In less than six months, Tesla’s ambitious new Mira Loma energy station went from idea to broken ground to up and running. Located roughly 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles in Ontario, California, the project was developed and built with the help of utility giant Southern California Edison, as well as Ontario’s local government. A blistering pace in terms of conception-to-operation, perhaps Mira Loma’s greatest native feature is the fact its humming energy storage facility boasts the capability to powering roughly 15,000 homes for upwards of four hours — during maximum energy usage periods, no less.

Earlier this week, Tesla’s Chief Technology Officer, JB Straubel, officially unveiled the new 1.5-acre space to a throng of employees, government workers, and media personnel. While speaking to the gathered crowd, rows of Tesla’s massive Powerpack batteries (i.e., the commercial version of Tesla’s Powerwall battery) and industrial inverters lined the property, dotting the dusty environment with the company’s trademark white and red color scheme. Aesthetics aside, Mira Loma’s sole existence is to store surplus energy that would otherwise dissipate without use. Instead of power stations creating energy that goes unused, Tesla’s new grid stores that surplus for when energy needs rise.

“This project is exactly in line with our mission to accelerate sustainable technology and sustainable energy broadly for the world,” said Straubel at the event. “Storage is a piece that’s been missing on the grid since the grid was invented, so thanks to these technologies, we’re right at the turning point of being able to deliver storage and use renewables — solar, wind, and others — that can power people’s needs for longer parts of the day.”

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A new report from the World Bank has concluded that energy storage capacity is set to increase dramatically in emerging markets in tandem with and enabling greater renewable energy development.

More specifically, the new report — which was authored by Navigant Research and commissioned by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, along with the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), a global knowledge and technical assistance program administered by the World Bank — predicted a 40-fold increase in the stationary energy storage capacity in developing countries by 2025, adding more than 80 gigawatts (GW) to the already 2 GW installed.

The report concluded that by 2020, “developing countries will need to double their electrical power output to meet rising demand” and that by 2035, “these nations will represent 80 percent of the total growth in both energy production and consumption.” Unsurprisingly, therefore, to meet these needs while also adhering to global emissions reductions targets, the authors of the report conclude that “a substantial portion of this new generation capacity will likely come from renewable sources.”

“Energy storage technology will be critical in the expansion of renewable energy in remote and rural areas that lack grid infrastructure or reliable electricity supplies,” said Philippe Le Houérou, IFC Executive Vice President and CEO. “By dramatically expanding the capacity to store energy, these technologies will help countries meet their renewable energy targets, support the demand for clean energy, and help bring electricity to the 1.2 billion people who currently lack access.”

According to the conclusions of the report, deployment of energy storage across emerging markets is expected to grow by 40% annually over the next decade.

The report predicts that the largest energy storage markets over the coming decade are likely to be China and India, thanks in large part to the tremendous renewable energy ambitions of those two countries. Latin America will also represent an attractive market for the development of energy storage, as several countries in the region are moving hard toward increasing their renewable energy capacity — including Mexico, Chile, and Brazil.

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In a speech to the National Press Club yesterday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declared that the key requirements for Australia’s electricity system are that it should be affordable, reliable, and able to help meet national emissions-reduction targets. He also stressed that efforts to pursue these goals should be “technology agnostic” – that is, the best solutions should be chosen on merit, regardless of whether they are based on fossil fuels, renewable energy or other technologies.

As it happens, modern wind, solar photovoltaics (PV) and off-river pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) can meet these requirements without heroic assumptions, at a cost that is competitive with fossil fuel power stations.

Turnbull and his government have also correctly identified energy storage as key to supporting high system reliability. Wind and solar are intermittent sources of generation, and while we are getting better at forecasting wind and sunshine on time scales from seconds to weeks, storage is nevertheless necessary to deliver the right balance between supply and demand for high penetration of wind and PV.

Storage becomes important once the variable renewable energy component of electricity production rises above 50%. Australia currently sources about 18% of its electricity from renewables – hydroelectricity in the Snowy Mountains and Tasmania, wind energy and the ever-growing number of rooftop PV installations.

Meanwhile, in South Australia renewable energy is already at around 50% – mostly wind and PV – and so this state now has a potential economic opportunity to add energy storage to the grid.

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If you’ve got solar panels on your house, you’ve probably also thought about getting a battery from Tesla to store up solar energy; that way, you can use the solar panels overnight, and maybe even disconnect from the power grid altogether. According to a new study, batteries do have some benefits, but when it comes to energy consumption and carbon emissions, well, they’re a wash.

“While home energy storage is a useful tool to reduce power flows in the distribution system, our findings indicate that it would increase net energy consumption due to energy storage inefficiencies,” University of Texas–Austin researchers Robert L. Fares and Michael E. Webber write in Nature Energy.

That conclusion is based on minute-by-minute data gathered from 99 Texas homes with solar panels and storage batteries in 2014, combined with specifications for Tesla’s Powerwall home battery—namely, its power output, total capacity, and what’s called roundtrip efficiency (essentially, how much energy is lost during the process of storing electricity in the battery and again when drawing electricity from it).

Data in hand, the researchers considered a scenario in which homeowners try to draw (and contribute) as little energy to the main power grid as they can. Under that scenario, batteries would reduce the total peak power draws across all 99 homes from 379 kilowatts to 349 kilowatts, or about 8 percent, simply because those homes don’t need energy from the grid. If nothing else, that’s good for utility companies, which must build their facilities to meet peak power demands, regardless of average needs.

Despite that, consumers aren’t actually using less energy—in fact, the homes in the study would end up using around 340 kilowatt-hours more per year than they would if they didn’t use a battery, essentially because of losses from storing energy in the battery and then taking it back out again.

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Tesla Motors Inc. and Southern California Edison on Monday unveiled one of the world’s largest energy storage facilities, part of a massive deployment of grid-connected batteries that regulators hail as key to helping keep Southern California’s lights on and reducing fossil-fuel reliance.

The facility at the utility’s Mira Loma substation in Ontario contains nearly 400 Tesla PowerPack units on a 1.5-acre site, which can store enough energy to power 2,500 homes for a day or 15,000 homes for four hours. The utility will use the collection of lithium-ion batteries, which look like big white refrigerators, to gather electricity at night and other off-peak hours so that the electrons can be injected back into the grid when power use jumps.

Tesla and Edison sealed the deal on the project in September as part of a state-mandated effort to compensate for the hobbled Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. They  fired up the batteries in December.

“This was unprecedented fast action,” Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony as part of media events across the region to tout a growing number of energy storage projects.

Picker said advancements in how electricity is delivered are happening at a pace that even his office can’t track. “The innovation taking place occurs faster than we can regulate,” he said.

In addition to the Tesla-Edison project, storage facilities of similar size are being rolled out by San Diego Gas & Electric with AES Energy Storage and by Greensmith Energy Partners with AltaGas. In all, the projects are adding 77.5 megawatts of energy storage to the state’s electricity grid.

Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage for Boston-based GTM Research, said the delivery of the battery systems in a matter of months highlights that energy storage, which continues to drop in price, can be a strong alternative during times of high electricity consumption to natural gas peaker plants, which contribute to pollution. Peaker plants, which are tapped during high-demand periods, can take two to three years to get through the permitting and building process, he said.

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CONCORD, N.C–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Alevo, the Energy Storage Provider, has today unveiled the GB35, a compact-Alevo GridBank delivering optimum levels of safety, robustness, reliability and lowest levelized cost of storage (LCOS). The GB35 joins the recently launched GB50 as part of a new suite of lithium-ion compact-energy storage systems (ESS) that are non-flammable and capable of extreme long life (50,000+ cycles). The GB35/GB50 systems are also capable of high power output (70 and 100 kW respectively).

The GB35/GB50 systems utilize Alevo’s patented proprietary inorganic electrolyte – Alevolyte – to ensure non-flammability and optimum reliability and safety levels. These high power and safety properties mean the GB35/GB50 systems are ideally suited for DC fast charging stations for electric vehicles, in addition to must-run critical workloads such as hospitals, data centers, mines, sensitive machinery and microgrids.

The original Alevo GridBank is one of the most in-demand energy storage systems on the market due to its use of the breakthrough, inorganic Alevolyte. The system offers unparalleled safety, high power and extreme long life, making them the perfect solution to providing multiple services to the grid to facilitate higher rates of energy efficiency, as well as a more efficient use of capital already invested in the grid infrastructure. The new, more-compact GB35/GB50 systems provide the same, industry-leading safety standards while delivering stackable ESS to meet any capacity requirement.

“We’re proud to unveil our new GB35 system which, alongside our existing GB50 system, delivers the industry’s most-advanced energy storage systems for the commercial and industrial markets,” explained Christopher Christiansen, President of Alevo Inc. “We have designed the systems with safety absolutely central to our thinking, which is why we firmly believe our GB35/GB50 systems are perfectly suited to must-run critical situations where safety is absolutely paramount.”

About Alevo

Alevo, a leading provider of energy storage is redefining energy as a developer, manufacturer and provider of grid-scale energy storage solutions featuring GridBank™ & Alevo Analytics. GridBank Lithium-Ion batteries feature a proprietary inorganic electrolyte (Alevolyte™), which is non-flammable and offers extreme long life and stability. Alevo’s vertically engineered turnkey energy storage solution can be placed anywhere on the electricity supply chain, to reduce energy waste, lower greenhouse gases and other emissions, create efficiencies and lower costs. Founded in 2009, Alevo is headquartered in Switzerland with GridBank manufacturing in the US.

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Energy storage is a game changer. Ultimately, it could free the electric power system from matching generation and consumption on a minute-by-minute basis, saving electricity until it’s needed. Policymakers, utilities, and customers are beginning to recognize its value. Doug Little, chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission, summed up the potential of behind-the-meter (BTM) storage this way: “Energy storage technology is really the ‘secret sauce’ for the future of residential rooftop solar.” At AEE, we agree, but add that it could be the secret sauce for numerous other applications – on both sides of the meter. That makes energy storage a key  technology for modernizing the energy grid and leading to an advanced energy future.

The secret sauce of energy storage is leading states from coast to coast to take action. The map below shows 89 state regulatory and legislative actions taken on energy storage recently. Clearly there is no shortage of interest. (Click the full screen button for a clearer view.)

Here are some highlights: the California Public Utilities Commission adopted an $8.7 million energy storage request for offers for Southern California Edison to address reliability concerns from the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak; the Public Utility Commission of Oregon opened a proceeding to develop energy storage program guidelines, consider project proposals, and implement a procurement program; the Colorado Public Utilities Commission approved a $9.1 million investment for two energy storage projects as part of Xcel Energy’s Innovative Clean Technology Projects Program; and the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center partnered on a $10 million energy storage initiative to advance the energy storage industry and accelerate deployment of commercial storage technologies.

Falling prices, advances in system integration, and more sophisticated rate designs are driving growth in the burgeoning energy storage market, which grew more than tenfold in the U.S., from $57 million in 2014 to $734 million in 2015. But even that does not explain why energy storage is the hot topic in energy today.

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Recently completed big battery projects in various parts of the world offer a taste of what’s to come in 2017 for large-scale energy storage.

Last Friday, AltaGas Ltd. officially opened the Pomona Energy Storage Facility, situated in the East Los Angeles Basin of Southern California. At 20 megawatts of electricity storage capacity, AltaGas Ltd. says it is currently the largest battery storage facility in operation in North America.

AltaGas will be able to provide Southern California Edison (SCE) with the 20 MW of  capacity for a continuous four hour period as required. This represents the equivalent of 80 MWh of energy discharging capacity; which it says is enough to provide the electricity needs of approximately 15,000 homes over the four-hour period.

“Providing energy from electricity stored in lithium-ion batteries provides clean reliable energy that complements California’s renewable energy portfolio while adding to the versatility of our asset base which is well situated for pursuing other energy storage developments,” said David Harris, President and CEO of AltaGas.

While the company says the project is the largest in North America, it may be a title it needs to share. Early last week, Electrek reported Tesla and Southern California Edison have completed a 20 MW/80 MWh energy storage facility at SCE’s Mira Loma substation; which uses the new Tesla Powerpack 2 .

Like the new Powerwall 2, the Tesla Powerpack 2 commercial energy storage solution features twice the energy storage capacity of its predecessor and also has new inverter; designed and manufactured by Tesla.

Elsewhere, Greentech Media reports India has launched its first grid-scale battery storage system, a 10-megawatt Advancion energy storage array designed for peak load management.

In related news, India’s first grid-scale solar energy plus storage tender reportedly attracted strong interest, with 13 developers submitting bids. The tender was for 5MW battery storage systems to be integrated into two separate solar energy projects of 50MW each at Kadapa Solar Park.

Over in Germany, the stage is also set for a very busy 2017. A recent study forecasts there will be a threefold increase in large battery projects this year, from around 60 megawatts last year to 200 megawatts this year.

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Until recently, the world’s most remote off-grid communities have relied on traditional diesel generators to supply their electricity needs. This has created significant cost and reliability issues. Sometimes, it can cost more to transport the fuel to the site than it actually cost to purchase in the first place. Should adverse weather disrupt travel then there is a risk of running out of fuel. Furthermore, the gensets need regular expensive maintenance.

For these reasons a growing number of communities are now turning to solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines. And in many cases, they are adopting microgrid solutions in which the diesel generation and renewable plant complement each other. The aim is always to ensure the reliability and autonomy of the electricity supply and to optimize operating costs.

This is where a large scale lithium-ion (Li-ion) energy storage system (ESS) can play a vital role in mitigating the variable and unpredictable nature of wind and solar plants. The ESS can perform a number of roles, including control of ramp rates, power smoothing, power shaping, peak shaving and frequency regulation.

It is useful to consider the situation at a typical remote site. Using standard power electronics a PV installation might contribute up to 20 to 30 percent of the power that would be generated by the diesel genset during daytime hours. If we add dedicated software then the PV penetration could increase to 50 percent. For example, a 1-MW microgrid might accept up to 300 kW, but this could be raised up to 500 kW of PV in the best case. Since the PV output is limited to sunlight hours, highly variable and does not necessarily meet the required consumption profiles, its contribution to the overall energy mix is naturally limited.

However, when an ESS is introduced, it is possible to maximize the contribution of renewables, increasing the penetration and harvesting all of the PV power. Fuel savings of 50 to 75 percent then become a realistic possibility.

Three recent examples show how energy storage is now making an important contribution for some very remote communities.

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Following years of hype and underwhelming products, the plug-in vehicle market had a breakout year in 2016. Not only do consumers now have the option to buy an electric vehicle with more than 200 miles of range and pay less than US$40,000, but the year was littered with announcements of automotive OEMs committing serious resources to building their own electric vehicles – and not just compliance cars. Cost reduction in Li-ion batteries has enabled this revolution, as have better performing batteries optimised specifically for electric vehicles. Increasing Li-ion demand will help to continue to lower energy storage costs, but also bring up an important issue: what should be done with the batteries after they are used in vehicles?

Historically batteries are recycled, and the lead-acid battery remains one of the most recycled products humans produce, but the high cost of processing most Li-ion chemistries makes this process unprofitable. This has fostered interest in reusing batteries for other applications, mostly for stationary energy storage applications, which would delay but not eliminate the need for battery recycling. On the surface this seem like an excellent opportunity to recapture value that would otherwise be wasted in Li-ion recycling batteries. While this is true in some applications, there are several reasons why reusing EV batteries is not ideal for most stationary energy storage applications.

Complexities of second-life use

Reusing Li-ion batteries in second-life applications is not as simple as removing a battery from a vehicle then installing it directly into a stationary system. Before a battery can be reused, it first must be manually removed from a vehicle and the pack disassembled into individual cells. The cells must then be tested to determine the battery’s state of health, sending batteries without sufficient remaining capacity to be recycled. Even within the batteries suitable for reuse, cells must be sorted by similar remaining capacity, or else the second-life system performance would suffer. These are labor and energy intensive processes, but efforts in both academia and industry are underway to reduce costs. Introducing automation in the process will reduce time and labor costs, as will convincing battery manufacturers to use clearer labels and design for disassembly.

Even with better processing techniques there are some limitations to our current understanding of the second-life battery opportunity. As the first mass-market electric vehicle was released about six years ago, and few vehicles have reached the end of their life, there isn’t a clear indication of how much remaining capacity can be expected from these batteries after typical use. There will be further variation among the different chemistries being used in the Li-ion batteries: the nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) batteries preferred by Tesla are unsuitable for most stationary applications, even when new, due to poor cycling characteristics. Other chemistries such as lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) preferred by other manufacturers in batteries made by LG Chem, Samsung SDI and BYD are better suited for second-life applications.

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