Tesla has now finished construction work on the 129 megawatt-hour (MWh) energy storage facility that it was contracted to build in South Australia, the government of the region has revealed.

The news means that Tesla has finished construction well before its self-imposed 100-day deadline — which means that Tesla won’t be providing the installation free of charge to South Australia (the promise had been “100 days from contract signature or it is free”). To clarify, that meant within 100 days of the signing of a grid connection agreement (which was signed on September 29th).

The facility reportedly now represents the world’s largest lithium-ion battery energy storage installation — dwarfing most others. The large size was important to help South Australia avoid power supply issues, which have been topics of much news coverage and political rugby ball in recent times.

Reuters provides more context on how quickly Tesla got the job done, and touches on other matters I’m sure readers are interested in: “When the grid connection deal was signed on Sept 29, Tesla was already half way through installing the battery packs. The Tesla Powerpacks have now been fully installed at a wind farm run by France’s Neoen, and testing is set to begin to provide grid security services in South Australia. … The state has yet to say how much it would pay for the battery, which is part of a A$510 million ($390 million) plan that includes diesel-fired generators to help keep the lights on following a string of blackouts over the past 18 months.”

“While others are just talking, we are delivering our energy plan, making South Australia more self-sufficient, and providing back up power and more affordable energy for South Australians this summer,” commented South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill.

While the new energy storage installation will no doubt be helpful in dealing with grid supply over the coming years, there will still be a tight power supply this summer — particularly in South Australia and in Victoria — owing to the recent closure of a large coal-fired power plant. That’s according to Australia’s energy market operator. So, don’t expect that this giant 129 MWh Tesla Powerpack facility gets the region completely out of the woods.

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The growth of energy storage from a complementary but ultimately unnecessary addition to renewable energy projects to a valuable standalone commodity has rocked the energy world and even entrenched fossil fuel-dependent countries like Australia, and new figures from Navigant Research identify over 1,700 energy storage projects around the world.

Clean energy technology research firm Navigant Research published its Energy Storage Tracker 3Q17 report this week in which it identifies more than 1,700 energy storage projects worldwide, well up from the 1,420 energy storage projects in existence identified in the first quarter of this year. The following chart outlines new deployed storage power capacity across global markets year-to-date through to the end of the third-quarter of 2017:

“The global energy storage industry is poised to continue to grow quickly over the next several years, especially in emerging economies,” said Ian McClenny, research analyst with Navigant Research. “With emerging infrastructure becoming increasingly integrated, dynamic, and complex, flexible resources like storage will provide added value to existing and new power generating assets.”

Further, improvements in energy storage technologies, developing regional regulatory and market drivers, and emerging new business models are all poised to drive the growth of the energy storage industry, according to Navigant Research. More than growth in the sector itself, Navigant predicts a growing need for energy storage around the world.

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The energystorageindustry is set to rise dramatically — for those companies that can play the long game. 

Bloomberg New Energy Finance released a report Tuesday that forecasts the global energy storage market will “double six times” from now to 2030, from a meager starting point of less than 5 gigawatt-hours last year, to more than 300 gigawatt-hours and 125 gigawatts of capacity by the end of the next decade. An estimated $103 billion will be invested in energy storage over that time period.

The trajectory for energy storage mirrors the market expansion that solar went through from 2000 to 2015, when the share of solar PV as a percentage of total generation doubled seven times. 

This rapid global growth rate tracks well with the U.S. energy storage market forecast from GTM Research, which projects a twelvefold growth in the U.S. alone between 2016 and 2022, to reach 7.2 gigawatt-hours, or 2.6 gigawatts, of capacity. 

This growth is going to be driven by both cost reductions for batteries and associated systems, and a rising need for more gigawatts of flexibility to manage the ups and downs of an increasingly wind- and solar-powered grid, according to BNEF energy storage analyst and lead report author Yayoi Sekine. “With so much investment going into battery technology, falling costs and with significant addition of wind and solar capacity in all markets, energy storage will play a crucial part in the energy transformation,” she said.

On the cost side, BNEF sees utility-scale battery systems falling from about $700 per kilowatt-hour in 2016 to less than $300 per kilowatt-hour in 2030. That’s in line with other projections that see stationary storage benefiting from investments into the mass manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for consumer electronics and electric vehicles.

On the demand side, 70 percent of global capacity through 2030 will be installed in eight countries: the U.S., China, Japan, India, Germany, U.K., Australia and South Korea. The primary driver in each will be managing an increasingly renewable and intermittent energy resource mix.

Earlier this month, BNEF released a report that illustrated how some of the most renewables-rich markets will be pressed to incorporate energy storage at record scale. The report found that “future energy systems in the U.K. and Germany with very high levels of variable renewable generation must be complemented by flexible resources, including energy storage.”

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Vertical integration of supply chain

Titanium electrode supply deal for Primus

For the most part, it will take some years for solar-plus-storage in the ASEAN region to become economically viable on a large scale, but panellists at the opening day of Solar and Off-Grid Renewables Southeast Asia event in Bangkok, have warned that investors who come on board quickest are going to gain a huge advantage.

The ‘ASEAN Storage Market Potential’ session saw panellists disagree strongly over whether solar-plus-storage had already become an economically viable solution, with some claiming it had already reached grid parity with conventional power generation.

Leandro Leviste, CEO, Solar Philippines, said there was a need for more “daring” developers to enter Southeast Asia and take risks to allow for solar and storage to take on coal-fired power through the unregulated market. This echoed comments back in October about how Leviste’s company had commissioned a large-scale solar project in the Philippines without receiving approval from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), achieving a sub-6 US cents per unit tariff by taking merchant risk.

However, not all developers are able to take these risks from either a PV or solar-plus-storage perspective.

Edward Douglas, partner at Southeast Asia renewables-focused firm, Armstrong Asset management, said that putting together a commercial solution for PV and storage had been a challenge. He also noted that there is a lack of system integrators in the region and the storage technology providers were not interested in the smaller markets so far.

He added: “You’ve got this situation where, commercially, from a financing standpoint, the battery guys won’t want the work of the system integrator and vice versa.”

However, he also said the potential for solar-plus-storage is enormous, adding: “Investors aren’t waking up to it really yet; they are beginning to, but the execution of that idea or potential into real projects isn’t happening quickly enough and I think investors who manage to put their pieces in place quickest are going to gain a very significant advantage, because the cost curves like solar are moving much more quickly than most people anticipate.”

Patrick Jaeger, vice president of Conergy Group, a frontrunner in storage deployment, said there was still a lack of understanding of how storage and solar really work when connected to the grid. This was in spite of the large amount of theorising and risk modelling that has been undertaken already. Jaeger also said regulation is far behind the energy storage concepts and this “throws wrenches” into people’s economic models.

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Australia has been named as one of eight countries expected to lead a massive boom in energy storage uptake that will see the global market double six times over between 2016 and 2030, to an installed total of 125GW/305 gigawatt-hours in 2030.

In its Energy Storage Forecast, 2017-30, released on Tuesday, Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts the global energy storage market will follow a “remarkable” growth trajectory similar to that charted by the solar industry between 2000 to 2015.

The report predicts that the global energy storage market will grow to a cumulative 125GW/305GWh by 2030, attracting $US103 billion in investment over this period, as behind the meter storage becomes “ubiquitous” in countries like Australia, and combines with utility-scale storage to play a crucial role in the transition to renewables.

And as we have seen with solar, energy storage market momentum will be driven by falling costs – in the case of lithium-ion battery systems, for example, BNEF is forecasting annual cost reductions of around 10 per cent from now to 2020, and 7 per cent a year by 2030. (Although this will mostly be driven by demand from a booming electric vehicle market, the report says.)

“The industry has just begun,” said BNEF energy storage analyst Yayoi Sekine, lead author of the report, in comments on Tuesday. “With so much investment going into battery technology, falling costs and with significant addition of wind and solar capacity in all markets, energy storage will play a crucial part in the energy transformation.”

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The global energy storage market looks to mirror the rapid growth the solar industry experienced between 2000 and 2015, with a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) report predicting that the energy storage market will double six times by 2030.

BNEF released a new report on Monday (20 November), which predicts that the energy storage market will grow to 125GW between 2016 and 2030, creating an output of 305gWh. This growth is remarkably similar to the trajectory the solar industry experienced for 15 years from 2000, when the share of photovoltaics in the energy mix doubled seven times.

BNEF energy storage analyst Yayoi Sekine said: “The industry has just begun. With so much investment going into battery technology, falling costs and with significant addition of wind and solar capacity in all markets, energy storage will play a crucial part in the energy transformation.”

The Global Energy Storage Forecast report notes that the UK, the US, China, Germany, Australia, Japan, India and South Korea will account for 70% of all installed capacity. Both utility-scale and behind-the-meter installations will be issued to create a “crucial source of flexibility” capable of handling an influx of renewable energy, the report notes.

BNEF predicts that more than $100bn will be invested during the next 15 years in the energy storage markets, spread equally across continents. A previous energy storage forecast from BNEF suggested that energy storage system investments would cost $8.2bn annually by 2024, before reaching $250bn by 2040.

The revised investment prediction is based on BNEF’s own calculations that battery technology costs will fall to $120 per kWh by 2030.

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A new report into energy storage commissioned by chief scientist Alan Finkel highlights the enormous opportunities for storage in Australia, but underlines how little is actually needed over the short to medium term, even at relatively high levels of wind and solar.

The report, The role of Energy Storage in Australia’s Future Energy Supply Mix, funded by Finkel’s office and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), says the required investment in energy security and reliability over the next 5-10 years will be minimal (see graph above), even if wind and solar deployment moves far beyond levels contemplated by the Energy Security Board.

The contrast with the ESB modelling – and the attempts by Coalition parties at state and federal level to dismiss high levels of renewable energy as “reckless’ – could not be more pronounced.

While the ESB, in arguing for a National Energy Guarantee, speaks of the system threats and urgency to act with a level of “variable” renewables accounting for between 18 and 24 per cent of total generation, this new report says surprising little storage may be needed with 35 per cent to 50 per cent wind and solar.

Even in the 50 per cent variable renewable energy scenario – more than double that contemplated at the high end by the ESB – the new report suggests enough battery storage may be available “behind the meter” – households and businesses – to meet the storage needs.

In one of the most detailed reports into energy storage, the authors point to the huge potential of battery and energy storage in Australia – both in core mineral resources, manufacturing of battery storage, R&D,  deployment, and even renewable hydrogen.

At the same time, the report also warns that Australia needs to develop a recycling strategy for battery storage, and also needs to take into account other social aspects, such as the origins of lithium and cobalt.

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The starting point is that Australia’s electricity sector will get a minimum 35 per cent and potentially 75 per cent of power from ­renewable sources by 2030. South Australia and Tasmania could be as high as 100 per cent by this time.

To achieve it, storage costs alone could top $22 billion.

The report, compiled by the Australian Council of Learned Academies, says this spending will be critical to make intermittent wind and solar power possible at this scale.

Also critical would be “financial incentives” for either states or the private sector to build the level of storage required. Without storage, the council report says, the costs of electricity in Australia will continue to increase with “large negative implications” for the Aust­ralian economy.

There is plenty of political mischief in the projections for renewable energy penetration and potential cost. But, given that global climate change talks limped over the line in Bonn at the weekend there is reason to expect the global fixation on renewable energy generation and how to store it will become only more pressing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change talks in Bonn achieved little other than survive US President Donald Trump’s ­declaration of withdrawal.

The more significant meeting will take place in France next month where the Paris Agreement host nation will work to keep the proposed $100 billion-a-year ­climate funding promise alive without US participation.

But lobby groups are already ramping up demands for government’s to increase their “ambition” ahead of next year’s meeting. Storage is the big hope but still poorly understood, ­especially in Australia.

The council report says the most likely forms of energy storage over the coming decade or so are pumped hydro, batteries, compressed air and molten salt.

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