US energy storage designer and manufacturer SimpliPhi Energy has installed a combination of solar PV and batteries to power air-conditioning units at a school in Hawaii, with a further 1.4MWh of such projects in the pipeline.

In May 2016, Hawaii State’s Department of Education (HIDOE) brought into legislature a commitment to add air-conditioning to 1,000 classrooms across Hawaii, with the US$100 million Heat Abatement Program for public schools created to fast-track projects. The 1,000 classroom goal was reached in August, but the programme continues to add new units.

According to HIDOE, many of its schools are more than 50 years old and were never designed with the kind of electrical load needed to run air-conditioning in mind. A HIDOE fact sheet on the Heat Abatement Program says that the department annually spends US$48 million on electricity and cited the example of one school’s new AC-unit and said that it doubled power costs at Pohakea Elementary School.

Solar-plus-storage has now been put forward as an economical solution to power those air-conditioning units, allowing schools to control the long-term costs of their energy. Waialua High and Intermediate School, on the island of Oahu, is now being fitted with a system designed by Ameresco Solar, a developer and designer of PV systems headquartered in Arizona. Ameresco and SimpliPhi worked with local solar system integrator Haleakala Solar to execute the project.

“Bringing sustainable cooling relief to students in Hawaii was a problem we knew required innovation on several levels, including how to manage the up front and long-term costs of these systems and how to work with the limited electrical infrastructure on these campuses,” Ameresco senior account executive Richard Dean said.

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Tesla Inc. has partnered with Vestas Wind Systems A/S to figure out how to combine wind turbines and batteries, socking away power during breezy times to use when the air is still.

This partnership is part of a wider global program run by Vestas, the world’s biggest wind-turbine maker. It’s seeking to add energy storage to its wind farms and is working with a number of other battery makers on about 10 projects in total.

Vestas announced its new focus on storage at its latest annual general meeting in April, and the partnership with Tesla was first reported by Denmark’s Borsen newspaper. Chairman Bert Nordberg has said Vestas is seeking a new competitive edge amid consolidation in the industry and after it surpassed General Electric Co. last year to take the biggest market share in the U.S.

“Across a number of projects, Vestas is working with different energy storage technologies with specialised companies, including Tesla, to explore and test how wind turbines and energy storage can work together in sustainable energy solutions that can lower the cost of energy,” Vestas said in a statement on Friday. 

The broader program started in 2012 with a project in Lem-Kaer, Denmark, with atest project to combine wind turbines and batteries. Vestas said it plans to commission additional projects worldwide.

Tesla has recently begun to seek new applications for its batteries beyond its electric cars and Powerwall battery units. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk signed a deal with the South Australian government in July to built a giant energy storage facility to help balance the grid.

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The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released funding to the Argonne National Laboratory for a scaled-up round of independent testing of Terrafore Technologies’ innovative encapsulated thermal energy storage in phase change salts, designed to operate in temperatures to greater than 800°C in a single tank that acts as both storage and heat exchanger.

Argonne scientists approached CEO Anoop Mathur to submit an application when they heard of the potential awards under the SBV program.

“Earlier, at Southwest Research Institute we proved the reliability of capsules with salt melting at 370°C. Argonne tests will be showing the reliability of our capsules; that the special coating on these salt capsules will be able to withstand those temperatures and high pressure, using a test rig at the lab,” said Mathur.

“The capsules for high temperature are ready-to-scale and we expect the thermal storage using these will enable distributed scale CSP like mini-towers and dish collectors as well as next-generation CSP using Supercritical CO2,” he added.

The funding is one of 38 awards that had been funded by the outgoing Obama administration to support startup innovation through the “valley of death” phase of advanced innovative technologies. The results are expected by mid 2018.

Mathur designed the encapsulated salt capsules – what he now calls TerraCaps – to eliminate the need for the two tanks used in today’s sensible heat thermal energy storage systems, the hot and the cold tank. The idea is to be able to store 50% more energy per unit volume than the two tank molten salt thermal storage system used in current CSP projects.

The key to being able to heat and cool in a single tank operation is a space inside each marble-like capsule for salt to expand when it melts.

Mathur pointed out that some of the salts expand as much as 25%. Also, since salts have low thermal conductivity, they are not efficient at transferring heat and require a large heat transfer area; so encapsulating the salts in small capsules results in a large specific surface area that helps maintain the high heat transfer rate needed for power generation.

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Twenty years ago, the problem with rooftop solar was that customers needed a large collection of lead acid batteries to store their daytime energy and use this energy at night. But simple net metering rules made it possible for the electric grid to function as a 100 percent efficient storage device. Unfortunately, utilities are doing everything they can to eliminate net metering so they can maximize their profits. So the compelling need for battery storage linked with rooftop solar has re-emerged.

Although lead acid batteries are an inexpensive and mature technology, they are not well-suited for home energy storage applications. Fortunately, lithium-ion batteries have become much more reliable and inexpensive — primarily because of production volumes required by the automotive industry. That availability comes just in the nick of time as net metering is constrained in some states, and time-of-use electric rates shift towards late afternoons and evenings (limiting potential rooftop solar savings).

LG Chemical is one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world. They recently introduced a line of residential and commercial energy storage systems that are optimized for both residential and commercial solar applications. LG knows how to make reliable appliances — which is essentially what a home battery storage system will be in the home of the future.

My guest on this week’s Energy Show is Linh Tran, Western Regional Sales Manager for LG Chem Power. In addition to explaining the features and benefits of LG Chem’s battery storage products, Linh also explains the special handling requirements that are mandatory for installers of large battery storage systems (hint: DOT Hazmat training is required). For a quick education on the latest in home battery storage, please Listen Up to this week’s Energy Show on Renewable Energy World.

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Ever wonder why there are so few blackouts in the United States? It effectively boils down to this: power plants are always making more power than people are asking for.  

As soon as electricity is produced, the electrons flow through power lines to homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals—wherever it is demanded. More electricity is made than grid operators expect you to consume, so that when you flip a switch, a light turns on.

Regardless of whether you actually turn on the lights,  power plants keep their turbines spinning, ready to send power to the grid at a moment’s notice.

This problem of excess power-generating capacity is worse at night when demand is very low, and the disparity between the amount of power needed and available is even greater. This discourages the use of some renewables, specifically wind power, which runs mostly at night when winds are strongest (and when people are using less electricity).  In short, a lot of electricity, and importantly, clean electricity, is produced at the wrong time.

That’s where energy storage comes in. Storing energy when it’s made and releasing it when it’s needed helps keep the grid reliable and paves the way for introducing intermittent renewables like wind and solar to the mix.

Energy and technology companies have been working to tackle the supply/demand mismatch for years, and batteries have arisen as the top contender to store electricity. Tesla Inc., for example, invested over $600 million in its Gigafactory in Nevada to make mass amounts of lithium ion batteries.

But one Alabama power company has found a different place to put large amounts of excess energy – in salt caverns. Half a mile underground, a salt cavern that could fit the Statue of Liberty holds Power South Energy Cooperative’s most useful resource: air.

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Stem Inc. announced it has surpassed a number of company execution milestones made possible by its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered network of energy storage systems located at businesses and institutions throughout the U.S. Stem aims to build the world’s smartest and largest digitally controlled network, and currently has more than 700 systems contracted or installed in 75 U.S. jurisdictions. The company also has 150 MWh of customer-sited systems across the U.S. ready to be aggregated.

With its proprietary AI at the helm, the rapidly expanding Stem network has successfully responded to more than 500 utility dispatch requests. In California, Stem has consistently offered stored energy from its network into the CAISO wholesale markets since 2015, including dispatch for seven grid areas during the unprecedented heat wave on June 19, 2017.

Stem has dispatched aggregated customer-sited systems in 300 responses to the CAISO wholesale market in 2017 alone.

Stem’s Athena, an advanced energy intelligence, enables the company to execute for its customers every day, optimizing the timing of energy use for businesses and institutions, and across the utilities that serve them. Shifting energy use away from the most expensive times for network members, while dispatching virtual power plants to strengthen the grid, is a complex problem best managed by AI.

The growth of Stem’s network and successful execution of hundreds of grid service calls illustrates the unique value of real-time energy optimization using energy storage. Athena automatically links facilities into a powerful network that can instantly form virtual power plants to generate value for all members, in 350 MWh of local capacity and other grid services in Stem’s eight utility contracts in California, Hawaii, New York, and Texas.

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Using just 351.9kW of PV and 1MWh of energy storage in a microgrid, a tiny island off the Massachusetts coast successfully met more than 50% of its electricity demand over summer.

Historic Cuttyhunk Island, just a few miles from Martha’s Vineyard, a summer destination for the rich and famous, has less than 50 residents outside of seasonal tourist peaks and about 300 residents during the summer season.

The island is famous for being one of the trading posts with the British pre-independence but has now found a degree of energy independence for itself. Solar Design Associates, a Harvard-headquartered company, designed and installed the PV array, which has 1,020 panels, and the lithium-ion battery energy storage system.

As with most electrified island territories, Cuttyhunk Island has always relied on burning diesel fuel, which is brought to the island on a barge, which is of course expensive, polluting and relies on supplies being able to negotiate bad weather conditions and other logistics. The project received financial assistance from the US Agriculture Department’s grant scheme for rural electrification projects.

While the new microgrid will not eliminate diesel use entirely, during this year it is expected to reduce consumption by 30,000 gallons, a representative of Gosnold Electric Light Commission, which oversees utilities on Cuttyhunk, said. In fact while helping the residents and visitors to rely on more than 50% renewable energy over summer, during off-season periods, that proportion can rise to 80% renewables.  The massively diminished population numbers in those times are a factor in this – some accounts refer to there being less than 20 residents on the island at some points in the year.

“The microgrid’s performance and reliability have exceeded all our expectations, and we are on track to burn 30,000 fewer gallons of diesel fuel this year,” Gosnold Electric Light Commission’s Paul Elias said.

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Pushback against the proposed Puente natural gas plant in California now hinges on whether energy storage could do the job instead.

The first whack at the question, in a study by the California Independent System Operator, found that storage could provide the needed local reliability, but at 2.7 times the cost.

A GTM analysis of CAISO’s calculations, though, found that they rely on lithium-ion cost projections from 2014, which makes them just about ancient history in terms of the fast-moving storage industry. Battery costs keep falling faster than predicted, and in 2014 the industry was barely getting started.

CAISO doesn’t have access to proprietary cost data; the grid operator’s study makes clear the numbers are more of a ballpark calculation. It’s up to the California Energy Commission to decide whether to allow NRG to build its Puente gas plant in Oxnard for 2020, or whether more up-to-date cost data on alternative solutions would be helpful. 

“At a minimum, the prices assumed for energy storage and solar in the CAISO study are not reflective of today’s market for either technology,” said Shayle Kann, head of GTM Research. “It’s always hard for regulators to keep up with markets that are adapting as fast as both solar and storage are, but in particular storage costs are falling fast enough that using data from 2014 is like relying on gas prices from before the shale revolution.”

Environmentalists have rallied to squash Puente, arguing the plant perpetuates a history of Oxnard as a “sacrifice zone for polluting power plants,” even though alternatives now exist. The city itself opposes the plant and called it “expensive, obsolete before it is open” in comments on the draft of CAISO’s study. 

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