Autarsys GmbH is planning to develop an energy storage system and PV project in Mam Rashan, a refugee camp in the Dohuk district of northern Iraq near the Syrian and Turkish borders.

Autarsys’ energy storage system will be integrated with a 300kW PV project that will secure a more stable supply of power. The system’s energy management software will give camp administrators the ability to prioritise and schedule the delivery of power based on residents’ most critical needs.

While refugee camps are traditionally powered by diesel generators, diesel is more expensive than renewable energy and is dangerous to transport in a volatile region. The first phase of the project will have the capacity to power one portion of the camp at a time during the day.

Autarsys expects that the renewable energy system will be operable by spring 2018. Additional funding in the future may enable expansion of the system. The German company has developed and delivered a number of off-grid microgrid or ‘edge of grid’ projects pairing solar, energy storage and other resources including two in the Philippines, one at a resort, the other for a remote village, one for a remote village in Cameroon and another in Australia with Conergy Australia combining 13MWp of PV with 1.4MW / 5.3MWh of energy storage which is currently underway in Lakeland, Queensland.

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One of the best new markets for energy storage might not be in a state with a deregulated market and policies that favor renewable energy, but in Florida, a bastion of traditional, regulated utilities.

States like California, Texas, New York, Hawaii and Massachusetts have either competitive wholesale power markets or policies that support and encourage energy storage, or both, and are among the leaders in energy storage projects. Florida, in contrast, has virtually no energy storage projects. But that could change quickly.

Florida could see $230 million of investment in utility-owned battery systems by 2021, according to a report by researchers from the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

Projects approved or proposed for Florida Power & Light and Duke Energy Florida could make the state a prominent location for energy storage. But electricity rates that track the national average — providing less incentive for storage as a means to reduce demand charges — and a lack of regulatory mandates pose challenges for storage developers, the report said.

Dramatic market change

Florida’s market for energy storage has already changed dramatically, Rick Ferrera, one of the authors of the report, told Utility Dive. “The market is a lot different today than it was a year ago when we started the report.”

That shift is being driven by the falling costs of battery storage and a heightened awareness of the need to bolster grid resilience in the aftermath of last year’s hurricane season that brought the devastation of Irma and Maria, Ferrera said.

The report, Battery Energy Storage in Florida, was released by The School of Global Policy and Strategy at the UCSD.

It finds an existing positive investment case for behind-the-meter storage in Florida. The main driver, the authors say, is the ability of battery storage to offset demand charges for utility customers. The scenarios modeled in the report found several battery systems are already “in the money” under a variety of scenarios at the low end of current cost estimates. And, as lithium-ion battery prices fall, even more potential projects could become viable, according to the report.

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Leaders in the fledgling commercial and industrial (C&I) sector in the US have made energy storage ‘as-a-service’ the core of their proposition, a market analyst has said.

Julian Jansen, senior market analyst in energy storage at IHS Markit told Energy-Storage.News that his team’s latest work, looking at opportunities and business models in the behind-the-meter C&I space, which he said that to date has been “under-analysed”, for the most part.

In the US, C&I users of electricity, from retailers to factories are charged premiums for the portion of their power drawn from the grid during peak times on a monthly basis. These so-called demand charges can make up 50% of a C&I customer’s electricity bills in some cases. Storing energy in batteries and discharging them to mitigate those peaks is one way that energy storage companies can earn money. The customer pays a fee to the energy storage provider, who in turn commits to delivering bigger energy savings to the customer via demand charge reduction or management.

While C&I energy storage can also offer other benefits, such as backup power and resiliency, could increase or enable self-consumption of onsite solar generation or can be used by utilities as a capacity or grid services resource, the primary focus of IHS Markit’s analysis was on “techno-economic modelling” of the business case for demand charge management, as the current biggest business opportunity available.

Payback times for C&I installations in the US can be as short as one year, in some cases, although the analyst and his team were keen to point out that project economics vary greatly and can be customer-specific.

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Renewable generation deployments (primarily solar photovoltaic and wind farms) have grown substantially over the last decade and are forecast to continue growing well into the future. That’s thanks to lower costs and technological improvements leading to increased power output.

Indeed, the International Energy Association expects that average annual global renewable installations will be 80 percent higher than coal, oil and natural gas combined between 2017 and 2040. Separately, Navigant Research anticipates that wind and solar PV installations — both in front of and behind the meter — will surpass 1,500 gigawatts cumulatively between 2017 and 2026.

This is good news in terms of sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction activities. However, this massive influx of variable generation capacity can present issues for outdated electrical grids around the globe. Energy storage that supports renewables integration can help solve these issues by maintaining smooth, consistent power flow to the grid. As a result, renewable installations combined with energy storage are expected to make significant waves in the energy market well into the future.

Deployments of this nature can be divided into two large segments. The first category includes utility-scale solar PV and wind power plants (typically larger than 1 megawatt in capacity) combined with energy storage and capable of servicing entire communities. The second category includes behind-the-meter solar PV installations combined with energy storage that generally service individual commercial or residential buildings and are usually less than 1 MW in size.

Renewable, utility-scale power plants tied with energy storage will be a major force in the global energy market — but it is the behind-the-meter installations combining renewables with storage that will lead the way around the world over the next decade.

Consider these forecasts. Annual revenue for energy storage tied to utility-scale wind and solar is expected to reach $9.6 billion by 2026. Revenue for behind-the-meter installations, however, is expected to surpass $13 billion in the same timeframe.

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HAYWARD, Calif., Jan. 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Primus Power (“Primus”), a leader in stationary energy storage systems, announced today that it has received orders to install flow battery systems at multiple life science buildings owned by HCP, Inc (“HCP”) (NYSE:HCP), a fully integrated real estate investment trust that invests primarily in real estate serving the healthcare industry in the United States.

Primus EnergyPods are long duration flow batteries that generate savings by storing electricity from the grid during times of low price and demand, and releasing it back at times of high price and demand.  The release back to the grid reduces the electrical draw from the utility, saving money for commercial building tenants with no impact on operations.

“At HCP, we take pride in delivering best-in-class facilities for customers,” said Tom Klaritch, HCP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.  “Sustainable building operations that incorporate renewable energy, integrated and efficient subsystems and now, stationary battery systems like those from Primus, provide savings that benefit all of our stakeholders, in addition to supporting our corporate sustainability initiatives.”

“We are delighted to work with HCP and help their tenants save money,” remarks Tom Stepien, Primus Power’s CEO.  “Commercial customers pay premiums for peak electricity, typically in late afternoons.  A long duration battery system, like our 5 hour EnergyPod, better guarantees savings compared to short duration systems that have insufficient energy to catch extended peaks.  Additionally, our two decade fade-free performance results in significant lifecycle savings over Li Ion batteries which tend to fade 10-15% per year, as we commonly experience in our cell phones and laptops.  Commercial buildings need the Duration without Degradation™ that Primus provides.”

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A subsidiary of Japan’s NEC Corporation has announced it has completed the commissioning of a total of 50 MW of energy storage projects in the UK.

EC Energy Solutions (NEC ES) will team up with VLC Energy, a joint venture between Low Carbon, a renewable energy investment company, and VPI Immingham, owner of one of the largest combined heat and power plants in Europe and part of the Vitol Group.

The 50 MW portfolio, which is now fully operational and includes a 40 MW facility in Glassenbury in Kent and a 10 MW installation in Cleator in Cumbria, represents the largest portfolio of utility-scale battery energy storage systems connected to the UK grid.

The Cleator and Glassenbury sites secured two contracts with National Grid in August 2016 for battery energy storage systems to provide Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) to the UK system operator.

NEC ES provided turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services which included its GSS® end-to-end grid storage solution, and was contracted to operate the sites to provide the EFR service directly to National Grid. Energy storage operation for EFR will be handled by an automated operating mode designed specifically for the UK frequency response service, and is part of the AEROS® controls system, NEC’s proprietary energy storage control software.

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Xcel Energy’s latest resource solicitation returned renewable energy and storage bids so competitive they have the sector abuzz on social media. While Kann noted details about battery duration and sizing were not made available, the price of battery-paired solar in the solicitation is a full $9/MWh cheaper than the cheapest contract announced just last year. 

Last year Xcel subsidiary Public Service Co. of Colorado announced a plan to shutter 660 MW of coal-fired capacity at the Comanche Generating Station and issued a competitive request for proposals of up to 1,000 MW of wind, 700 MW of solar, and 700 MW of natural gas and/or storage.

In its status report, Xcel told state regulators that “the response to this solicitation is unprecedented.” The utility received 430 total individual proposals including 238 total projects. More than 350 of the individual proposals are renewable energy proposals or renewable energy with storage proposals, according to the report.

For comparison, Xcel said it received 55 bids in its 2013 all-source solicitation.

Many developers provided multiple bids for a single project resulting in significantly more bids than projects, Xcel noted. Differing bid information, such as different proposed in-service dates, different power purchase
agreements terms, and different ownership structures can result in multiple bids from a single proposed
project.

Of the 238 projects proposed, 99 projects included some level of utility ownership. 

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Adding energy storage gives solar developers and the industry in general the ability to “keep going”, while offering both lithium and flow battery systems covers a “wide-range of use cases”, NEXTracker CEO Dan Shugar has said.

The US’ leading provider of single-axis trackers, mainly for large-scale solar PV installations, NEXTracker was bought up by multinational technology manufacturer Flextronics for over US$300 million back in 2015. The company has recently touted such milestones as reaching 10GW of global sales, including a gigawatt of sales into India, a market which NEXTracker only really began prioritising last year.

NEXTracker has launched two energy storage products that sit alongside the trackers at customer’s sites. NX Fusion Plus, a package that included NX Horizon tracker, inverter, battery and software components, was made available from late 2016, using flow batteries from manufacturer Avalon. Company sales director Ralph Fallant had told Energy-Storage.News a few months later that NEXTracker was aiming to shift around 15MW of those units per week, worldwide.

Then, late last year, the company relaunched the flow product as NX Flow and also released NX Drive, an integrated energy storage solution using lithium batteries.

“For us it’s really just that the needs now have landed there foursquare [in the] mainstream for the market,” Dan Shugar told Energy-Storage.News, about the decision to diversify the product offering to include not only energy storage but two types of battery solution.

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Trade associations NY BEST and the Energy Storage Association have been quick to applaud New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s historic setting of a 1,500MW energy storage procurement target for his state.

Energy-Storage.News reported earlier this week that Cuomo, in his annual State of the State address, had set out plans for US$200 million to be invested via New York’s NY Green Bank and US$65 million via NYSERDA in the development and deployment of energy storage projects, while the 1,500MW target should be reached by 2025.

The announcement was made along with a raft of other environmental, energy and sustainability policy measures as Cuomo attempted to set out a “comprehensive agenda to combat climate change”.

These included establishments of energy efficiency targets, moves to cap greenhouse gas emissions and limit pollution from natural gas plants, establish a solar PV programme for 10,000 low-income households and to reconvene a scientific panel on climate change disbanded by the Trump presidential administration.

Energy Storage Association CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman said her group “heartily applauded” the establishment of the target. Meanwhile William Acker at NY BEST, pitched as a regional trade association as well as a technology development group – NY BEST has its own battery testing and research facilities available to its members – said the deployment of 1,500MW by 2025 and the US$265 million investment would help cement New York’s position as a leader in the energy storage industry while contributing strongly to the state’s climate change and sustainability goals.

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You purchased that spiffy new rooftop solar array and waited patiently in the queue to get interconnected to the grid. Now that you’re generating kilowatt-hours, you’ve decided to invest in a residential energy storage system to maximize your ability to avoid paying for peak-priced power. There’s one hiccup, though: What do your state’s interconnection rules mean for connecting your new battery to the grid? 

We’ve now arrived at a cutting-edge topic in interconnection, one that several states have recently addressed or are working on addressing, and which many more will need to address soon.

As the Interstate Renewable Energy Council discussed in our recent report, Charging Ahead: An Energy Storage Guide for State Policymakers, energy storage promises to play a critical role at all levels of the electric system, from traditional utility-scale generation down to residential customer applications. It is also vitally important in accelerating integration of all types of distributed energy resources, or DERs. Energy storage offers a broad suite of electricity services, including deferral of expensive transmission and distribution line upgrades, the regulation of voltage and frequency, and expanding consumers’ ability to control their energy use and costs.

But while energy storage is affected by many of the same interconnection issues we’ve discussed in previous posts, it also raises new issues because of the technology’s unique characteristics — specifically, its ability to act as both energy “generation” (by injecting stored electricity onto the grid) and load (during its charging state), as well as its ability to be controlled so that it operates only when intended.

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