California approved one of the the biggest installations of battery-based energy-storage systems in the U.S. as the state moves to add power resources to its grid after suffering from rolling blackouts.

The California Public Utilities Commission signed off on previously announced utility contracts for nearly 1.2 gigawatts of battery storage capacity that is expected to be in service by August of next year. The commission’s vote comes less than two weeks after California’s grid operator imposed power shutoffs that left millions in the dark during a record heat wave.

Read more: The Day California Went Dark Was a Crisis Years in the Making

Last year, state regulators ordered utilities to secure an additional 3.3 gigawatts of reserve supplies as it anticipated electricity shortfalls with the retirement of aging natural gas plants. The batteries will be able to soak up excess energy produced by California’s solar farms during the day and discharge that electricity when the sun goes down and solar production falls.

In May, Edison International’s Southern California Edison said it had inked deals for 770 megawatts of battery projects and PG&E Corp. said it had agreements for 423 megawatts to help close the gap. Those contracts were approved Thursday.

Separately, the commission allowed Southern California Edison to sign short-term contracts to buy power from several natural gas units.

“California recently experienced reliability challenges not seen in decades and we are working to identify the root causes,” CPUC Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma said in a statement. “Our decisions today continue to build the foundation of our resource adequacy program by securing additional contingency resources for use when needed.”

The largest battery storage system in North Carolina is now in operation with Duke Energy at the helm.

The 9-MW system is operating next to a Duke Energy substation in the Shiloh community of Asheville, N.C. The project, featuring a lithium-ion Samsung battery array, cost almost $15 million to install.

The Shiloh energy storage facility will provide support to the electric system, including frequency regulation and other grid services.

“Energy storage will play a significant role in how we deliver energy to customers now and into the future as we act to reduce carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” said Stephen De May, Duke Energy’s North Carolina president.

See more PE stories about Duke Energy

The utility giant plans to invest about $600 million to install 375 MW of energy storage across its regulated businesses. Duke already has more than a decade’s worth of experience with battery storage, including the 36-MW storage system next to its Notrees Wind Facility in Texas.

The Shiloh battery storage system is one of several Duke projects in the Asheville area. The $817 million combined cycle station became operational in April, replacing a recently retired coal-fired plant.

Yulong Ding, director of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Energy Storage, UK, explains how Chinese companies are keen to work with international teams to develop new technologies.

What led you to focus on energy storage?
My research on energy storage started approximately 20 years ago. Back then, China was playing catch-up in this field. But in the past decade, the country’s expertise has drawn roughly parallel with that of Europe and the United States.

I came to the United Kingdom in 1994 to do my PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Birmingham, after finishing my undergraduate and master’s degrees in thermal energy engineering at the University of Science and Technology, Beijing. I went on to complete six years of teaching and research there.

How has energy-storage research in China developed in recent decades?
My collaborations with China are mainly in thermal and liquid air energy storage. My team has several postdocs and PhD students from China, and we regularly have Chinese professors visiting. I think there will be fewer international students over the next few years because tuition fees have increased; to study here costs close to £30,000 (US$39,200) per year now, and many postdocs want to start their careers in China because they can find better-paid positions there, and the research quality has increased.

Although China leads the world in its capacity to produce solar and wind energy, roughly two-thirds of China’s electricity is generated by coal. So it has real clean-energy challenges.

What projects are you currently working on with teams in China?
In 2016, our centre established a joint energy-storage research laboratory with the Beijing-based State Grid Corporation of China, which operates the country’s electricity network. We now have six completed research projects related to energy conversion and storage. A seventh, secured during lockdown, is in progress. For example, we are developing materials for use in energy storage that change from solid to liquid, and back again, to release power.

Smart grid, energy storage and EV charger solutions provider Alfen has made significant quarterly increases in revenues in all three segments according to the Dutch company’s reporting of its latest financial results.

Alfen, listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange, today reported half-year total revenues of €90.3 million (US$106.71 million) which it said was up 47% from the equivalent period last year, when it netted €61.6 million. It made an adjusted net profit of €5.3 million, which was an enormous 266% leap on H1 2019’s €1.4 million of profits. EBITDA was more than doubled from €4.9 million to €10 million.

The company said in a press release that its “strong profitable growth” for the half-year ending 30 June 2020 included a 154% rise in EV charging solutions revenues, 67% rise in energy storage revenues and 23% rise in its smart grid revenues.

Energy storage ‘market fundamentals remain solid’
Alfen’s investment in solar PV including developing solar park servicing offerings is paying off, with a contract signed with solar farm developer Goldbeck to look after 180MWp of solar capacity across six sites in the Netherlands among recent highlights.

In the EV segment, existing deals have been scaling up, new customers won and new territories reached, the company said. Alfen also pointed out that the EV market appears to have been more resilient than much of the light duty vehicle market during the COVID-19 downturn and also said that favourable policies by governments, particularly in Europe, to support vehicle electrification, were also positive influences that are expected to be ongoing.

Energy storage however, while a growing market, was more badly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, Alfen said, calling market circumstances in Q2 2020 “challenging” with decision making “postponed across the industry”. The company claimed however that its already proven track record in the energy storage sector is “playing to its advantage as well as its strong market position”.

Construction has begun on the Chisholm Grid battery energy storage system, the largest standalone battery energy storage project currently under construction in the US outside of California. Located in Fort Worth, Texas, Chisholm Grid will have an initial rated capacity of 100 megawatts (MWac) and is scheduled to begin commercial operations in mid-2021.

The Chisholm Grid battery energy storage system was developed by Able Grid Infrastructure Holdings, LLC, a joint venture between Able Grid and MAP. Able Grid will provide construction management and operational asset management services for the site. Chisholm Grid is owned by Astral Electricity, LLC, a privately-held energy storage power producer.

In early August, Astral issued full notice to proceed to Mortenson and work has already begun onsite for the balance of plant and high voltage transmission components, making Chisholm Grid the largest standalone battery energy storage project currently under construction in the US outside of California.

At peak construction, approximately 50 people will be employed on-site at Chisholm Grid, and Mortenson has secured subcontracts from local Dallas – Fort Worth-based trade partners to ensure local participation on the project.

For all the excitement over the next big thing in lithium-ion batteries, the simple fact is that plain old water is the only large scale, long duration energy storage medium available today in the US and in many other parts of the world. The challenge is that water batteries — aka pumped hydropower — require expensive new infrastructure, which limits their application. That could be about to change, and it looks like the US Department of Energy is determined to be the change maker.

But First, A Word About Seams

To get a snapshot of how pumped hydro fits into the national energy profile, let’s go back to last week when The Atlantic published an account of the Energy Department’s ill-fated Interconnections Seam Study under the title and subtitle, “How a Plan to Save the Power System Disappeared: A federal lab found a way to modernize the grid, reduce reliance on coal, and save consumers billions. Then Trump appointees blocked it.”

The Seam study was a wide-ranging, collaborative effort aimed at enabling more electricity to hop back and forth across the US, rather than getting stuck at a “seam” that splits the nation into two grids (Texas, unsurprisingly, has a third electricity grid all to itself). The study is part of the Energy Department’s ongoing grid modernization effort, which comes down heavy on the side of renewable energy and energy storage.

The Atlantic presented the story of the Seam study as a successful attempt to block clean power. Be that as it may, seam or no seam, more renewable energy has been making it onto the grid, partly with support from other Energy Department R&D programs. There is plenty more where that came from, and energy storage will play a larger role in the future as more wind and solar come aboard.

Long Duration Energy Storage On The Cheap

That brings us to the Energy Department’s push for more and better energy storage in the form of pumped hydropower.

For those of you new to the topic, pumped hydro can take advantage of renewable energy to pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir. When the local grid needs more electricity, gravity does the rest. Water from the upper reservoir scoots downhill to run turbines, and ends up in the lower reservoir.

The US Energy Storage Association (ESA) has adopted a target of 100GW of energy storage capacity in the country by 2030, a capacity it said would help facilitate greater penetration of renewables.

The figure, which serves as an upgrade on a previous target of 35GW by 2025, was unveiled during the trade body’s annual conference and described by chief executive Kelly Speakes-Backman as “entirely reasonable and attainable”.

But, Speakes-Backman added, reaching such a goal would require the “right policies and regulatory frameworks” to be in place. That policy environment has been described in detail within a ‘vision paper’ – dubbed ‘100 x 30: Enabling the clean power transformation’ – also released yesterday.

Also speaking on the opening day of the event was US Department of Energy deputy secretary Mark Menezes, who said in a keynote address that his department recognised the importance of energy storage and reiterated its commitment to a technology that would support deeper penetration of renewable energy on US grids.

While storage deployment has slightly lagged behind the original 35GW by 2025 vision crafted by ESA with help from Navigant Research (now known as Guidehouse Insights), with BloombergNEF predicting around 32GW by then and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables about 28GW, analysis all points to an accelerating rate of deployment.

Indeed the three analysis and research firms between them predict around 85GW to 95GW by 2030. ESA argues that with policies to further stimulate higher shares of renewables on the grid, the 100GW figure is achievable. 100GW would support an aim of 50% renewables by 2030 across the country – an aim shared by ESA together with other prominent renewable and clean energy trade associations including groups representing the wind, solar and hydropower industries. The latter, incidentally, includes 16GW of new pumped storage in its 2030 vision, which ESA also backs.

The U.S. Energy Storage Association  (ESA) today issued an expanded vision for energy storage: 100×30: Enabling the Clean Power Transformation. Informed by developments in the energy storage and clean energy markets and extrapolating upon ESA’s 2017 vision document (35×25: A Vision for Energy Storage), this white paper charts a path for the industry to deploy 100 GW of new storage across the United States in the next decade.

“The U.S. power sector is in the midst of transformation to a cleaner, more modern infrastructure,” said Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of ESA. “With the right policies and regulatory frameworks in place, we believe that achieving 100 GW of new storage installations by 2030 is entirely reasonable and attainable. Current market projections indicate remarkable growth for energy storage over the next decade, and its role is expanding to maintain and enhance the reliability, resilience, stability and affordability of electricity over the coming decade.”

The 100×30 paper depicts a path to 100 GW of new energy storage in the next decade, based on an extrapolation of the original 35×25 report, experts’ projections, and the impact of the accelerating clean energy transformation of the U.S. electricity grid. Technologies in the 100 GW of new energy storage include batteries, thermal, mechanical and pumped storage hydro. ESA estimates that 100 GW of storage deployment by 2030 would produce 200,000 jobs, roughly a threefold increase from current levels.

To reach the goal of 100 GW of new energy storage by 2030, the report outlines a combination of strengthened policy support, such as the investment tax credit (ITC) for stand-alone storage facilities, as well as the continuation of emerging policies that remove barriers to market participation. The combination of a supportive policy framework and a vibrant clean energy economy will drive energy storage growth and set a trajectory for 100 GW of new storage, keeping the power system reliable, resilient and affordable.