Solar energy and energy storage have always been natural partners for homeowners and businesses who want to produce their own energy. But the energy storage side of the equation has never made economic sense, partly because batteries are expensive and partly because residential and commercial solar owners can export electricity to the grid under net metering. 

What’s changing right now is that battery costs are coming down rapidly and net metering is coming under pressure as utilities try to fight off growing residential and commercial solar installations. That creates an opening for solar and battery storage to become a booming market as companies create the technology that allows people to produce and consume more of their energy on-site. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWR), SolarEdge(NASDAQ:SEDG), and Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN) are the four companies to watch as the industry grows. 

Tesla

Tesla’s Powerwall is probably the most well-known battery for residential solar systems, making the company a leader in the market. The Powerwall combines an inverter with a 13.5 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery and controls for your energy system. It will connect to a solar system as well as Tesla vehicles, charging when you want it to and providing backup power for the home. 

Also, don’t forget about Tesla’s scalable Powerpack battery system. It’s one of the leading products in commercial and utility scale energy storage. The company just completed a 129 megawatt-hour (MWh) energy storage system in South Australia, the biggest lithium-ion battery storage system in the world. 

What Tesla can do is sell energy storage systems through SolarCity and through other installers. That makes it a solar battery storage powerhouse with a number of ways to grow in energy long-term. 

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Australian large-scale renewables investor Lyon Group has confirmed it is selling three projects under development, totalling 800MWh of energy storage and 545MW of PV generation capacity, in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia.

The group said on Friday in a statement sent to Energy-Storage.News that the Cape York, Nowingi and Riverland projects are expected to be sold by the end of this year. Lyon already has a shortlist of bidders, but refused to reveal names at this stage.

The sales will help support Lyon Group’s ongoing strategy to develop more than 2,000MW of solar PV and over 1,000MW of battery energy storage within the next three years. The company was behind the development of Australia’s first utility-scale solar-plus-storage facility, Lakeland in Queensland, which pairs 22MW of solar with 1.4MW of energy storage.

Lyon Group launched a ‘Battery storage market services tender’ for 640MWh of energy storage across the three projects in June, open to electricity retailers and generators, heavy electricity users, and other sector participants.

The Riverland project in South Australia features what is thought will be the world’s largest lithium battery installation to date when completed, pairing 240MW of solar PV with 100MW / 400MWh of energy storage, although the solar portion could be scaled up to 330MW in future. It will take the ‘world’s largest’ crown from Tesla’s just-completed 129MWh project, also in South Australia.

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As renewable sources of energy like wind and solar gain traction, scientists and engineers are eyeing new ways to store that energy in a cost-efficient manner — laying the groundwork for a future in which renewables rival fossil fuels in powering our homes and vehicles.

Over the last decade, Sunverge has become a preferred provider of home solar-battery systems to utilities. It rivals Tesla in scope and scale of its deployments, if not in its marketing hype. 

But just like Tesla, the startup has seen its share of struggles, albeit of a different scope.

While Tesla is seeking mass-market acceptance for its Powerwalls (and achieving decidedly mixed results in terms of keeping production on track with its sales) Sunverge has shifted from making its own battery units to providing software to utilities, in hopes of finding a niche as a trusted virtual power plant (VPP) platform provider. 

On Tuesday, the company announced three more utility customers, including two with some advanced interest in solving the solar-storage grid challenge. 

The first, Arizona Public Service, plans a neighborhood-scale installation of Sunverge One battery-inverter units, along with home energy controllers, to help balance the rising neighborhood-level swells and sags in customer-generated solar power throughout the day. 

This pilot is the latest in the utility’s long-running study ofstorage power electronics and communications to manage its rising tide of customer-generated solar power. The first round, a joint effort with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), has been testing megawatt-scale grid batteries, as well as more than 1,600 advanced inverters. This next phase, known as the Solar Innovation Study, involves distributed energy resources at the residential scale, including rooftop solar, load controllers, HVAC systems and battery storage. 

The Sunverge One, the company’s basic 6.4-kilowatt, 11.8 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery and inverter unit, has a decidedly low-key feel, suggesting more of an outdoor air conditioning unit than Tesla’s futuristic turtle-shell wall mounting. That’s partly because it’s meant to be installed outdoors, and is rated to withstand the typical utility ranges of heat, cold and rain, and partly because Sunverge seeks to involve the customers as little as possible in the unit’s overall operation, beyond informing them how much it’s earned them over the course of time. 

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BYD Co Ltd (OTCPK:OTCPK:BYDDF) is looking to seize energy storage business opportunities around the world. Recent contract wins in both residential and commercial emphasize the company’s worldwide reach and competitive position. Many other companies, including Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), are optimistic about the business as well. BYD may have the competitive advantage, though. Its founder and chairman has very ambitious targets for future growth.

North America

Energy storage systems are benefiting everywhere from a combination of rapidly falling costs, improved capability and greater industry expertise. Many Governments are looking to subsidize the business short-term. Consumer interest is showing strong levels. The World Bank has predicted that 378.1GW of solar and wind generating capacity will come on-stream between 2017 and 2022. They see the main barrier as up-front cost. However costs are falling across the board. Thus payback times are shortening. The affluent USA did lead in such early applications, but may now fall behind the rest of the world.

Energy storage systems are still increasing in the USA. It is estimated that 260 MW was installed last year. This has been encouraged by a decline in net metering. This makes it now more viable for the consumer to store energy. Commercially the market will be hampered by the lack of clear direction and policy initiatives from the Federal Government. Individual States very much have individual policies.

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Annette Verschuren, Chair and CEO at NRStor Inc., said, “This facility is a major milestone in the development and expansion of the Canadian energy storage market. The facility allows NRStor C&I to accelerate its deployment of BTM commercial, industrial, and institutional energy storage solutions. Incorporating long term flexible and sustainable solutions is our mission and we are delighted to be working with SUSI Partners in growing this sector.”

The SUSI Energy Storage Infrastructure Fund finances storage projects in the areas of spectrum regulation, load management and off-grid solutions with a focus on the OECD area.

Asif Rafique, Managing Director of Energy Storage at SUSI Partners, states: “Our agreement with NRStor C&I represents another important step for the SESF and the wider energy storage market. We are delighted to complete this deal with NRStor’s market-leading team and are looking forward to realizing further investments in the near term.”

Otto von Troschke, CIO and co-founder of SUSI Partners, pointed out his company “has a solid track record of energy efficiency projects with commercial and industrial customers and is now pleased to tap into this customer segment in the energy storage sector as well. “

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The latest “Energy storage forecast 2016–2030” from Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts explosive growth in energy storage over the next 12 years. BNEF says storage will grow in much the same way that solar power grew between 2010 and 2015. Solar power expanded 700% during that time. It sees a six fold increase in energy storage to 305 gigawatt-hours between now and the year 2030. Making that happen will require an investment in excess of $100 billion.

The United States is expected to be responsible for a quarter of the new storage capacity, with the remainder spread among nations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. China, Japan, India, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and the UK will play a major role in the expansion, according to BNEF. “Energy storage, both utility-scale and behind-the-meter, will be a crucial source of flexibility throughout this period and will be essential to integrating increasing levels of renewable energy,” reads a statement from the BNEF staff.

The International Renewable Energy Agency says battery storage worldwide totaled only 1 gigawatt-hour at the beginning of 2017. Its prediction is that there will be 250 gigawatt-hours of storage installed by 2030. Either way, the increase in energy storage should be nothing short of meteoric in the coming decade or so.

One aspect of the latest advisory from BNEF that has gone under-reported is this — BNEF expects fully 50% of that increase in energy storage to take place “behind the meter.” In other words, storage by large commercial actors such as Walmart, Google, Amazon, and other large businesses, combined with residential solutions, will account for more of the new storage capacity as grid-scale storage for utilities.

BNEF says, “Utility-scale storage will be built to provide system-level services in the near term, but aggregating behind-the-meter energy storage becomes a viable alternative as the market for customer-sited storage grows. By 2030, behind-the-meter systems will represent over half of total capacity. These systems can also provide services such as frequency regulation and peaking capacity, on top of the savings they generate for customers.” It expects $30 billion will be invested in residential storage during this expansion phase.

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Swiss institutional investment group SUSI Partners has agreed to finance C$120 million (US$94.56 million) of commercial and industrial (C&I) sector energy storage projects by Canadian project developer/owner NRStor.

Toronto-headquartered NRStor completed one of Canada’s first large-scale grid-connected energy storage systems, a 2MW flywheel system using 10 separate Temporal Power flywheels, in 2014. That appears to be the only completed project in the company’s portfolio as listed on the NRStor website, but in late 2016, the company signed a deal with fellow Canadian company Hydrostor, which delivers advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) from underground caverns, to jointly develop utility-scale energy storage projects across Canada.

Meanwhile SUSI Partners’ SUSI Energy Storage Fund hit energy storage industry headlines when it provided third-party project financing for 12MW of Canadian energy storage projects with developer Convergent Energy and Power. At the time, Florian Mayr of consultancy Apricum, who advised on the deal, said the arrival of an institutional investor such as SUSI in the space spoke volumes about the promise of energy storage as a technology and economic opportunity.

“SUSI Partners has clearly realized the high potential of the energy storage market for its institutional investors seeking attractive risk-adjusted returns in a rapidly growing infrastructure asset class that also contributes to the mitigation of climate change,” Mayr said at the time.

The investment group has earmarked a total of €250 million (US$298.7 million) for investment in energy storage and related areas such as smart microgrids, which SUSI said will be open to investors until early next year. SUSI reached the closing of a €66 million (US$70.4 million) fund in April, garnering investments from pension funds and other institutional investors. 

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StorEn Technology* is developing a new generation of vanadium flow batteries to meet the growing market demand for cost-effective energy storage.

Unlike conventional batteries that store their reactive materials within their cells, vanadium flow batteries are a type of rechargeable battery in which the energy is stored chemically in a liquid electrolyte contained in two tanks.

Stor.En has developed Multigrid™ technology that improves the electrical efficiency of the stack, helping reduce costs for storage solutions for residential, industrial, or utility needs.

The following is an interview with StorEn’s Chief Technology Officer, Angelo D’An

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Filipino firm Kennedy Renewable + Technology Corp has partnered with AC Energy to provide seven school campus buildings in the Island of Tawi-Tawi, south Philippines, with solar-plus-storage systems.

In this remote province, just 30% of the population has access to electricity, with most power sourced from diesel generators and often hit by blackouts.

Such rolling blackouts have negatively affected the Mindanao State University (MSU) in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, which is aiming to be a centre for excellence in the areas of fisheries, marine and maritime science and engineering, as well as oceanography.

Kennedy is the main developer, while AC Energy is offering technical and financial support. The two firms equipped the campuses with solar panels, hybrid inverters and batteries, providing not only 141kW capacity to the university but also energy storage capability to help the school deliver uninterrupted education despite the inefficiencies of the local power supply.

Dr. Philip Ella Juico, chairman of Kennedy Renewable + Technology Corp, said: “The successful launch of this project highlights the reality of conglomerates successfully working with small companies that labour under challenging circumstances to promote sustainable development. This installation is a living, although modest testament of how organizations like AC Energy and Kennedy Renewable + Technology Corp. solve real problems of power shortages that affect critical institutions in remote areas. Many more projects like this will help advance the cause of energy derived from sources that are replenished by nature.”

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