked on power control systems and filling the flow batteries’ electrolyte tanks, PV installer Enersol and power supply specialist JEMA which installed the PCS.

The first element is pumped storage hydropower, a technology that has been steadily refined over the past 100-plus years. It is currently the most reliable, efficient and durable form of electricity storage. Pumped storage hydropower schemes are mainly found in mountainous countries, as they require a difference in elevation between two reservoirs, as well as sufficient amounts of water. When large volumes of power are generated, the excess electricity is used to pump the water from the lower reservoir to the higher one. If electricity demand increases, the water flows back down and drives turbines that in turn generate power. Pikl has implemented this principle completely underground. Subterranean tunnels are used to create the difference in elevation between the two underground reservoirs needed to produce electricity, regardless of the topography. This minimises the area required, and simplifies both the process of finding a location as well as the mandatory approval procedure.

Heat accumulators, where the thermal energy is stored, form the second component of the new storage concept. Thanks to its high specific heat capacity, water serves as an additional thermal energy storage medium for the underground pumped storage power plant. Renewable energy is used to heat the water to up to 90°C. Thermal energy is stored and used by means of heat exchangers installed in the underground reservoirs. When demand for heat is high, it can be supplied directly to consumers via district heating transmission lines.

Franz Georg Pikl also integrated district cooling technology into the concept – this method of cooling buildings is becoming increasingly significant – in the shape of absorption chillers. When required – in other words, on warm days – the hot water drives the chillers, which produce cooling energy that is distributed to customers along district cooling transmission lines. To ensure a constant supply of cooling energy to various temperature zones, this system can be modified by cooling the water of the underground pumped storage hydropower scheme – which could then be labelled a “cold-water pumped storage hydropower plant.”