Energy Secretary Rick Perry hailed energy storage Thursday, describing it as the “holy grail” of energy. The Trump administration, however, doesn’t share Perry’s enthusiasm for the technology, based on its budget request to Congress.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy storage program would see its budget cut by 61 percent — from $20.5 million to $8 million — under President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal. The administration’s lack of interest in funding energy storage, though, hasn’t stopped Perry from touting its value.

“The holy grail of energy … is about battery storage,” Perry said Thursday at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by Axios and NBC News. “Battery storage changes the world, I would suggest, the same way that hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling has changed the world.”

DOE’s energy storage program is housed in its Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, whose budget would plunge from $230 million to $120 million under Trump’s proposed budget. A House-passed appropriations bill, however, would set funding for the office at $219 million for the fiscal year.

DOE’s storage program performs research and development on a wide array of storage programs, including solid state batteries, flow batteries, flywheels, and compressed air. Gigawatt-scale grid storage would improve the transmission and distribution system, resulting in lower future investments necessary to ensure grid stability. One of the barriers to lowering the cost of energy storage is that public research and development spending in energy storage has slowed down, even as reliable electric power delivery has become a higher priority.

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HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant of Four Seas (Suzhou) Food Co., Ltd. made by Narada has been put into operation recently. This is the first modular pre-installed energy storage station in China.

This Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant is located inside the factory of Four Seas in Suzhou, and the scale of the project is 250KW/1MWH, which covers 45m², and the expected life is 10 years.

Narada has been constantly exploring new models of energy storage power station construction, this modular pre-assemble energy storage station filled the gap at home and abroad. This Power Plant consists of prefabricated foundation module and prefabricated standard container. Some advantages of this Power Plant are short construction period, controllable construction quality, saving the required area and cost, high reliability, expandability, less service interface and being in harmony with environment.

The commissioning work have already been done in the factory. It can be operated while it is connected to the grid.

The 20-ft prefabricated standard container and prefabricated foundation module was, for the first time, carried out by the modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant. After completing the design of the power plant, the factory started simultaneous installation of prefabricated foundation module and construction of prefabricated standard container. The whole construction period, from the installation of pre-fabricated foundation to positioning and hoisting the container, is no more than a week.

The Modularized and Pre-installed Battery Energy Storage Power Plant reduces the load of the main power network by discharging at peak periods and increasing power utilization rate at non-peak period through charging the system.

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Duke Energy is planning to develop and install battery storage materials and PV panels that will serve as part of a microgrid system at the Indiana National Guard’s Camp Atterbury in Johnson County, Indiana.

As part of the development of the site, the North Carolina-headquartered utility and holding company will also install battery storage equipment at a substation in Nabb, Indiana.

Before work can begin, plans for the project must be approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. It would be the first microgrid installed at a National Guard facility in Indiana.

Melody Birmingham-Byrd, Duke Energy Indiana state president, said: “Given our recent success with the installation of a 17MW solar power plant at Naval Support Activity Crane, we were eager to find another opportunity to join with the US military to incorporate new technology into our grid operations. The project at Camp Atterbury will help us gain valuable operating experience and may help determine how best to expand the new technology to other areas.”

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While the overall volume of energy storage deployments in the United States remains relatively modest, the technology is gaining more and more traction with utilities and policymakers, as evidenced in North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center’s (NCCETC) latest 50 States of Grid Modernization report.

NCCETC found that among the 33 states that took legislative or regulatory action on grid modernization in Q3, 26 took some sort of action on energy storage. This includes not only the usual suspects of California, and the Northeastern states, but also an increasingly broad group of states in the South, the Mountain West and the Midwest.

In fact, among the top policy actions identified by NCCETC during the quarter is a move by regulators in both Washington State and New Mexico to require utilities to fully evaluate energy storage alongside other options in their integrated resource plans.

In many cases regulators are simply calling for utilities to deploy energy storage, and NCCETC found 14 policy actions related to storage deployment during Q3.

Utilities discover batteries

But far from having storage forced upon them, many utilities are seeking to deploy batteries and other forms of energy storage. During Q3, an administrative law judge in Texas has recommended that AEP be allowed to own battery storage, after the utility proposed deploying two battery storage systems to defer transmission and distribution investments.

NCCETC says that this trend goes beyond batteries. “Distributed energy resources are being increasingly viewed as a potential solution, rather than simply a challenge,” states Autumn Proudlove, the report’s author and manager of policy research at NCCETC.

A similar conclusion was reached by Smart Electric Power Association, which reported in September that the majority of utilities it surveyed planned to offer behind-the-meter storage programs for residential and/or commercial and industrial customers.

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The research was carried out by Robert Mokaya, Professor of Materials Chemistry, and Troy Scott Blankenship, an undergraduate project student, in the School of Chemistry and has been published in the academic journal Energy and Environmental Science.

Professor Mokaya said: “We have utilised cigarette butt waste as starting material to prepare energy materials that offer unprecedented hydrogen storage properties. This may not only address an intractable environmental pollution problem – cigarette butts – but also offers new insights into converting a major waste product into very attractive hydrogen storage materials.”

Hydrogen is attractive as a fuel because whether it is burned to produce heat or reacted with air in a fuel cell to produce electricity, the only by-product is water.

Solving a major waste disposal problem

Every year nearly six trillion cigarettes are smoked worldwide. This generates more than 800,000 metric tons of cigarette butts. Apart from causing unsightly litter, cigarette butts contain contaminants such as toxic heavy metals which can leach into waterways potentially causing harm to both humans and wildlife.

Cigarette butts – used cigarette filters – are a lingering pollution hazard because they mainly contain cellulose acetate which is non-biodegradable. However, the cellulose acetate makes them an attractive starting material for valorisation to porous carbons. Such valorization is in line with the current trend to move away from coal-based carbonaceous precursors to biomass-derived or waste-based starting materials for porous carbon synthesis.

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Energy flows from the Permian Basin in more forms than crude oil and natural gas. West Texas is home to some of the nation’s largest wind farms, and work has been done on developing solar and geothermal energy as well.

Now West Texas is becoming home to the development of energy storage, which will become an important piece of future energy infrastructure. Essen-Germany-based E.ON, an energy network, customer solution and renewables-focused company, has broken ground on two short-duration energy storage projects on its wind farms near Roscoe.

Texas Waves, located on E.ON’s Pyron and Inadale wind farms, consists of two 9.9 megawatt short-duration energy storage projects using lithium-ion battery technology. Texas Waves is designed to provide ancillary services to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas market in order to respond to shifts in power demand quickly and increasing reliability and efficiency. The projects will be E.ON’s second and third grid-connected lithium-ion battery systems installed in North America and are expected to be online by the end of the year.

Mark Frigo, vice president of energy storage, North America, at E.ON, provided some insight on Texas Waves via email.

MRT: This may be an elementary question, but are lithium-ion batteries already a part of the wind farm industry?

Frigo: Actually, not really. These batteries are becoming a growing part of the overall power industry, and especially the renewables industry (wind + solar) because they are becoming much more cost effective. They are a solution to the generation intermittency problem that is inherent with renewable generation.

MRT: Power is an integral part of oil and gas production, which is integral to West Texas. How can Texas Waves impact power availability?

Frigo: The Texas Waves projects will help maintain frequency regulation within the ERCOT grid. In a U.S. electricity grid, the alternating current (AC) frequency needs to be held within tight tolerance bands around 60 Hz. If the frequency falls outside of this tolerance band, generators begin to go out of synchronization triggering events that can quickly lead to catastrophic grid collapse (i.e. blackouts). Energy storage allows grids to quickly maintain that tight tolerance, thus protecting against blackouts.

MRT: What kind of jobs is this project creating and how many?

Frigo: Texas Waves has immediately created 50 construction jobs. Note that the batteries are fairly automated, and integrated into the existing Pyron and Inadale wind farms. These wind farms are managed by our West Texas team, which numbers approximately 100.

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Over the last few weeks, the state of Puerto Rico’s electrical grid has been on everyone’s mind in the power industry. Getting Puerto Rico back online has been the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s (PREPA) top priority, and rightfully so. The devastated country’s grid was knocked almost entirely offline.

Efforts now are focused on getting everyone’s lights back on as soon as possible – not necessarily building out an impressive, ground-breaking new electrical system in the process. Utilities and suppliers across the United States have come together to help rebuild Puerto Rico, but rebuilding should just be the first step. We also need to look to solve Puerto Rico’s long-term power needs.

Once Puerto Rico is back on solid ground, with power running across the country, then the time will come to discuss what to do next.

This U.S. island commonwealth is at great risk for similar destruction the next time a large tropical storm or hurricane rolls through. There is no simple solution to harden the island’s grid, but recent events prove that change needs to happen to address future events.

Even before Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Rico did not have the most reliable grid. While it is difficult to think about long-term solutions when so much needs to be rebuilt, improving grid reliability and resiliency should be a priority. With that in mind, what if the utility moved to an underground distribution system (at least in part) instead of an entirely overhead distribution system?

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Powin Energy, the Oregon-based energy storage developer, is expecting to see an uptick in non-recourse financing following a landmark project this month.

The company secured construction financing for an 8.8-megawatt/40.8-megawatt-hour battery plant in Stratford, Ontario, from Brookfield Renewable Partners, one of the largest independent renewable energy businesses in the world. 

“Securing non-recourse financing is a critical step for energy storage assets themselves, as well as the broader market,” said Geoffrey Brown, Powin Energy president, in a press release. “We believe that closing a deal of this nature with a well-respected group like Brookfield is indicative of market maturation and Powin’s future prospects.”

While the non-recourse funding model is commonplace in most renewable energy markets, the track record is more limited in energy storage. Only a handful of deals have made headlines.

Last year, for example, another Ontario project based on flywheels and lithium-ion batteries and built by Convergent Energy and Power was funded through a non-recourse finance package from CJF Capital and SUSI Partners’ Energy Storage Fund I.

“The facility reflects a non-recourse, third-party project financing structure for energy storage assets in a sector dominated by on-balance-sheet financing,” noted Convergent in a press statement.

Previously, non-recourse finance had helped fund Australia’s first utility-scale integrated solar and battery project, built by Conergy with backing from Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale.

And in 2015, half the money for the Jake and Elwood battery storage projects developed by Renewable Energy Systems Americas came from non-recourse senior secured project financing debt.

Brown said he thought many energy storage projects since had been difficult to fund through non-recourse debt because of the nature of their contracts.

Following the Stratford deal, though, Brown told GTM he expected non-recourse funding to become the norm for energy storage projects with clear, fixed revenue streams.

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Historically, the vast majority of the world’s power has been consumed as quickly as it is made, or it’s wasted. But climate change has made governments interested in renewable energy, and renewable energy is variable—it can’t be dispatched on demand. Or can it? As research into utility-sized batteries receives more attention, the economics of adding storage to a grid or wind farm are starting to make more sense.

But grid-tied energy storage is not new; it has just always been limited to whatever resources a local power producer had at the time. Much like electricity production itself, storage schemes differ regionally. Power companies will invest in batteries that make sense on a local level, whether it is pumped storage, compressed air, or lithium-ion cells.

Looking at the kinds of storage that already exist is instructive in helping us see where storage is going to go, too. Lots of the latest battery projects merely build on engineering that has been in service for decades. To better see our way forward, we collected a number of images and diagrams of the world’s biggest energy storage schemes.

Pumped storage

Pumped storage is possibly one of the oldest forms of modern grid-tied energy storage, and it certainly packs the most punch as far as megawatt-hours delivered.

The way it traditionally works is simple: the system has a bottom reservoir of water to draw from and a top reservoir that’s topographically higher than the bottom reservoir. When there’s not a lot of demand for electricity, you use that power to “charge” the battery by pumping water up to the top reservoir. When demand for electricity is high, that reservoir can be drained via a hydroelectric generator, back down to the bottom reservoir.

In the future, Germany is looking at using old coal mines for pumped storage, and some German researchers have been working on building giant concrete spheres that can function as pumped storage containers after they’re placed on the ocean floor.

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