Updates in the compressed air energy storage (CAES) market are hard to come by. Although the technology was proven viable years ago, actual utilization hasn’t occurred for a number of reasons. Geology, however, is the biggest culprit.

Traditional designs for compressed air energy storage have air sealed inside pressurized salt caverns. Finding a large enough cavern that can also withstand the pressure without leaking is difficult. As Julian Spector, Staff Writer at Greentech Media said, “It’s not exactly a buyer’s market.”

This doesn’t mean several organizations haven’t tried pursuing the technology. The reality is, however, that lithium-ion batteries have a majority of the energy storage market on lockdown.

But Hydrostor, the advanced compressed air energy storage company based in Canada, is putting its money on a proprietary solution to shake up the market: it’s called Terra.

While a small industrial building is the only visible footprint Terra leaves, the underground grid-scale, long-duration storage asset could have a huge impact on the market in the relatively near future.

The President and CEO of Hydrostor, Curtis VanWalleghem, wants Terra to be used to offer cheap grid electricity and discharge when needed, and perform transmission decongestion and renewables integration roles.

Is all of this a little over your head? No worries. Here are six aspects of the Terra tech that you need to understand.

The New System is Already Bankable

With $10 million in equity, around $10 million in government grants, and revenue from its first project in Ontario running another $10 million, Hydrostor has laid a strong business foundation before officially launching Terra.

But this on its own is not enough to attract the big-ticket clients away from reliable lithium-ion storage. To prove they not only had the resources but the reliability, Hydrostor partnered with a couple industry leaders.

AECOM joined forces with the company after an extensive review of operational data from the pilot project and market analysis. What’s more, this multi-billion dollar company has guaranteed Terra’s projects for over 30 years. The lifetime of a lithium-ion battery is a fraction of that.

Canoe Financial, a privately owned investment manager, has committed to project financing. The backing from both firms makes the Terra projects financially bankable.

That’s crucial for the kinds of customers the firm is courting: primarily large, traditional utilities.

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Stem

May 31, 2017, Sacramento – The California Senate passed a bill that would give consumers more access to clean energy and provide the next critical piece for California to achieve its aggressive greenhouse gas and renewable energy goals. SB 700, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would increase availability of local, customer-sited energy storage for schools, farms, businesses and homes.

“In California, we are pushing aggressive renewable energy goals because we know that fighting climate change means taking action now,” said Senator Wiener. “This bill will push us down the path to 100% renewable energy. To meet our goals, we need solar, storage, and other renewable energy resources in every city and neighborhood in California, not just those that can afford it. This bill will transform energy storage so that all can reap the benefits of clean, renewable energy.”

SB 700 would create a 10-year rebate program designed to grow the California local storage market and make storage more affordable for consumers. The rebates would step down as more storage systems are installed and economies of scale are achieved, thereby driving down the installed cost of the systems. Local energy storage enables the integration of large amounts of renewable energy, creates value for consumers by helping them save money on energy bills, and increases grid reliability.

“Thanks to the leadership of Sen. Scott Wiener, Californians are one step closer to taking control of their clean energy future,” said Laura Gray, energy storage policy advisor with the California Solar Energy Industries Association. “This bill would allow homes, businesses, schools and public buildings to use solar and renewable energy at all hours of the day and night. Using a combination of solar and storage, consumers will make the sun shine at night.”

“Energy storage is an essential tool to enable Californians to participate in achieving the Golden State’s critical renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction goals and to curb our reliance on natural gas peaker plants,” said Michelle Kinman, clean energy advocate with Environment California, the sponsor of SB 700. “With uncertainty on climate action at the federal level, it is even more important that California is now one step closer to demonstrating its clean energy leadership by transforming the energy storage market.”

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Many organisations have to manage critical power supplies with technology that can provide full UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) functionality, due to the increasing number of brownouts and blackouts the electricity network is experiencing.

Alongside resilience, rising energy prices are also a cause for concern for many businesses.

Meanwhile, peak network charges for both the transmission system (Triad) and the distribution network (DUoS) are increasingly significant costs.

Battery-based energy storage systems can help mitigate network costs while providing UPS – and are already doing so for many businesses. They enable electricity storage from either the National Grid at times of low demand, or directly from renewable sources, for use at peak times or when required.

VIRTUE, Powerstar’s energy storage system, is one such solution. It can provide full UPS capabilities, alongside greater control and flexibility of electricity usage, and the potential to access grid incentives such as Demand Side Response (DSR) schemes. The award-winning solution can be integrated with renewable generation, allowing companies to save and store electricity generated locally; reducing demand on the National Grid, the strain on the network and lowering carbon emissions.

The adoption of energy management solutions such as VIRTUE can act as a safeguard and offer a ‘future proof’ UPS solution for sites with critical power supplies such as data centres or medical facilities, which have an ever-growing amount of vital electrical equipment.

Correctly designed to the specifications of a facility’s needs, VIRTUE can easily be scaled to match growing demand, with capacity increased by simply installing additional batteries.

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Advances in energy storage technology will lead to a huge transformation of the Middle East and Africa’s energy market in the next decade.

Battery technology has the potential to give countries their own self-sufficient, 24-hour electricity generation systems. That in turn will have a huge impact on the price of energy and the region’s economy in a wider context.

Between 2011 and 2015 China’s capacity of solar module production increased by six times. It was a huge contributor in the decline of the cost of solar. That same type of increase is occuring in lithium-ion batteries today. Between 2016 and 2020 we’re looking at a six-fold increase in lithium-ion battery capacity.

We’re seeing massive declines in the cost of solar-plus-storage and that means we’re moving towards a renewable baseload energy system.

Currently in the Middle East and North Africa we have a grid which relies on multiple energy elements, like solar, gas, oil and coal.

In the next 10 years we’re going to be at the point where, for about US$0.05/kWh we’ll be producing 24-hour electricity, very consistently and eliminating the need to import things like coal from other countries to balance the grid.

That becomes a huge value proposition with countries producing their own energy without having to depend on foreign sources. The benefits of countries producing their own energy without having to depend on foreign sources is huge and that’s not even touching on the environmental impact.

The advancement of storage technologies, particularly in the context of use with solar, is going to lead to a huge transformation of the way we approach energy in the next 10 years.

However, there are other factors to consider. For example, the cost and value of oil is likely to be affected if countries can create consistent energy from solar and batteries. As a region that is dependent on the revenues of oil – we need to understand the implications of this.

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Photos taken during the 2012 Hurricane Sandy disaster almost literally turned the spotlight onto microgrids.

Images posted on social media and in the news during the storm showed swaths of Manhattan plunged into darkness as power outages cut off electricity to large parts of America’s biggest city.

Just as striking, however, were blossoms of light visible against the otherwise black skyline.

Many of these lighted outposts had separated from the grid and were now generating electricity on their own. These microgrids were islands of light in a sea of darkness. Facilities such as hospitals were able to provide critical services both during and after the storm because of microgrids.

Now, Ameren Corp. has completed a $5 million microgrid at its Technology Applications Center adjacent to the University of Illinois campus in Champaign, Ill. The facility is one of the only utility-scale microgrids in the United States that serves live customer loads on an actual utility distribution feeder.

If the grid-connected electric distribution line fails or is knocked out by a storm, the Ameren microgrid is intended to seamlessly transition to island mode and provide 180 residences and 12 commercial buildings with power from dedicated wind, solar, and natural gas resources, backed up by a bank of lithium-ion batteries.

The microgrid, which has already been show to work as intended, will now be tested in order to learn how it can improve electric reliability, says Ron Pate, Ameren Illinois senior vice president of Operations and Technical Services. It also will be tested to receive and respond to market price signals, potentially adding value to still wider microgrid deployment.

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The DOE’s SHINES program is part of the agency’s Grid Modernization Initiative that aims to improve the resiliency, reliability and security of the nation’s power grid. SHINES itself is the first DOE funding program that looks exclusively at connecting renewable power to storage.

Austin Energy’s $4.3 million SHINES grant is the largest of six projects that have won a total of $18 million of awards the DOE program. The utility must also meet its renewable energy target of 55% by 2025.  

Younicos, working with the Austin project’s prime contractor, Doosan GridTech, is deploying its Y.Q software platform, which will communicate with Doosan’s Intelligent Controller using the Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) open standard. Younicos says the seven Y.Cubes and Y.Converters represent being deployed on the project represent the company’s largest Y.Cube deployment in the U.S. to date.

The battery system will be sited in an east Austin neighborhood near both residential and commercial buildings and has been designed with multiple thermal management subsystems for maximum safety.

“Integrating energy storage with solar is becoming essential as we achieve our utility’s goal of 55% renewable energy by 2025,” Karl Popham, Austin SHINES principal investigator and manager of emerging technologies at Austin Energy, said in a statement. “The Austin SHINES program is more than a technical pilot; it is phase one of a larger rollout to maximize the value of distributed energy resources for our customers and the utility.”

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Called SkelGrid, the system is based on the firm’s curved graphene ultracapacitor technology, which is designed to provide high power and energy density.

Taavi Madiberk, CEO of Skeleton Technologies, writes:

“In the semiconductor and electronics industries power quality is of utmost importance. A power outage lasting for under a second can damage all the products on the production line, and the losses are compounded by the unavoidable downtime of clearing the backlog and setting everything up again. On average, our customers face one such event per year.”

The SkelRack power storage modules can be installed in industry standard 19-inch deep cabinets, and in 20 or 40 ft. containers to provide short-term power at the megawatt level.

The system has maximum power ratings ranging from 520 kW up to 1500 kW.

“In diesel generators, SkelGrid is ideally suited for starting and to bridging power until the gensets are online and synchronized with the grid,” said Madiberk.

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