While states like California and Hawaii lead the growing market for energy storage, the potential in the Midwest is growing.

Minnesota is seeing a small but growing number of lithium ion battery storage projects that will be discussed along with other battery-related topics at the Midwest Energy Storage Summit in Minneapolis Sept. 15.

Sponsored by the the Energy Transition Lab at the University of Minnesota, the event features speakers such as Mary Powell, CEO and president of Green Mountain Power; Christopher Clark, president of Xcel Energy for Minnesota and the Dakotas; George Crabtree of Argonne National Laboratory and Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association.

The transition lab’s initial conference, two years ago, was the first time in Minnesota experts and industry officials came together to discuss storage, according to Barbara Jacobs, energy storage project manager. One result of the conference was the creation of the Minnesota Energy Storage Alliance to share knowledge and promote battery storage.

“There seems to be a lot of interest and excitement about storage across the board right now,” Jacobs said.

So what’s the difference between storage between now and two years ago? One is clearly dropping prices and increased production of lithium ion batteries, accompanied by products from Tesla, Panasonic, LG and many others.

Secondly, utilities are taking greater interest, with 80 percent nationwide considering storage projects, according to a recent survey.

Minnesota utilities are stepping up with projects and proposals. Xcel Energy proposed a solar storage battery project that regulators failed to approve while allowing the utility another chance to submit it after making changes.  

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The fact that California’s three investor-owned utilities were at the top of the Smart Electric Power Alliance’s recent rankings is not surprising, but the presence of utilities in Indiana and Ohio is notable.

California has been a leader in energy storage, with a 2010 law that requires the state’s IOUs to procure 1.3 GW of storage capacity by 2020 and then a 2016 law requiring each IOU to procure another 166 MW of storage.

There has been no similar legislative push in either Indiana or Ohio and yet Indianapolis Power & Light and Duke Energy Ohio were third and fifth, respectively, in SEPA’s rankings of utilities that connected the most energy storage to their systems in 2016. IPL installed 20 MW in 2016, and 16 MW were connected to Duke Energy Ohio last year.

The rankings do not tally how much energy storage a utility built or owns, but how much was connected to their system. So while IPL built and owns the storage facility in its territory, Duke does not own the 16 MW of storage that connected to its system in 2016. Similarly, while California’s utilities are permitted to own some energy storage assets, they do not necessarily own all the storage facilities connected to their systems.

Measured by energy (MWh), IPL ranked fourth with 20 MWh, and Duke Energy Ohio ranked eighth with 6.1 MWh.

Ranked by energy storage watts per customer, IPL and Duke actually beat the California utilities, ranking fifth and sixth with 42 W/customer and 23 W/customer, respectively.

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Go Electric won a $499,506 contract by Electricore for a demonstration microgrid project at the Fort Custer Training Center in Michigan.

The project is funded by the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP), a Department of Defense program for promoting the transfer of proven innovative technologies into field use.

Go Electric will deliver a 400 kW/160 kWh battery energy storage system and will provide engineering support for the installation and commissioning of the energy storage system into a facility-wide microgrid. Go Electric will also support the integration of a microgrid controller provided by power management company Eaton.

Electricore, a non-profit consortium formed at the request of the Department of Defense to implement advanced energy, transportation and electronics technologies, is leading the project with support from Eaton and local utility Consumers Energy. The Michigan Army National Guard, which uses Fort Custer alongside several other units, is hosting the project.

The microgrid will enhance power surety, energy resilience, distributed generation management and demand response, while contributing to the critical power needs of nearby military installations. In addition to the 400 kW system, the microgrid includes 1.375 MW of legacy diesel generators and 720 kW of photovoltaics.

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At Solar Power International (SPI) in Las Vegas this week, BYD announced the world’s first installation of its high-voltage B-Box energy storage system in Germany.

BYD’s B-Box is a modular energy storage system that allows customers to add battery modules to the B-Box unit as demands increase over time. This particular installation in Germany utilized 9 battery modules for a combined storage capacity of 11.5 kWh. If greater capacity is required, up to 5 B-Box systems can be connected in parallel.

BYD developed the B-Box to store energy generated from rooftop residential solar systems, which it can then meter back out to the house after the sun has set. It is intelligent enough to minimize the amount of solar energy sent to the grid or intelligently feeding in battery power to offset home usage that would have pushed the household into a higher tier of electricity usage, depending on the rate and fee structure of the local utility.

The BYD B-Box is available in Europe and Australia today, with a US launch expected later this year in Hawaii as well as select west and east coast markets with high electricity prices that make the B-Box a more lucrative financial proposition. The B-Box has evolved over the last few product offerings and is now a modular, stable, high-voltage unit that makes use of BYD’s long-lasting Lithium Ferro Phosphate (LiFePo4) batteries. These batteries have a slightly lower energy density than most EV batteries, resulting in a slightly larger size and weight per kWh (resulting in a slightly heavier product), but they are well suited for home energy storage since they reportedly have a much longer lifespan and far lower deterioration over their lifetimes.

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The US Energy Department has been steaming full speed ahead on cutting edge energy storage technology, and the latest development is one of those environmental twofers we love. A $1 million grant from the agency will help a company called Saratoga Energy to bridge the gap between its labwork and a low cost, high efficiency energy storage technology ideal for electric vehicles — without the carbon footprint, too.

The Union of Concerned Scientists took a look at the lifecycle carbon footprint of EVsand determined that it is significantly smaller than conventional gas-powered vehicles.

However, EVs still have a carbon footprint, and in the interests of global carbon management that footprint needs to be as small as possible.

Part of the EV carbon problem is the graphite used in lithium-ion energy storage technology.

Graphite is a form of pure carbon chemically identical to diamonds but with different structural characteristics.

The carbon footprint of mining and processing comes into play for naturally occurring graphite, and the go-to source for synthetic graphite is petroleum coke (surprise!).

Local environmental issues also bedevil the graphite industry, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms.

The Saratoga Energy solution is to skip the graphite supply chain middleman and go straight to the source: carbon.

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With renewable energy sources becoming more and more advanced, storing that energy means big business. While we’ve seen technological breakthroughs enabling everything from DIY powerpacks to batteries integrated into windmills, one team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is looking to old-school innovations for next-generation energy storage techniques. How old school? Over three millennia.

Indeed, MIT researchers have reinvented firebricks, a Bronze-Age technology created by the Hittites—who occupied what is today Turkey, in the 17th century BC. Firebricks were designed by the Hittites to retain heat for long periods of time, if properly insulated.

Such a device would be immensely useful today, according to the MIT team, citing a high demand for industrial heat. The team’s Firebrick Resistance-heated Energy Storage (FIRES) system stores thermal energy (heat) in firebricks and later converts the energy back into electricity. Oh, and storing this energy costs 1/40th the price of putting it into batteries.

This solution could be a game-changer for the renewable energy industry, which has always suffered from the problem of over-producing on some days when the wind or sun are strong and under-producing on others.

“I believe FIRES is an innovative approach to solve a real power grid problem,” said Regis Matzie, an electric expert not affiliated with the research told Global Construction Review. 

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A new report by the Smart Electric Power Alliance indicated 31 utilities, or 43 percent of the utilities surveyed for the study, added energy storage to the grid in the last year.

All told, 207 MW of energy storage was deployed last year in 829 systems. Utilities have now installed a total of 622 MW of energy storage in total.

As expected, California had the most energy storage established in 2016 at 120.5 MW, much of which was rapidly deployed in response to the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage leak. Indiana was the second at 22 MW, with Ohio at 16.1 MW.

Of the total added, 151 MW was used for utility supply. Non-residential accounted for 54 MW, with residential at 4.5 MW.

Energy storage is set to grow further, as the cost of battery-based storage has dropped more than 60 percent since 2012. Additionally, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that would remove barriers to energy storage participation in wholesale markets. 

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Experts are asking whether project portfolio sell-offs by Amber Kinetics and Powin Energy represent a new trend.

Last month, Flywheel maker Amber Kinetics said it was giving up on a 20-megawatt project, Energy Nuevo, for Pacific Gas and Electric in California.

“The company’s new five-year strategic plan calls for an acceleration of equipment deployment and a de-emphasis on project development,” said Amber Kinetics in a press release.

Ed Chiao, co-founder and CEO, said the money earmarked for project development would now be spent on commercializing a new product, the 40-kilowatt, 160-kilowatt-hour M160, which is due for testing in the first quarter of 2018.

“Energy Nuevo would have required almost $10 million in security deposits and development costs,” Chiao said in the statement. “When we compared investing a similar amount in bringing the M160 to market on schedule, and focusing on generating greater near-term revenue, we chose to prioritize commercialization over project development.”

Portland, Oregon-based Powin Energy has since revealed it is selling its entire project portfolio, comprising around 100 megawatt-hours of energy storage assets, as a precursor to refinancing and refocusing on product development.

“We will be looking to strengthen our finances once we’ve moved these assets,” said Jan Jacobson, vice president of business development, in an interview. “We’re selling everything.”

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To meet the increasing energy demands of a growing population, not only are new ways of creating the energy being devised, but so are new ways of storing this energy, and a team of Researchers from India have developed a hybrid nanomaterial composed of graphene and flower-shaped MoS₂ nanostructures to store energy in a prototype supercapacitor.

As a result of an ever-expanding population and its associated energy consumption, there is a projection that the demand for energy in 2050 will exceed 40 terawatts (TW). Because of the requirements for a high amount of energy, new ways of producing renewable energy are being researched and implemented, as current non-renewable fuels will eventually run out.

Due to both the energy increase and nature of the produced energy, new materials are also being developed that can store this energy efficiently.

At present, such storage capabilities are not close to meeting the energy demands set out in future predictions. Current devices can only store 1% of renewable energy that storage devices do for fossil fuels.

As such, there is a great need to not only create materials which can store renewable energy, but to also produce materials with a real-world function that can rival non-renewable storage options, potentially as a variant of Li-ion and Na-air batteries that can hold renewable-produced energy.

The team of Researchers have created a hybrid nanomaterial composed of flower-like MoS₂ nanostructures and 3D graphene heterostructures to be used as an active material in energy storage and transfer devices. The Researchers also tested and employed the material in a solid-state supercapacitor, where the 3D graphene-MoS₂ material was used with a graphite current collector.

To create the active material, the Researchers first created MoS₂ nanospheres through a hydrothermal method using ammonium molybdate and thiourea. A modified hydrothermal method was then utilized to deposit 3D graphene oxide onto a graphite electrode using a series of wet synthetic steps.

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