Electric vehicles could become a vital asset for California grid operators who are struggling to bring more renewables online. The state’s rapid adoption of solar power is contributing to a problem known as the “duck curve” — a deep dip in demand during solar-saturated midday hours, followed by a steep ramp in the evening as solar power fades away.

Regulators have responded by mandating that the state’s three biggest utilities procure a total of 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage by 2020. But researchers say they’ve found a more effective way to mitigate the duck curve using strategic EV charging.

Scheduling electric vehicles to charge in the middle of the day rather than the evening would help balance the grid by storing surpluses of electricity that would otherwise need to be curtailed. The effect on the duck curve would be equivalent to adding 1 gigawatt of storage capacity at a cost of $1.45 billion to $1.75 billion, according to a new analysis from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“Our results show that…California can achieve much of the same benefit of its Storage Mandate for mitigating renewable intermittency, but at a small fraction of the cost,” wrote the paper’s authors.

If some vehicles feed electricity back to the grid during peak evening hours, the benefits become even more pronounced. A mix of vehicles doing one-way and two-way charging would shave almost 5 gigawatts off daytime over-generation and evening peak demand, while keeping up-ramps and down-ramps within current levels. If just 30 percent of workplace chargers and 60 percent of home chargers allowed EVs to provide power to the grid, it could offset up to $15.4 billion in stationary storage investment, according to the study.

Researchers say the cost to implement such a plan would be relatively small, because most of the technology is already in place. Grid operators would theoretically be able to control charging in real time using software inside the vehicle, charging station, or both.

“A lot of vehicles are already internet-connected devices…so if it’s possible to use the existing communications channel to get this additional value for the grid, that’s fantastic,” said Samveg Saxena, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who worked on the study.

The research relies on forecasts for EV adoption in California, which predict there will be half a million fully electric vehicles and 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2025.

Ambitious solar and storage project developer Lyon Infrastructure has teamed up with two major international energy and battery storage groups to pursue its portfolio of projects in Australia, and others overseas.

In joint announcement on Tuesday, Lyon says it has signed a “collaboration” agreement with Japan’s JERA and US-based Fluence to “identify and pursue utility-scale battery storage development and investment opportunities in Asia-Pacific markets.”

The agreement may provide renewed momentum for Lyon’s list of major solar and storage projects, which have attracted big headlines and publicity, but are yet to advance to contracting, financial close, or construction.

The three Australian projects flagged in this deal were due to begin construction in 2017 (see table below) and executive chairman David Lyon still promises that an announcement for a start in the first of those will be made in the first “within a few months”.

A legal battle with US solar giant First Solar over the details of one of Lyon’s projects appeared to take the wind out of its sails late last year.

But while the legal dispute is ongoing, Lyon’s David Green told RenewEconomy he is confident the company can move forward and it will not impact its projects.

Both JERA and Fluence are joint ventures created by some of the biggest energy players in the world.

JERA is joint venture of two major Japanese electricity companies, TEPCO Fuel & Power Inc and Chubu Electric Power Co, while Fluence is an equal joint venture of Siemens and AES that focuses on battery storage.

Together, the three groups say they will look at utility and industrial scale battery storage solutions in new projects and at existing renewable and thermal generation plants.

Lyon would be the project developer, JERA an investor, and Fluence the energy storage solution and service provider.

Top of the list in Australia are three long talked about projects that Lyon has been developing, and was talking about a year ago as on the point of development:

Most current solar energy systems utilize storage outside of the generators that create the power. In other words, two separate systems are required to ensure successful operation.

But experts from UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering have developed a way to integrate solar power generation and storage into one single system, effectively reducing the cost by an estimated 50 percent. The UT project will develop the next generation of utility-scale photovoltaic inverters, also referred to as modular, multifunction, multiport and medium-voltage utility-scale silicon carbide solar inverters.

Collectively, the combined technologies are known as an M4 Inverter – their main function being the conversion of the direct current output of solar panels to medium-voltage alternating current, which eliminates the need for a bulky and expensive low-frequency transformer.

Electrical and computer engineering professor Alex Huang, who directs the Semiconductor Power Electronics Center in the Cockrell School and works with the UT Center for Electromechanics, is the lead principal investigator for this DOE-funded project. He believes the M4 Inverter will create efficiencies in a variety of ways.

“Our solution to solar energy storage not only reduces capital costs, but it also reduces the operation cost through its multifunctional capabilities,” Huang said. “These functionalities will ensure the power grids of tomorrow can host a higher percentage of solar energy. By greatly reducing the impact of the intermittence of solar energy on the grid and providing grid-governing support, the M4 Inverter provides the same resilience as any fossil-fuel-powered grid.”

One such additional functionality is the ability to provide fast frequency control, which would prevent a solar-powered grid from experiencing blackouts on days when large cloud cover might obstruct solar farming.

No, we are not claiming a low cost, environmentally friendly carbon proton battery will be replacing conventional lithium ion batteries any time soon. But it might someday, and that’s news you can use. Researchers at Australia’s RMIT University in Melbourne say that, after many years of intensive research, they have created a battery that uses a carbon electrode, water, and a permeable membrane to store electricity. The research is funded by the Australian Defense Science and Technology Group and the US Office of Naval Research Global.

Lead researcher Professor John Andrews says,

“Our latest advance is a crucial step towards cheap, sustainable proton batteries that can help meet our future energy needs without further damaging our already fragile environment. As the world moves towards inherently variable renewable energy to reduce greenhouse emissions and tackle climate change, requirements for electrical energy storage will be gargantuan.

“The proton battery is one among many potential contributors towards meeting this enormous demand for energy storage. Powering batteries with protons has the potential to be more economical than using lithium ions, which are made from scare resources. Carbon, which is the primary resource used in our proton battery, is abundant and cheap compared to both metal hydrogen storage alloys and the lithium needed for rechargeable lithium ion batteries.”

“Future work will now focus on further improving performance and energy density through use of atomically-thin layered carbon based materials such as graphene, with the target of a proton battery that is truly competitive with lithium ion batteries firmly in sight,” Andrews says.

According to Science Daily, “The working prototype proton battery combines the best aspects of hydrogen fuel cells and battery-based electrical power. The latest version combines a carbon electrode for solid-state storage of hydrogen with a reversible fuel cell to provide an integrated rechargeable unit.”

“During charging, protons produced by water splitting in a reversible fuel cell are conducted through the cell membrane and directly bond with the storage material with the aid of electrons supplied by the applied voltage, without forming hydrogen gas. In electricity supply mode, this process is reversed. Hydrogen atoms are released from the storage [medium] and lose an electron to become protons once again. These protons then pass back through the cell membrane where they combine with oxygen and electrons from the external circuit to re-form water.

“A major potential advantage of the proton battery is much higher energy efficiency than conventional hydrogen systems, making it comparable to lithium ion batteries. The losses associated with hydrogen gas evolution and splitting back into protons are eliminated.”

The original research has been published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energybut is hidden behind a pay wall; hence the extensive quotes from Science Daily.

The Internal Revenue Service has indicated that federal solar tax credits extend to battery systems added as retrofits — a policy that could “open the floodgates” for residential solar installers eager to add energy storage to their mass-market offerings.

That’s how GTM Research analyst Brett Simon summed up a letter from the IRS, released Friday (PDF), in reply to a query from an unnamed married couple. They claimed a federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for a battery, inverter, wiring and software they added to their existing rooftop PV system, set up so that it will only store energy from the solar panels, and otherwise be available day or night to respond to power outages or to reduce overall load.

The letter finds that, under these operating restrictions, the entire cost of the retrofit is subject to the 30 percent tax credit — as long as it only charges from the sun. Specifically, the letter states that the investment “meets the definition of a ‘qualified solar electric property expenditure’ under § 25D(d)(2) of the Code, and therefore, you may claim a tax credit on this Battery.”

It’s important to note that this letter concludes with a statement that it’s directed “only to the taxpayer who requested it,” and that “Section 6110(k)(3) of the Code provides it may not be used or cited as precedent.” It also notes that it hasn’t investigated the couple’s system logs or other records to see that it’s operating in 100 percent solar charging mode.

Still, for an industry hungry for some guidance on what could be a hot new market opportunity, Friday’s letter adds an important new piece to the record of such so-called “private letter” rulings, said Simon. Previous private letters have led to the legal understanding that new solar-storage systems were eligible for the ITC, but Friday’s letter is the first to specifically address retrofits.

“It’s just a single case,” he said, “but is nevertheless important because it reveals how the IRS views retrofits, and could lead to a future guidance that allows for all retrofits of storage to take the ITC. If that happened, the floodgates would open.”

Siemens Gamesa, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, is boosting its focus on energy storage technology, the latest sign of the growing importance of batteries to extending the reach of wind and solar power.

Chief executive Markus Tacke said his aim was to make renewable energy sources available on demand, even when the wind was not blowing and the sun was not shining.

“The missing part is storage,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. “To unlock the potential growth limitations, that is the piece of technology that needs to be developed.”

Mr Tacke pointed out that as the cost of wind turbines has come down, it made sense to pair them with solar or storage to create a more consistent source of power. He said Siemens Gamesa was increasing its investment in storage technology.

As part of its push, Siemens Gamesa has invested more in batteries and other types of energy storage, including a hot rock plant (where surplus power is retained by heating rocks) that helps provide power for an aluminium smelter in Hamburg.

The company is also testing a vanadium redox-flow battery system — a niche technology that some people believe could eventually rival lithium-ion batteries for energy storage — at a research facility in Spain.

Siemens Gamesa had a difficult first year after it was created from the merger of Siemens’ wind turbine business with Gamesa, the Spanish turbine maker, and its share price has fallen by almost a third since the deal was completed last April.

Mr Tacke, who had been head of Siemens’ wind business, became chief executive of the new company when the merger was completed.

Technology to design and use batteries to store electricity harnessed from solar panels has received substantial interest recently. Companies like Tesla and Daimler already have a foot in the door with battery technology and recently, Japanese automaker Nissan has announced that it will soon join the duo. These companies have previously used battery tech to power their electric vehicles, some of which also come with integrated solar panels built into the roof.

The Japanese carmaker’s new venture will be called Nissan Energy Solar. This wing of the company will be dedicated towards sales of solar panels and energy storing battery packs and developing a consumer base for the same. The stationary battery packs which were developed by Nissan were first showcased in 2016.

These energy storage battery-packs are now available to the customers and are ready to go on sale. The company is limiting the sales of this product to the U.K market. The Japanese car maker, however, has shown interest in expansion to other European companies in the future.

Effective storage of energy has been a crucial hurdle for the practicality of renewable energy incorporation. In this scenario, solar energy can be effectively stored in these specially designed stationary battery packs. On a regular day, the solar panels produce energy which is several times more than the energy consumption needs of a regular household for a single day.

This energy can be stored overnight and be used on the days when the climatic conditions obstruct Sun from Shining as brightly, which would impair the panels from harnessing similar levels of energy. This technology will also give homeowners the option of selling the excess energy they have stored in the battery packs and continue to run and power their household efficiently.

In the automotive field, the power generation and storage capabilities of the solar panels and stationary battery packs will redefine green cars into their most quintessential form. This will be done by substantially reducing the carbon footprint of the energy source which produces electricity that charges these electric vehicles.

Last week I happened to catch an intriguing documentary on NOVA called Search for the Super Battery.

The topic is of intense interest to me, as the development of better, cheaper batteries is critical for both the future of electric vehicles (EVs) and for the future electrical grid. Battery improvements are needed to increase the range of EVs, and cheaper batteries can help drive down the costs of EVs so more consumers can afford them.

For the electrical grid, increased penetration of renewables poses some challenges because of their intermittent nature. Since the wind could stop blowing at any time, and the sun’s radiation can only be captured during the day, these sources of power need to be backed up. Cost-effective storage of power could enable essentially unlimited penetration of renewables into the grid.

Thus, tremendous effort has gone into battery development in recent years. The effort is paying off, with prices for battery cells falling by 70 percent between 2012 and 2017, according to PV Magazine. But costs need to continue to decline to make widespread use of utility-scale battery storage a reality.

Lithium-ion batteries have become the battery of choice in many consumer electronics such as laptops, and in electric vehicles such as those produced by Tesla. But there are a couple of problems with these types of batteries that need to be resolved.

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For reasons that are explained in the documentary, the use of lithium-metal electrodes enables a greater energy density than conventional lithium-ion batteries. But lithium-metal electrodes can develop finger-like structures called dendrites that will eventually short-circuit the battery.

The solution to this problem was to replace the lithium-metal electrode with a carbon electrode with a lattice structure that houses lithium ions. Thus, the lithium-ion battery was born, albeit with a lower energy storage capacity than a battery utilizing a solid lithium-metal electrode.

Lithium-ion batteries also suffer from one other shortcoming that has been the subject of numerous news articles. If these batteries are damaged, they can explode or catch fire. This has happened in laptops, cell phones, and EVs. If damaged, all of the energy stored inside the battery can release over a short period of time, and the result can be a hot, intense fire.