‘The cornerstone of the redesign of the electricity market’

California has already postponed and even canceled plans to build new natural-gas-fired power plants in favor of distributed energy. But it hasn’t proposed to replace an existing power plant with them — until now.

Early this month, the California Public Utilities Commission issued a resolution that would direct utility Pacific Gas & Electric to open competitive solicitations for DERs — energystorage mostly, but with room for other carbon-neutral “preferred resources” like demand response — to cover the grid capacity and voltage needs now being served by three Northern California natural-gas-fired power plants. 

Choosing which power plants are vital to keep the transmission grid running is the domain of the California Independent System Operator, not the CPUC. And the grid operator has designated the 580-megawatt Metcalf Energy Center south of San Jose, as well as the 47.6-megawatt Yuba River and Feather River generators as reliability must-run (RMR) resources. 

These RMR contracts come with secure, high payments for running relatively few hours per year — mainly during hot summer afternoons when air conditioning loads surge, demand spikes, and CAISO struggles to maintain the reserves to cover potential emergencies. Calpine, the owner of the plants, said they aren’t cost-competitive without RMR, and intends to seek that status with federal regulators, having passed over opportunities to bid their energy or capacity into resource adequacy or bilateral agreements. 

But California regulators argue that these must-run contracts are too expensive, and that distributed resources can replace them at lower cost to ratepayers. It also states that Calpine’s contracts failed to go through CAISO’s procurement process for flexible capacity, which could “lead to market distortions and unjust rates for power” in years to come.

That, the CPUC contends, gives it broad authority to allow solicitation of resources that can “fill local deficiencies.”

While the resolution doesn’t set a specific megawatt-hour target on what PG&E should procure, it does set some clear deadlines. If the resolution is passed, PG&E will have no more than 30 days to issue its first solicitations. Any resources the utility does procure will have to prove they’ll be ready in time to assure the RMR contracts won’t be renewed in 2019.

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Battery energy storage systems have always been in news. Given that inefficiencies in the power sector are always attributed to the fact that power can’t be stored at scale (so you need to over-build in every part of the value chain), grid scale storage solutions have been the holy grail for quite some time! As recent data suggests, this is not too far in the future. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has predicted cost of storage systems to fall to 1/10th of the 2010 levels by 2025 (see below). The learning curve of storage lies at 20%, which means that cost reduces by 20% for every doubling of storage capacity.

In addition to this story of energy storage becoming more mainstream, generally speaking, there are a few examples where BESS have solved here-and-now challenges for the grid. I want to highlight three such cases which highlight the coming of age of BESS. Two of them are for solving real, grid-scale challenges and one for grid planning.

Case 1: South Australia

This definitely is the most public of the cases so I might as well not talk about it! Legend has it that South Australia was suffering through a major grid instability back in December, 2016. Elon offered to solve the problem (through a series of tweets, mind you!) by installing a 100 MW/129 MWh battery pack in 100 days and ended up achieving it in 60 days!

Not only did this battery pack help solve a real problem for the customers in South Australia, it ended up doing it in record time. What’s more impressive is that another, larger, BESS system (100 MW/400 MWh) is already being deployed next to this system. BESS as a grid-scale solution has really arrived.

Case 2: Aliso Canyon (Southern California)

Although not talked about as broadly as South Australia, Aliso Canyon set the benchmark for speed of execution just earlier this year. For background, Aliso Canyon is a massive natural gas storage site in Southern California that experienced a catastrophic gas leak back in October, 2015, which impacted fuel supply for the gas plants in the area. This led to a declaration of state of emergency in California, with blackouts, and the Government hastily sanctioned procurement of 100 MW of BESS in Southern California.

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New York is the birthplace of our modern electrical grid. It’s a point of pride, but also a source of pain for New Yorkers since it means that we have the oldest and most outdated system in the nation. The inefficiencies and periodic failures of our electric grid cost New York businesses and citizens billions of dollars every year.

Entrepreneurs and investors are ready to deploy more advanced, cleaner technologies and services that will reduce the vulnerability of our grid to natural disasters (like Hurricanes Sandy and Irene) and terrorist threats. They’re ready to deploy solutions that will benefit both urban and rural communities.

There’s one problem: They’re prevented by outdated electricity sector regulations. 

In an effort to address the outmoded rules and regulations that prevent innovation in our electrical system, New York state has been working for three and a half years on the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) process. The purpose is to enable the transition to a modern, distributed and clean electrical grid that includes critical energystoragetechnologies.

Much emphasis has been put on solar power and other renewables, but there are still no clear market guidelines for energy storage — meaning that many of the critical technologies needed to modernize and harden our grid to both natural and manmade disasters cannot be deployed at meaningful scale in the Empire State.

This inability of the New York Public Service Commission (PSC) to successfully implement REV has forced the legislature to take action. In June legislators unanimously passed an energy storage bill (A.6571 in the Assembly and S.5190 in the Senate). Thankfully, Governor Cuomo signed it into law at the beginning of December.

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AMHERST — Chemists have been trying for years to make a new type of battery that can store solar energy in chemical bonds rather than electrons, and release the energy on demand as heat instead of electricity — addressing the need for long-term, stable, efficient storage of solar power.

Now, chemists at the University of Massachusetts report that they have solved one of the major hurdles in the field by developing a polymer-based system. This method can yield energy storage density — the amount of energy stored — more than two times higher than previous polymer systems. Details appear in the current issue of Scientific Reports​​​​​​.

UMass researchers said previous high energy storage density achieved in a polymeric system was in the range of 200 Joules per gram, while the new system is able to reach an average of 510 Joules per gram, with a maximum of 690.

Lead researcher Dhandapani Venkataraman said, “Theory says that we should be able to achieve 800 Joules per gram, but nobody could do it. This paper reports that we’ve reached one of the highest energy densities stored per gram in a polymeric system, and how we did it.”

The authors said applications for the new technology include solar pads that collect and store energy by day then heat food, living spaces, clothing or blankets at night. They noted that this approach will be especially valuable in areas where there is no access to a power grid.

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LONDON/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Dutch energy storage systems group Alfen is planning a share market listing in Amsterdam in the first half of 2018, hoping to benefit from surging demand for its large batteries and electronic vehicle charging stations, people close to the matter said.

The company’s owner, investment firm Infestos, is working with ABN Amro (ABNd.AS) and Barclays (BARC.L) to organize the flotation as global coordinators, they added.

The firm may be valued at 500 to 600 million euros ($591-709 million) in a flotation, one of the people said.

Infestos, Alfen and the banks declined to comment or were not immediately available for comment.

Alfen, founded in 1937 as a maker of high- and low-voltage equipment, diversified into electronic car charging stations in 2007 and into large-scale batteries in 2013. The energy storage systems provide utilities with a means to help balance supplies from intermittent solar and wind power production.

Alfen was part of construction group TBI from 1971, which sold the company to Infestos in 2014.

According to an undated page on Infestos’s website, Alfen has 250 employees and about 100 million euros in annual revenue.

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The British retailer, Marks and Spencer, and the property developer, Landsec, announced that they are exploring battery storage technologies on their estates.

At a recent edie webinar, hosted on the topic of energy resilience, Energy Managers for the two companies revealed their interest in the technologies.

Maria Spyrou, Energy Manager at Marks and Spencer, confirmed that the company is currently undergoing feasibility checks.

Landsec’s Energy Manager, Charles Sainsbury, also commented that for the firm, energy storage is ‘crucial’ for security.

“We’re committed to looking at energy security as one of the biggest issues for our company in terms of infrastructure and energy supply,” Mr Sainsbury reported.

“It’s a big part of what we do. We are constantly looking at opportunities where we can bring in battery storage across our sites.”

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When you hear energy storage and graphene mentioned in the same sentence this usually refers to electrical energy. Let’s take a brief look at some of the research that has been coming out of the labs recently…

Batteries

Energy storage is of critical interest in road transport because you have to carry the energy you need around with you. Electric vehicles (EVs) run on batteries.

Batteries work by storing electrical energy in a chemical reaction. When the battery is connected and circuit is made, the pathway for the reaction is opened and electricity is released in a controlled way.

There are two problems with the technology. Firstly the batteries take a long time to charge. Secondly they don’t store a lot of energy in comparison with liquid fuels like diesel.

This means you cannot travel long distances without recharging. Then when you connect to the power grid you have to wait quite some time for the batteries to recharge.

Improving batteries with graphene

Recent work reveals that graphene could help with the charging time. Samsung claim to have developed a graphene coating for the electrodes that can make batteries recharge faster.

The secret seems to be that they have made a graphene powder from graphite with a sophisticated milling technique developed by the Hosokawa Micron Corporation in Japan. This machine is called the Nobilta. It grinds up solid graphite to create an exfoliated graphene nanoplatelet powder that looks a bit like microscopic popcorn.

This form of graphene is coated on the battery electrodes. It has a high surface area, which means there are more sites for the chemical reaction to operate. This is why the reaction can go faster and this speeds up the charging time. However it is hard to see how this development can increase the energy density of the battery.

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With renewable energy generation now cost-competitive with electricity produced from fossil fuels, significant challenges remain in how to integrate renewable energy into power grids and systems, as renewables cannot always match supply with demand.

Sustainable energy company, Vestas, and battery-manufacturer, Northvolt, announced a technology collaboration on the development of a lithium-ion battery platform for Vestas power plants. As an initial phase of the partnership, Vestas is investing 10 million EUR.

The solution to solving this challenge is storing renewably-generated electricity so it can be provided when needed. Battery storage is a key technology to support the large-scale integration of renewable energy into energy systems and to speed up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

In this context, providers of both wind energy technologies and battery technologies are looking for ways to accelerate this integration.

With the support of Northvolt, Vestas is looking to bring the most competitive and sustainable hybrid storage solutions to the market and to better integrate storage and renewable energy generation technologies as a means to meet broader industry challenges and increase the uptake of more renewables.

This is being done both through existing research and development and by combining it with unique competencies and experiences of new partners. In this way, Northvolt will become a part of Vestas’ hybrid supplier ecosystem.

Northvolt, with the support of Vestas, is looking to better understand the needs of the renewable energy sector in order to develop batteries for solution providers and OEMs. Northvolt is building a next-generation battery factory with the aim to produce the world’s greenest batteries to enable and accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

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With energy storage deployments in the US up almost 50% year-on-year, according to GTM Research analysis, the next big question for the industry might be who gets to own all of the assets.

In the latest edition of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s downstream tech journal for the global PV industry, Jigar Shah, clean energy entrepreneur and financier says in an interview that he expects 2018 to be a year that utilities in the US start to carve themselves a bigger stake in the nascent industry.

Speaking in the ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of the journal, which is brought to you by the Energy-Storage.News team, Shah says that many utilities in the US, that were similarly sceptical on the potential of solar PV some years back before beginning a wave of deployments and acquisitions, are increasingly seeing the value of energy storage.

“Energy storage has broken through such that utilities [in the US] admit that their value is very high, at least to a 3.5% penetration,” Shah says in the interview.

“The fight now is really about who owns the storage – I am inclined to believe that the utility companies will win that battle.”

In solar, there was a long period – still extant in some states of the US – when utilities were often accused of trying to shut down the industry, particularly rooftop PV. Having seen their retail electricity business eroded and less and less customers fully reliant on the grid, utilities were often accused by the industry and advocates of lobbying against solar through self-interest. The picture is now rapidly changing, with major utilities such as Duke Energy and California’s main investor-owned utilities all prolifically deploying renewables.

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