A 3,000MW energy storage target, proposed in Arizona as part of a grid modernisation policy, recognises the role of the technology in reducing the need for fossil fuels to stabilise the grid, a consultant has said.

Yesterday, Andy Tobin of the state’s regulator, the Corporation Commission, presented a plan that includes a goal to generate 80% of Arizona’s power from renewable sources by 2050, a commitment to review the existing Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff (REST) policy, to use renewables to mitigate peaks establishing a ‘Clean Peak’ standard and to deploy 3,000MW of energy storage to “leverage low priced energy during the day”.

The Commission will vote on the proposal in the next couple of weeks. A final vote is expected which would make the regulatory proposal legally binding, within six months to a year, Lon Huber, vice president and head of consulting at Stratagen Consulting, told Energy-Storage.News.

The 3GW target would be the biggest established to date in the US – the first state to set a target, California, is calling for 1.35GW by 2024 and New York for 1.5GW by 2025. While the timeline for deployment is longer for Arizona than those two previous title-holders, Huber pointed out that relative to the state’s size, the figure pencils out at a far higher capacity deployed per capita than in the others.

Lon Huber said the establishment of the target is closely linked to known plans for development of new gas turbine facilities by Arizona’s major utilities, including Arizona Public Service, which is projecting that it will need 5GW of new gas plants by 2032. Huber said it was likely the 3,000MW figure was arrived at as “a fraction of the new combustion turbines in the IRP (Integrated Resource Plans) of the utilities”.

“I think the assessment of what could be cost-effective storage was probably based on the need for new peakers over the next 15 years, more than anything. I think the innovation here is that, depending on different states and how they do things, you could end up in a situation where you buy a lot of renewables but you still need a large fossil backup fleet.”

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The CEO of Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, has said that his company is working to establish “a scalable commercial model” for solar PV and energy storage, viewing both as potential drivers of long-term growth.  

Danish power company Orsted, formerly known as DONG Energy until a rebrand and restructuring last year that also included selling off its oil and gas businesses, has just reported its latest quarterly financial results, including reporting for the full 2017 year.

For 2017, the group saw DKK22.5 billion (US$3.77 billion) operating profit, an increase of 18% from the year before. This included a 74% rise in profits from its wind business. The company made an overall net profit of DKK13.3 billion (US$2.23 billion), an increase of more than DKK1 billion from 2016.

The report and accompanying statements from the company and CEO Henrik Poulsen reiterated Orsted’s commitment to a transition to a low carbon, green and sustainable energy system repeatedly. The company is aiming to go coal-free by 2023 and also to source 95% of its heat and power generation from renewables by that time.

“Our strategy is based on the vision of an integrated green energy system, where renewable energy technologies can be combined with each other and with energy storage solutions, more flexible and intelligent patterns of consumption and electrification of the transport sector, heating systems and industry,” Poulsen said.

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Marking its entrance into the Japanese battery market, and gearing up to take advantage of the growing self-consumption opportunities in the country, London-based Moixa Energy Holdings Ltd has entered into a partnership with one of Japan’s largest trading houses.

Under the exclusive marketing deal, Itochu has said it will install Moixa’s GridShare platform as a standard, on its products by this summer. Overall, Itochu also aims to sell more than 6,000 units of its “Smart star” home battery systems, which were developed in cooperation with the NF Corporation, by the end of this March.

AI technology

Under the GridShare aggregation platform, Moixa uses AI technology to trade excess power stored in smart batteries owned by partners in the GridShare scheme, with the National Grid. This helps to reduce the load on grids during peak demand, to create a flat grid.

The partners receive a share of the profits in return, the amount of which depends on whether the partner has a fixed income or profit share membership.

“The technology will save customers money by using artificial intelligence to optimise the performance of their battery based on their patterns of behaviour, the weather conditions and market prices,” said Moixa in a statement released.

Expansion

In addition to the distribution partnership, Itochu has said it will invest £5 million (around US$7.1 million) in Moixa to support international expansion.

This follows on from an investment of £500,000 by Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) last April. Overall, the company raised around £3.5 million in 2017. It is specifically eyeing the European and U.S. markets for expansion.

“Moixa will now seek to expand its GridShare partnerships with Japanese utilities and electric vehicle manufacturers and to market services to electricity networks. It is also planning trials in the US and Europe this year,” read the statement.

In the U.K., the company has already installed nearly 1,000 battery systems. It further holds patents in the U.K., U.S. and Australia on distributed smart battery systems, and aggregating batteries for grid services.

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Battery technology engineer Ernest Villanueva—who has helped design the battery models powering all of Tesla’s models—has left the electric vehicle maker, CNBC reports, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Villanueva’s LinkedIn profile still states that he is Manager of Battery Module Design at Tesla Motors. He has worked at Tesla since 2006 at various roles in battery module design.

According to CNBC, Villanueva holds eight patents and is credited with the design of the battery modules for all Tesla vehicles. Tesla declined comment for CNBC, while Villanueva did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

If Villanueva’s departure is confirmed, it would be yet another senior manager at Tesla who has left the EV carmaker over the course of several months.

Earlier this month, Uber hired Tesla’s lead battery expert Celina Mikolajczak as Director of Engineering and Energy Storage Systems to work on the ride-hail company’s ‘flying car’ project.

Also this month, another two senior engineers at Tesla were reported to have left the company—Jason Mendez and Will McColl, Jalopnik reported two weeks ago. McColl confirmed he had left Tesla, saying “I’m continually inspired by my colleagues’ resolve, and I wish them strength as they ramp and refine Model 3. It’s an amazing car!”

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States in the Pacific Northwest are moving forward with policies encouraging new energy storage projects, but the region already has a lot of old fashioned storage — the type that sits behind a dam.

Hydropower provides the region with a cheap and abundant source of renewable energy that can also be used, in some instances, to store energy; and that presents a challenge for newer technologies, such as lithium ion batteries.

“Policy is pushing energy storage in the Pacific Northwest, but the economics of storage could have an uphill battle against the economics of hydropower,” said Jay Paidipati, a director at Navigant Consulting.

In a new report, consulting firm Cadmus Group says energy storage development in the Pacific Northwest is stymied by the lack of a compelling business case, policies and pricing structures that favor large power plant development over distributed energy resources, sluggish movement towards grid resiliency planning, and potential concerns about storage technology lifetimes.

The Northwest does not have an organized capacity market, which means that storage cannot be traded with clear price signals. The region also lacks differential pricing that recognizes the locational and temporal flexibility of storage. That severely limits two possible revenue sources for a potential battery storage project: the sale of ancillary services and the opportunities that high electricity prices create for price arbitrage.

The Cadmus report, which takes a broad look at energy storage in the Northwest, also notes that there are many balancing authorities in the region, but there is no mechanism to easily aggregate and transfer storage resources across them. That engenders a need for complex bilateral agreements that make collaboration more difficult.

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Arizona is setting out to prove clean energy leadership doesn’t exist solely in coastal states like California and New York.

Andrew Tobin, a member of the Arizona Corporation Commission, proposed a clean energy overhaul Tuesday that would put the state at the front of the pack. The Energy Modernization Plan aims to produce one of the cleanest energy mixes in the nation, while lowering prices for consumers and improving grid reliability.

That means not only tackling the issue of clean baseload power, but also figuring out how to supply peak power in a cost-effective and clean way. Peak hours drive increasing expenses for utilities and their customers, a challenge that intermittent wind and solar alone cannot address. As such, Tobin’s plan includes an 80 percent clean energy target by 2050 coupled with a 3,000-megawatt energy storage procurement target for 2030.

That would leapfrog the state ahead of California and New York, which have dominated the grid modernization discussion so far. They both have 50 percent renewable energy targets on the books for 2030, and storage targets of 1,300 megawatts and 1,500 megawatts, respectively.

“We’re not trying to get on the train; we’re trying to be the engine in the train,” Tobin told GTM. “This is Western people doing things and setting lofty goals and reaching them.”

He has asked to get the concept on the agenda for the ACC’s meeting on February 6. If the five-member commission adopts the plan, as Tobin hopes it will, staff would begin a rulemaking to finalize the official language. That process could take up to a year and would involve stakeholder input.

Time for an update

The state currently is working toward a 15 percent renewable portfolio standard for 2025. The ACC set that policy in 2006, and included a 30 percent carve-out for distributed generation starting in 2012.

Since that time, solar generation has expanded, but so have the other tools available for sophisticated grid planning. That means it’s time for an update, starting with the name. Tobin suggests switching from the “Renewable Energy Standard and Tariff” to the “Clean Resource Energy Standard and Tariff.”

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AUSTIN, Texas and BERLIN, Jan. 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Younicos has signed an agreement with TerraForm Power to install and commission a 10 MW battery-based energy storage system upgrade at the site of the Kaheawa wind farm on the island of Maui, Hawaii. The batteries will be primarily used to provide ramping services to smooth out wind variability. The project is expected to be completed in the second half of 2018.

The agreement calls for Younicos to replace existing lead-acid batteries with advanced Samsung SDI lithium-ion batteries, which will be managed by Y.Q, Younicos’s proprietary control software. Lithium-ion technology will provide a significantly higher usable energy capacity potential, as well as increase the operational lifetime of the system. It will also enable fully automated operation – with no manual battery balancing or state-of-charge management needed.

“We’re pleased to be working with TerraForm to implement this significant upgrade of their energy storage system,” said Jayesh Goyal, Managing Director of Younicos. “The combination of wind plus storage adds stability, while also making new revenue streams for renewables possible through services such as peak shifting or arbitrage. It’s a win-win for both TerraForm and the environment.”

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The institution, which is supported from the Government’s industrial strategy, has announced £42m worth of funding to find solutions to fix some of the challenges surrounding battery technology, which limit the range of EVs.

The University of Oxford will lead a consortium to find ways to overcome the barriers which are preventing the more widespread uptake of solid state batteries in EVs.

The theory is that by using a solid material as a conductor, rather than the liquid-based electrolyte used in conventional lithium-ion batteries, solid state batteries should be lighter and safer, hence less costly and easier to keep cool.

Another project, led by the University of Cambridge, will look at extending battery life. It will examine how environmental and internal battery stresses, such as high temperatures and charging and discharging rates, damage EV batteries over time. The aim of this project is to extend EV range by extending battery life.

Meanwhile, Imperial College London will lead a consortium on battery system modelling and the University of Birmingham will lead a project focused on recycling and reusing batteries.

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If the blowup over President Trump’s new solar tariff proves anything, it proves that the renewable energy transition is inevitable. A new hydroelectricity project for the City of San Diego, California is a case in point. The city recently raised the level of an existing hydropower dam to hold more water, and now it is considering a massive new energy storage element that would help the grid support more wind and solar power.

The project provides support for the view that the new solar tariff is little more than a “speed bump” on the road to more sustainable future. Trump’s tariff is all but certain to disrupt the lives of individual solar workers, business owners and investors to some degree, but the overall impact is beginning to look like more smoke than fire.

Pushing the envelope on US hydropower

You wouldn’t know it from all the buzz over the latest high tech solar cells and wind turbines, but until very recently hydropower accounted for the lion’s share of the nation’s renewable energy pie.

That situation is rapidly changing. With wildlife conservation and environmental impacts in mind, there are few remaining opportunities to construct entirely new hydropower facilities in the US. In fact, this year the US Energy Information Agency expects wind energy to surpass hydropower for the first time ever.

There are still opportunities for growth in hydropower production, though. The US Department of Energy has been experimenting with ways to squeeze more electricity out of existing hydropower dams, and some interesting developments are occurring in the fields of wave energy, tidal energy and low impact hydrokinetic electricity.

It’s also worth noting that the importance of hydropower goes beyond the number of megawatts produced by the nation’s hydropower dams. The US Department of Energy foresees that hydropower provides the kind of stable, on-demand electricity supply that helps balance the variability of wind and solar.

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Every year, the clean energy experts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) predict what will happen in the sector in the year ahead. This year’s predictions have landed.

BNEF chief editor Angus McCrone writes that the falling costs in lithium-ion batteries, solar and wind energy that 2017 saw will continue in 2018 thanks to economies of scale and technological improvements, while the global economic recovery and associated strengthening of oil and coal prices will make clean energy and electric vehicles more competitive against their fossil fuel counterparts.

However, tightening monetary policies and higher interest rates “could start to affect the cost of capital, and therefore the relative competitiveness, of high-capex, low-opex technologies such as wind and solar”.

The research group predicts that 2018 investment in clean energy will be about the same as 2017’s $333.5 billion, but more capacity will be installed because of “the remorseless reductions in solar (and to some extent, wind) project capital costs”. More than 100GW of solar capacity will be installed in 2018, BNEF head of solar Jenny Chase predicts and although China will still dominate with about half the market, new markets will also open up. “This is the year that Latin America, south-east Asia, the Middle East and Africa will make up a measurable slice of the total. For instance, Mexico is likely to be a 3GW-plus market in 2018, and Egypt, the UAE and Jordan between them at 1.7-2.1GW,” she writes.

The wind energy market will be steadier, with about 59GW of onshore and offshore capacity added in 2018 before a rush in 2019 as the US Production Tax Credit nears its sell-by date. Onshore, China and Latin America will continue to see growth and while the usual suspects – the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and China – will dominate offshore, there are signs that the US and Taiwan markets are set to take off. Costs continue to fall, with two bidders – Vattenfall and Statoil – already lined up for the Netherlands auction of some 700MW of offshore capacity with zero subsidy. “Competition between a strong selection of developers would be another sign of the much-improved cost-effectiveness of offshore wind,” says Tom Harries, senior wind analyst at BNEF.

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