The battery might be the least sexy piece of technology ever invented. The lack of glamour is especially conspicuous on the lower floors of MIT’s materials science department, where one lab devoted to building and testing the next world-changing energy storage device could easily be mistaken for a storage closet.

At the back of the cramped room, Donald Sadoway, a silver-haired electrochemist in a trim black-striped suit and expensive-looking shoes, rummages through a plastic tub of parts like a kid in search of a particular Lego. He sets a pair of objects on the table, each about the size and shape of a can of soup with all the inherent drama of a paperweight.

No wonder it’s so hard to get anyone excited about batteries. But these paperweights—er, battery cells—could be the technology that revolutionizes our energy system.

Because batteries aren’t just boring. Frankly, they kinda suck. At best, the batteries that power our daily lives are merely invisible—easily drained reservoirs of power packed into smartphones and computers and cars. At worst, they are expensive, heavy, combustible, complicated to dispose of properly, and prone to dying in the cold or oozing corrosive fluid. Even as the devices they power become slimmer and smarter, batteries are still waiting for their next upgrade. Computer processors famously double their capacity every two years; batteries may scrounge only a few percentage points of improvement in the same amount of time.

Nevertheless, the future will be battery-powered. It has to be. From electric cars to industrial-scale solar farms, batteries are the key to a cleaner, more efficient energy system—and the sooner we get there, the sooner we can stop contributing to potentially catastrophic climate change.

But the batteries we’ve got—mostly lithium-ion—aren’t good enough. There’s been some progress: The cost of storing energy has fallen by half over the last five years, and big companies are increasingly making marquee investments in the technology, like Tesla’s ‘gigafactory.’ But in terms of wholesale economic transformation, lithium-ion batteries remain too expensive. They are powerful in our devices, but when you scale them up they are liable to overheat and even, occasionally, explode.

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Carla Peterman, a commissioner with the California Public Utilities Commission, said that among the many takeaways for regulators from California’s experience with energy storage deployment is the importance of setting targets.

Peterman made her remarks at an Energy Storage Policy Forum in Washington, DC, which was hosted by the Energy Storage Association and held on Feb. 15.

She said that setting energy storage targets is important because such a move sends a signal to the market and to utilities.

“I think that’s been a real measure of success, that we’ve seen so much procurement happen outside of the target RFOs [requests for offers]” issued by the state’s investor-owned utilities, Peterman said in her remarks at the ESA event.

Start early

Another key takeaway that regulators should consider? Start early, said Peterman. “Getting buy in to the procurement framework takes time and actually getting the procurement done takes time,” she said.

Peterman also said that regulators should allow for flexibility as the market develops. The CPUC commissioner said that “this is a new area,” which means it is important to have regular reviews and “be willing to change course.”

A tremendous amount of growth

She said that from 2000 to 2013, California developed 25 megawatts of energy storage. “Since we’ve adopted targets for energy storage,” over the last three years, “we’ve now approved 630 megawatts of energy storage. That’s a tremendous amount of growth,” Peterman said.

“You’re looking at a 200 percent increase year over year in the last three years,” she said.

Peterman said that the state’s 1.325 gigawatt by 2020 storage target “is the cornerstone of our energy storage work.” As a part of that target, “we set up a broader procurement framework, which has been useful in terms of evaluating storage, and enabling us to procure storage even outside of that framework.”

But it began with legislation, she pointed out, which “simply said, ‘PUC, look at this issue, consider setting targets, but if you do set targets, make sure that energy storage is viable and cost effective.’”

Peterman told the ESA gathering that as “you’re thinking about doing this work in other states, I can’t say enough how important the various stakeholder forums we had were in terms of deciding whether to develop targets.”

As the commission moved forward, it eventually proposed a target that includes targets for transmission-connected storage, distribution-connected storage and customer-side storage. There are biennial storage solicitations in California.

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The idea that giant batteries may someday revolutionize electrical grids has long enthralled clean-power advocates and environmentalists. Now it’s attracting bankers with the money to make it happen.

Lenders including Investec PLC, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc. are looking to finance large-scale energy-storage projects from California to Germany, marking a coming-of-age moment for the fledgling industry. The systems help utilities solve a long-standing clean-power conundrum: managing the unpredictable output from wind and solar farms, and retaining electricity until it’s needed.

Battery costs have declined 40 percent since 2014 and regulators are mandating storage technology be added to the grid. That’s encouraging utilities to offer longer contracts and developers are expected build $2.5 billion in systems globally this year. These trends are changing the risk profile, giving lenders confidence in batteries in much the same way that power-purchase agreements opened banks’ doors years ago for wind and solar power.

“Having big money come in is the first step to widespread deployment,” Brad Meikle, a San Francisco-based analyst for Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC, said in an interview.

That’s a shift from many of the storage projects we’ve seen to date as expensive components and unproven revenue potential made commercial lenders leery. Developers typically have financed systems from their own balance sheets, cobbling together revenue from short-term utility contracts or wholesale electricity markets.

“We see an opportunity in the space,” Ralph Cho, Investec’s co-head of power for North America in New York, said in an interview. “We’re attempting to be a first mover.”

Storage contracts to date in the U.S. and Canada rarely exceeded three years, said Bryan Urban, head of North American operations for the Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland-based storage developer Leclanche SA. Now utilities are signing agreements for three to seven years, and sometimes as long at 10 years, he said. And in the U.K., National Grid PLC is signing four-year contracts for storage services.

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The German home battery startup Sonnen is expanding its U.S. footprint with a significant investment in a new North American Innovation Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sonnen announced today that the InnovationHub will bring all of the company’s U.S. product development and manufacturing capabilities under one roof, allowing for new product innovation and the ability to rapidly scale up production capacity.

“Sonnen U.S. has experienced exponential sales growth over the past year, making the Sonnen InnovationHub a smart investment to capitalize upon the immense potential of the North American energy storage market,” said Christoph Ostermann, Sonnen Group CEO, in a statement. Bringing the company’s U.S. manufacturing and R&D teams into one facility will “enable us to better adapt to the future needs of the high-growth U.S. residential energy storage market.”

In an interview earlier this month, Ostermann said U.S. monthly sales had recently reached triple digits — growing threefold in December alone. Those sales lag well behind Sonnen’s home market in Germany, where the company has sold more than 15,000 battery storage systems to date, but they still position Sonnen as a leading residential storage company in the U.S.

The InnovationHub is no Tesla Gigafactory — but that’s by design, said Blake Richetta, vice president of Sonnen’s North American sales, and former sales manager at Tesla. While Sonnen is focused on scalability, the new factory is part of a concerted strategy to “grow smartly,” he said.

“We’re not going to make [the factory] so that it’s able to build thousands and thousands of units right away,” said Richetta. “It’s going to be what it needs to be to foster innovation and for our current level of production needs, and then we’re going to have an open-ended footprint to be able to grow.”

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It is not only the grid that is changing. Buildings are also changing how they use energy. Some are generating energy with wind or solar power and many are engaged in energy management programs.

All those functions increase the complexity of energy flows and require sophisticated technology to ensure reliability and efficiency.

The demonstration project is funded with about $1 million from the Department of Energy and corporate sponsors. The corporate partners in the project are FirstEnergy, Eaton, Siemens and Johnson Controls.

Simulated tests of energy control and flows will be conducted by the NASA Glenn Research Center.

The project aims to develop and showcase means of incorporating smart building technologies with conventional, solar and wind power while using batteries for backup power and to meet peak demand and store non-peak energy.

“What we’re doing is kind of preparing these campuses to be these living labs for these concepts,” Alexis Abramson, director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western, told The Toledo Blade.

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Comments have poured into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in recent weeks on proposed rules that industry players say would boost energy storage in wholesale markets and open new opportunity for microgrids.

Issued in November, the FERC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) attempts to smooth the way for energy storage to transact in six regional wholesale markets that span much of the U.S. The proposal (RM-16-23) also gives distributed energy aggregators wholesale market inroads.

As is customary, FERC has called on stakeholders to comment on the ideas before it puts them into effect. More than 100 companies, utilities, organizations and state agencies have weighed in.

The interest isn’t surprising. Ted Ko, policy director at Stem, says the proposal has monumental significance.

“It is probably the most significant thing at the federal level ever in terms of the rules changing for our business model,” said Ko. Stem aggregates energy storage so that it can participate in energy markets. The company’s mission is to build and operate a digitally connected energy storage network.

Under the FERC proposal, such aggregations could at last get the chance to compete against the power plants that now dominate the wholesale markets.

“It is finally going to make the different wholesale markets around the country adjust their rules to accommodate what energy storage is capable of doing,” Ko said in a recent interview.

Existing rules were designed long before the rise of energy storage and microgrids. Hence, they accommodate the sale of energy, capacity and ancillary services by large, centralized generators, but not small distributed energy resources (DERs) and energy storage in wholesale markets.

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Australian firm 1414 Degrees, formerly Latent Heat Storage, has developed a molten silicon thermal energy storage system it says can store 500 KWhs of energy in a 70-centimeter cube.  

If true, this is approximately 36 times the capacity of Tesla’s 14KWh Powerwall 2 lithium ion home storage battery utilizing the same space.

A prototype of the system had its first successful run on September 30, 2016.

By way of cost comparison, 1414 can build a 10MWh storage device for about $700,000. The 714 Tesla Powerwall 2s needed to store the same amount of energy would cost approximately 10X that amount, 1414 Degrees said in a news release.

Kevin Moriarty, a former chairman and managing director of zinc and gold miner Terramin Australia, joined the company late last year to help get commercial operations off the ground.

He says 1414 Degrees needs $10 million to $20 million to forward its plans, and is involved in “investment discussions” with several large energy companies.

The technology involved is unique in that it stores electrical energy by using it to heat a block of pure silicon to melting point – 1414 degrees Celsius. It discharges through a heat-exchange device such as a Stirling engine or a turbine, which converts heat back to electrical energy.

If the device stands up to commercial testing it could substantially reduce the costs of storing energy from solar and wind farms.

Rather than just sell its storage devices, 1414 Degrees wants to enter into joint ventures with customers – or partners – and share in the benefits.

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Tesla, Inc.’s CEO Elon Musk has made his company’s mission to help the world to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels and toward the embrace of sustainable energy sources. Now a U.K. energy-storage startup called Powervault is now in competition with Tesla, Inc. to outfit homes with affordable backup battery power across the pond.

WHY IS SOLAR POWER AND STORAGE THE KEY TO THE WORLD’S ENERGY INDEPENDENCE?

Solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation is at the heart of a transformation that will revolutionize the world’s electricity systems, letting consumers produce power for their own needs and feed surplus energy into the grid. Solar power is becoming ubiquitous: from large-scale utilities to micro-grids; from billion-dollar corporate HQs to rural rooftops; and from urban sprawl areas to small islands and isolated communities. We see solar next to airports, along highways, in fields, powering road signs, even at local small businesses like breweries.

Energy storage is an essential link needed to make intermittent solar energy reliable. Batteries installed inside homes can store excess energy produced by panels during peak hours of operation. When combined with smart meters and digital technologies, batteries can help utilities regulate the grid by providing power reserves which can be tapped and transmitted on demand.

As prices have dropped, solar PV generation uptake by households and local communities has increased dramatically. In 2015, around 30% of solar PV capacity installed worldwide involved systems of of less than 100 kW. This is gradually changing the face of power system ownership. Two companies — U.K.’s Powervault and the U.S. Tesla — are helping consumers to make the shift to solar installations combined with battery energy storage and a chance at energy independence.

POWERVAULT

Founded in 2012 with money from the U.K. government and private investors, Powervault has made a mission of reducing the cost of batteries in order to make them affordable to more homes. Powervault stores electricity in a home using either Lithium-ion Phosphate cells or Lead Acid batteries.

Powervault’s Lead Acid version is for customers who want a product with a low up-front cost and the prospect of upgrading to Lithium-ion technology when their Lead Acid batteries reach the end of their useful life in three to seven years. With Lithium-ion technology forecast to fall dramatically in cost over the next five years, customers can benefit from a low-cost Powervault using Lead Acid batteries now, then replace its batteries later. A Powervault lead battery that can store 3 kWh of power sells for 2,500 pounds ($3,117) a unit, or, about $1,039 for each kWh of electricity stored.  That price is about 12 percent cheaper than the $1,175/kWh average price in the industry, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

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Vermont Business Magazine South Burlington-based Dynapower, the global leader in energy storage inverters, and Intertek, a leading provider of quality solutions to industries worldwide, have jointly announced that Dynapower’s MPS-250(link is external) is the first storage-only energy inverter to be confirmed by Intertek to meet the UL 1741 SA draft requirements for a “smart” inverter.

Compliance with this standard ensures that Dynapower’s MPS-250 smart inverter is California Rule 21 and Hawaii Rule 14H compliant through development of advanced inverter features. This was achieved by Dynapower through the use of Intertek’s SATELLITE™ Data Acceptance Program.

The first energy storage inverter to be given the distinction of being UL 1741 SA listed. Dynapower Company photo.

“Dynapower has always been on the forefront of energy storage inverter technology and we are extremely pleased and proud to receive confirmation from Intertek that our MPS-250 inverter meets the UL 1741 SA draft requirements,” said Chip Palombini, sales manager of the energy storage group at Dynapower. “Working through the Intertek SATELLITE program enabled Dynapower to have full control over the timeline of the compliance process.”

“Intertek is proud to work with global leaders like Dynapower to advance the energy industry through smart inverter functionality, enabling PV integration and improving grid resiliency, crucial steps toward smart grids and smart cities,” said Sunny Rai, Vice President of Renewable Energy at Intertek. “Dynapower’s storage-only energy inverters are the first confirmed by Intertek to meet the UL 1741 SA draft requirements, and they achieved this through Intertek’s SATELLITE program, which allows manufacturers to run more efficient compliance programs.”

In addition to the smart inverter features required by the new standard, Dynapower also incorporated Dynamic Transfer as a standard feature into the Generation 2 MPS-250. Dynamic Transfer enables a “backup power” mode of operation for energy storage systems.

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A research team at Oregon State University is very excited over their new energy storage system, and not just because it is the world’s first hydronium-ion battery. They’re also excited because the new device provides a way forward to the next generation of grid scale stationary batteries that will enable the US grid to accommodate more solar and wind power.

A hydronium ion (H3O+) is what happens when you add a proton to a water molecule. They have been the object of much study these days, partly because of their emerging importance in battery systems.

Here’s an explainer from our friends over at Quirky Science:

…the water molecule allows acids to ionize. This is possible because of the formation of the hydronium ion. This is of immense importance not only to the physical properties of the universe, but to life itself.

Okay so that’s a little over the top but QS provides a hint why energy storage researchers are so interested in hydronium:

While the hydronium ion contains the hydrogen ion in its structure, the hydronium ion itself is surrounded by yet more water molecules. This serves to spread the positive charge further, stabilizing the system to a greater extent. The number of molecules associated with a given hydronium ion can range from perhaps six to many more than a dozen.

First Energy Storage Device With Hydronium Ions

In the new energy storage breakthrough, the OSU team created a rechargeable battery with hydronium ions as the charge carriers.

The break with conventional energy storage devices is a big one. Until now, positively charged ions that are used in batteries have belonged to the metals family.

The electrode which stores the hydronium ions is made of PTCDA, short for perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydridem. That sounds exotic but it’s basically just a solid crystalline material with a lattice structure, in the class of organics (think: plastic, not metal).

OSU explains why PTCDA was selected for the new battery:

…PTCDA material has a lot of internal space between its molecule constituents so it provides an opportunity for storing big ions and good capacity.

The hydronium ions also migrate through the electrode structure with comparatively low “friction,” which translates to high power.

Here’s chemist Xiulei Ji of OSU enthusing over the potentials:

“This may provide a paradigm-shifting opportunity for more sustainable batteries…It doesn’t use lithium or sodium or potassium to carry the charge, and just uses acid as the electrolyte. There’s a huge natural abundance of acid so it’s highly renewable and sustainable.”

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