The energy industry is evolving towards more ‘enterprise platform’-based business models, enabling energy storage to play a vital role for businesses and the grid, NEC Energy Solutions (NEC ES) CEO Steve Fludder has said.

NEC ES, the NEC Corporation’s energy storage system integration and technology business, relies increasingly on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Fludder said in an interview and presentation at last month’s Energy Storage Summit in London. Fludder took over as CEO in November, replacing temporary boss Hiro Ezawa, who in turn replaced longstanding leader Budd Collins.

These IT capabilities not only give NEC ES and its partners better visibility into system operation, Fludder said, but they also enable the company and others like it to capture value across the whole marketplace, making an analogy with the way that online retail giant Amazon uses predictive analytics to stock its strategically-located warehouses with the goods returning customers are most likely to purchase.

“This concept is actually happening around us all the time. You have cars that can tell you when they need to go in to be serviced, for example. I’m quite interested in the Amazon analogy, because that’s something that touches everyone every day. How do they do that? If they did that by building up massive amounts of inventory of everything that’s on sale on their site, they would never make money,” Fludder told Energy-Storage.News.

In his presentation that afternoon, Fludder had said Amazon, through mining data, AI, analytics and machine learning, “manages back into the supply chain in an optimal way” so that it only buys and stocks the goods its customers are most likely to want.

Northern Powergrid has called on electricity distribution network operators (DNOs), regulators and industry partners to work together to define the future of network-scale energy storage.

Speaking at two events across the country this month, senior team members from Northern Powergrid will address this hot topic.

“Energy storage has huge potential to change how the UK’s energy system works,” commented Patrick Ewin, policy and markets director. “The storage industry is growing rapidly and, in parallel, we are making the biggest changes to our power network since the 1970s. Evaluating how battery storage interacts with our network from household to utility level is a key priority for us as we seek to develop a truly customer-led distribution system. We welcome healthy engagement between DNOs, regulators and industry partners to present the best possible uses of energy storage on our network. Debate generated at events like those we are attending this week will be crucial to the advancement of this collaboration and the success of energy storage.”

One key area Northern Powergrid is looking at is the use of battery storage for increased resilience in areas that are susceptible to power cuts by nature of their geography – such as outlying coastal communities – and how to improve service for vulnerable people in these regions.

Northern Powergrid has a number of projects underway to develop understanding of the benefits that may be delivered by energy storage. In Darlington, it is operating a 2.5MW (5MWh) battery to maintain the electricity network at a stable frequency, providing balancing services to National Grid, and has also been providing services through the Winter to assist an energy supplier.

Northern Powergrid is also engaged in a trial project with home battery company Moixa that has seen batteries installed in 40 council owned homes in Oxspring village outside Barnsley. The trial is demonstrating how batteries can be used to manage peak solar output, reduce homeowner’s energy costs and avoid need for network reinforcement.

According to GTM’s new report, the costs of storage are dropping at a rate that will allow it to start being competitive with new peaking plants in about five years. But ten years from now, energy storage will “almost always” win out over the cost of a new peaking plant.

It could take years or even decades for energy storage to compete with the GTM-estimated 120 GW of existing peakers, Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at GTM Research, said during a webinar to discuss the report. The existing plants have lower operating costs because they have largely paid off their debt.

The key to the competitiveness of storage compared with peakers is not just lower costs, but lower costs for longer durations. Duration, how long a storage device can pump energy into the grid, has been the limiting factor when batteries are used to replace peakers. The other side of that concept is that peakers are an inefficient use of capital because they run so infrequently.

GTM’s research found that the median capacity factor of the operating U.S. peaker fleet is 3% and that the median hours of operation per start is 5.3 hours. In addition, 73% of the operating fleet averages eight hours or less per start.

The data show that battery systems are beginning to have sufficient duration to meet a high proportion of peaking needs, Manghani said.

The economics of battery storage used for peaking needs can also be enhanced if the batteries can serve other grid needs when they are not being used for peaking capacity. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s recent Order 841 aims to creates opportunity for energy storage to compete on a level playing field in energy, capacity and ancillary service markets, Manghani noted. The opportunities will be regionally specific, as each ISO or RTO will devise their own set of rules, he added.

As the markets for energy storage continue to grow and companies in those markets mature, business models and financing mechanisms are getting more attention.

Those models can involve alternatives to a traditional asset sale approach that can reduce the cost of entry for potential customers and lower the cost of capital for energy storage companies.

The trend was highlighted last week when Younicos announced its energy storage rental service. Renting energy storage equipment was an obvious step for Younicos, given that its corporate parent, Aggreko, rents power generation equipment on a global scale.

Younicos hopes that by lowering the cost of energy, it will be able to expand the market for its energy storage services. The idea is that in many cases renting storage equipment is cheaper than buying and owning it.

The main driver in that business model is “to help the economics a little bit by lightening the capital expenditure for the customer,” Tim Grejtak, an analyst with Lux Research, told Utility Dive. A lot of businesses use a discounted cash flow model and “any payment you defer into the future helps your cash flow,” he explained.

For the first phase of its marketing efforts, Younicos says it is targeting hybrid systems and microgrids in the commercial and industrial market, rather than large scale utility energy storage installations.

Younicos’s new business model is part of a wider trend under way in the industry, Grejtak said. Energy storage companies previously differentiated themselves with technology, especially before lithium-ion batteries became dominant. Then, they highlighted the control software for their energy storage systems. Now, companies are increasingly highlighting their financial and business models, Grejtak told Utility Dive.

Future of European business models is still opaque

Bay State Wind has signed a letter of intent (LOI) to collaborate with NEC Energy Solutions to develop an energy storage system for its 800MW wind/55MW – 110MWh energy storage combined project, which will be located in Massachusetts, US.

The project is expected to be the world’s largest wind-paired energy storage system for commercial-scale energy.

Bay State Wind is the 50/50 partnership between Ørsted and New England’s transmission builder Eversource.

Under the deal, the company have agreed to accelerate the development of early commercial integration of storage technologies into the electricity supply chain.

The deal will also capitalise on storage technology’s benefits to clean energy integration, grid reliability, system-wide efficiency, and system peak demand reduction.

Eversource business development vice-president Mike Auseré said: “The development of a robust battery storage system is going to help Massachusetts become a leader in renewable energy, and more importantly, it will help small businesses and consumers by ensuring a steady supply of energy, thereby reducing high-demand energy spikes.”

The deal will expand Bay State Wind’s commitment to supporting and promoting energy storage in Massachusetts.

Ørsted North America president Thomas Brostrøm said: “We could not be more thrilled to work with a Massachusetts company that is a global leader in battery storage technology and products.

“NEC Energy Solutions is widely recognised as a pioneer and leader in the market for utility-scale energy storage, and their ability to recruit talent from the local workforce will help not only Bay State Wind, but it will help solidify Massachusetts as a global leader in the green energy revolution.”

Held once again in Düsseldorf, Germany’s huge exhibition center March 13–15, the 12th annual International Renewable Energy Storage (IRES) Conference and Energy Storage Europe Conference attracted roughly 4,500 international visitors, and more than 170 exhibitors, from over 60 nations.

While showcasing the latest in energy storage technologies, presenters discussed developing markets worldwide, offered detailed case studies, and explained how transforming renewable energy into hydrogen, both for storage and for additional applications, is becoming an ever-more cost-effective “green gas” solution.

Main themes at IRES (Figure 1) included flexible sector coupling and de-coupling as well as system-useful storage solutions that stabilize networks. Several speakers detailed how they see storage continuing to nibble around the edges of the grid as it’s currently configured. Many envisioned that, in the near-term, storage systems will essentially displace expensive fossil-fueled peaker plants, discharging banked emissions-free renewable-generated energy instead of relying on natural gas or coal.

Storage takes many forms: some of it is based on heat pumps and pumped hydro, some on banks of lithium-ion batteries, and now new hydrogen storage units. But all systems are geared to take advantage of ever-increasing amounts of cheap renewable energy from solar and wind. Indeed, as more renewables come online in Europe and worldwide, the need to balance load and demand as well as store intermittent energy has long been a driving factor. But as more comes online and prices fall, batteries-in-a-box container units and other mobile solutions are also finding niches both in “island” and distributed grids worldwide.