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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Legislation proposed in Florida could see solar and energy storage become part of the go-to solution for providing energy resiliency against natural disasters and helping restore power in their aftermath.

Holly Raschein, a Republican member of the House of Representatives for the US’ so-called ‘sunshine state’, introduced HB 1133 ‘Energy security and disaster resilience program’ on 2 January. The bill calls for the establishment of a pilot programme within Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to investigate and correctly value the use of solar-plus-storage systems in preventing or coming back from energy supply and delivery problems stemming from natural disasters and other causes.

Creation of the pilot would “encourage and demonstrate the effectiveness of distributed energy generation and energy storage technologies to provide for the energy needs of critical disaster resilience facilities located in areas of critical state concern during a natural disaster or declared state of emergency,” the bill’s text reads.

Through the pilot the benefits and costs of such solutions would be assessed and valued, with key facilities such as community centres, airports, public buildings, hospitals and disaster and emergency assembly zones under particular consideration for deployment of systems.

It defines the systems to be used as solar PV systems with integrated energy storage that could offset all or the majority of a facility’s energy demand in the event of a grid outage. Systems would have to have ‘islanding’ capabilities i.e. to be able to work independently of grid, with another technical specification proposed being that the batteries on any given site are capable of powering the facility for 24 hours of backup power for critical, ‘must-run’ functions, or for five hours of the facility’s “average daily usage”. Grants would be provided towards the cost of leasing or purchasing systems that are placed to serve critical disaster resilience facilities.

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Energy storage has been called a “swiss army knife” because it’s highly versatile, adaptable and can provide many different benefits to the grid. This flexibility can be financially rewarding. For example, when storage is deployed in behind-the-meter applications, it can be programmed to target different value streams like peak-demand shaving, time-of-use arbitrage or self-consumption. These value streams are effectively different ways for an energy storage system (ESS) to make money by reducing a customer’s utility bill.

Smart energy storage developers highlight the versatile nature of an ESS when selling systems today. It’s a powerful selling point to show that storage can make money in different ways. It’s also a compelling value proposition to show that storage can adapt to future policy changes. For example, when an ESS is paired with solar PV, it can hedge against future changes to utility rate design or net metering (NEM) rules that erode the economics of solar. Storage effectively acts like an insurance policy to preserve future savings. In some cases, storage may not make financial sense from a pure return-on-investment perspective. But if a customer is convinced that storage can future-proof his or her solar savings, this may be reason enough for them to pair an ESS with a PV system.

Solar economics are eroding

Electric utilities all over the country are proposing changes to their utility rate designs and net metering frameworks. In Q3 2017 alone, 41 states took action on distributed energy solar policy and/or rate design, according to the most recent 50 States of Solar Report, published by the NC Clean Energy Technology Center. The types of changes being proposed and implemented are all different, depending on the state and utility territory. The one commonality they share is that the changes almost always erode the value of solar. Meaning that the “avoided cost” that solar can achieve, gets diminished because of the policy change.

A great example of this is the new time-of-use rates (TOU) that went into effect in the San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) territory in December 2017. The new TOU rates, which solar customers are now being defaulted onto, dramatically shift the summer season on-peak period (the highest priced energy) from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., all the way out until 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the evening. This radical shift erodes the value of solar, as afternoon solar production now gets valued at a lower priced mid-peak rate, instead of the premium on-peak rate, as illustrated in the chart below for the DR-SES schedule.

In California, both Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison have proposed similar TOU window shifts in their most recent general rate case filings, which are likely to be adopted in 2018.

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U.S. energy storage increases 46% in 3rd Quarter. Hawaii, California, Massachusetts aim to be powered by 100% renewable energy by 2045.

The article “US Energy Storage Increases 46% in 3rd Quarter” by Joshua Hill, published on December 7, 2017, revealed the latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor report by Greentech Media (“GTM”) Research showed a total of 41.8 MW (megawatts) worth of new energy storage capacity was deployed in the third quarter of 2017, representing an increase of 46% year over year and 10% quarter over quarter.

Texas led the way in the utility-scale segment with its 30 MW project, followed by Massachusetts, California, and Hawaii. GTM Research also highlighted the increasing role that energy storage is having in utilities’ integrated resource planning (IRP), with utilities across 14 states including nearly 2 GW (gigawatts) worth of storage into their IRP thinking.

Another article by Joshua Hill – “California To Meet 2030 Renewable Energy Targets By 2020”, dated November 21, 2017 – indicates California state’s major utilities have already met and should soon exceed the state’s 2020 renewable energy target of 33%. The article also says they will likely meet the 2030 target of 50% by 2020.

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Most of the focus on energy storage safety has been on mobile applications, given the spate of exploding laptop and phone batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries used in those applications are under tighter restrictions for size and density that can lead to higher risks. 

Stationary storage applications are often safer than mobile uses because there are not the same space constraints. But in some markets, space can also be an issue for stationary storage, especially with projects that use lithium-ion batteries.

Such systems could get a higher profile this year with the expected release of new safety protocols.

New York standards

New York City is a prime example. The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) is working on drawing up standards to ensure the safe installation of battery storage projects, but population density and bureaucratic overlap still make New York one of the most restrictive markets for energy storage projects.

FDNY is collaborating with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the National Fire Protection Association, insurance companies and Consolidated Edison. Together they are working to come up with procedures and protocols for battery safety.

NYSERDA also is working with Con Ed on a joint battery energy storage safety initiative that aims to answer critical safety questions confronting FDNY and other agencies that are responsible for reviewing applications for energy storage installations. The initiative was undertaken in support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Reforming the Energy Vision, which, among other things, looks to reduce peak demand by using battery storage.

The city saw its first behind-the-meter installation last May — a 300 kW, 1.2 MWh lithium-ion battery project in Brooklyn. But that project is sited outside, where fire safety concerns are muted.

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On January 3rd, New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered a state energy storage target of 1500MW via the private market by 2025 and has put up $260 million in state money to help drive the investment.

In the annual “State of the State” address, varying proposals  – from combating MS-13, to cleaning up the Hudson River, to expanding clean energy jobs – were delivered to start the new year. The energy storage target delivered seems to be an extension or culmination of prior state legislation requiring targets be set.

The 20th proposal of New York’s State of the State address was specifically directed at “clean energy jobs and climate agenda.” Here are the key sub-components of the legislation:

• Expanding the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and reducing emissions from the highest-polluting, high demand “Peaker” power plants
• Issuing solicitations in 2018 and 2019 to develop 800MW of offshore wind while developing the job ecosystem surrounding the industry
• A 1500MW energy storage target, a $200 million fund at the state Green Bank to help drive pricing down for energy storage through strategic deployment
• A “Zero Cost Solar for All” program for 10,000 Low-Income New Yorkers
• NYSERDA being directed to invest at least $60 million in storage pilots plus other activities that reduce barriers and costs when deploying energy storage – such as developing smarter permitting, customer acquisition, interconnection, and financing processes

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