The energy storage industry has grown to become a $100 billion market, projected to reach $250 billion by 2040.

This massive valuation is due, in part, to more than 50% of consumer energy bills being attributed to peak hour charges. Noticing the need to make energy usage more affordable and efficient, paired with a passion to improve the planet, one entrepreneur launched a company aimed at transforming the way we use energy.

Founded in 2009 by Vic Shao, Green Charge Networks designs and installs commercial energy storage systems. Their mission is to empower businesses, municipalities, and schools of all scales to use energy more efficiently, by limiting carbon emissions and minimizing costs through servicing energy storage. Energy storage is designed to help avoid drawing energy from the grid during peak hours, instead charging itself during regular hours when energy is cheaper. By using energy storage as a method to balance peak power demands, power efficiency increases. This subsequently reduces demand charges, reduces capital expenditures for service upgrades, and improves the planet by decreasing the usage of power plants.

Green Charge was the first to market with an ROI-driven energy storage product. Now, the company stands as the largest provider of commercial energy storage in the country, boasting a growing portfolio of 48 MWh of battery storage projects deployed or under construction across more than 150 sites. In addition to expanding their reach, the startup has successfully helped customers across the United States cut the cost of their electric bills by up to 30%.

To date, Green Charge has raised over $56 million in two rounds of funding. In May, Green Charge was acquired by global energy power Engie, an industry-leading battery storage company. Leveraging an innovative suite of patented software algorithms and smart data, Green Charge deploys, owns, operates, and optimizes battery systems across both private and public sectors.

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Dynapower and Samsung SDI are launching their integrated behind-the-meter ESS offering with an immediate first deployment at the University of Minnesota, and are working with several behind-the-meter ESS developers to deploy their integrated solution across the nation during 2017.

The integrated energy storage offering provides energy storage system vendors, project developers, and utilities with a fully engineered solution that reduces costs for commercial and industrial end users in the deployment of energy storage.

The two companies’ integration experience includes the Electrical Training Institute Net Zero Plus building microgrid and the Duke Energy Notrees 36MW/14MWh ESS project.

Adam M. Knudsen, president of South Burlington, Vermont-based Dynapower says, “As the energy storage industry has rapidly evolved we have seen a clear demand from the market for engineered solutions that are flexible and proven. This is a solution customers can rely upon.”

Fabrice Hudry, the vice president of Energy Storage Solutions at Samsung SDI says. “Samsung SDI is the world leader in Li-ion battery technology specifically for stationary energy storage application, and it is only fitting that we integrate our batteries with Dynapower’s leading inverter technology.”

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The cost of energy storage technologies is set to reduce significantly over the next five years driven by economies of scale and improvements in both technology and standardisation, according to a new report from financial advisory and asset management firm Lazard.

The second of Lazard’s Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis compares the costs of various energy storage technologies in detail across different segments in terms of capital cost and LCOE. The analysis was conducted with support from Enovation Partners.

The cost reductions will also be pushed forward by increased demand as regulatory environments improve, the penetration of renewables increases, and as ageing grids begin to need more support.

More demand for energy storage will also result in enhanced manufacturing scale. Meanwhile, the increasing deployment of both renewables and storage will create a mutually beneficial growth cycle where one technology’s success supports the other.

However, the extent of cost reductions in the five-year period has seen a mix of projections. Lazard cited some industry members forecasting lithium, flow and lead battery capital cost declines of around 40%. Lazard said cost reductions for lithium are already well underway since last year.

Ultimately it will be manufacturing and engineering improvements in batteries rather than balance of system (BOS) costs that drive the cost reductions.

Another key takeaway from Lazard was that some technologies are increasingly attractive for a number of specialised power grid uses, but not all uses are economically attractive right now. The main use at present is to strengthen the power grid through frequency regulation, transmission and distribution investment deferral. Another main use is to reduce energy bills for commercial and industrial energy users.

The report stated: “Energy storage appears most economically viable in use cases that require relatively greater power capacity and flexibility as opposed to energy density or duration.”

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China’s deployment of energy storage looks set to continue an upward trajectory, with almost 600MW in the pipeline as of the third quarter this year.

According to figures released by the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA), 14 new projects were announced in Q3 2016 totalling 587MW. This includes projects that are in planning stages, under construction and that have gone online in the quarter. This appears to represent a significant boost to the sector, and is a vast 586% increase on the same period of last year. Up until the beginning of the quarter, CNESA found, 170.6MW of energy storage was in operation in the country.  

The bulk of this large figure is contributed by a single project, a touted 400MW supercapacitor storage station with storage duration of four hours in Guazhou County, in the northern Gansu province, a couple of hundred kilometres south of the border with Mongolia. This project will be used to demonstrate the use of storage in preventing wind power capacity curtailment on a microgrid. The project, by Shidai Jiahua Co, requires US$680 million in investment and has an expected payback time of 16 to 18 years.

There was also a 160MW local government project in Inner Mongolia, another microgrid to be used for renewables integration. The local authority of Xilin Gol, one of Inner Mongolia’s 12 sub-divided regions, is keen to trial retail sales of electricity from independent suppliers and this project represents a major step forward in this regard.

While these two huge projects are in northwestern regions of China, Jiangsu in the east will get some significant new projects including a 1.5MW/12MWh project from partners including battery maker Narada Power, inverter maker Sungrow and project developer GCL Power, which is an arm of one of China’s biggest PV groups, GCL Poly. Narada Power was also involved in a 15MW/120MWh project in Jiangsu’s Wuxi City Xingzhou Industrial Park.

Overall, renewables integration appears to be the biggest application driver for energy storage in China, as seen in the diagram below. While big announcements were plentiful, only 1.5MW of storage actually came online in Q3, which was nonetheless a 50% increase on the same period of 2015.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA –(Marketwired – December 14, 2016) – Customized Energy Solutions (CES) recently passed the 100MW milestone managing grid-connected energy storage projects, making it the largest and most experienced independent third party manager of energy storage in North America. CES provides dispatch instructions, monitoring services, and market interactions for these energy storage resources from its Market Operations Center located in its Philadelphia, PA, headquarters. The resources being managed include battery and flywheel technologies located in the Mid-Atlantic, New York, New England, and Ontario, Canada energy markets. CES is currently contracted to add additional storage resources to its portfolio in California and Texas during the first quarter of 2017.

“CES is proud to be managing a storage portfolio of this magnitude. Energy storage is expected to have a pronounced positive impact on the transmission and distribution systems in the coming years, and CES is excited to be working with the developers and owners of these storage facilities,” said Erik Paulson, CES’ Vice President of Wholesale Market Services. CES has been a pioneer and leader in the energy storage industry. CES’s contributions have helped energy storage transform from a concept to viable commercial solution. For over a decade, the CES team has worked in the energy storage space — providing consulting and advisory services to organizations that have ranged from early-stage start-ups to large technology and project developers. CES’s practical experience with the day-to-day operation of battery and flywheel energy storage facilities in competitive energy markets provides the team with an experience base that sets CES apart from other providers.

About Customized Energy Solutions

Established in 1998, Customized Energy Solutions assists clients in managing and staying ahead of the changes in the wholesale and retail electricity and natural gas markets. Serving hundreds of clients, Customized Energy Solutions offers best-in-class hosted software solutions and consultative services focused on optimizing energy market operations. CES manages over 5,500MW of generation in total, and is committed to promoting economic development through the advancement of transparent, efficient and non-discriminatory practices in the energy markets. CES empowers clients by helping them better understand and manage the inner workings of energy markets and new technologies. CES provides the highest level of energy information technology and services to clients around the globe.

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The world will witness an international ‘megashift’ towards energy storage – batteries in particular – within the next 10 years. That was the prediction made by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) in the summer of 2015. 

A year later, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) went a step further, estimating that he annual investment in energy storage systems will increase six-fold to $8.2bn (£6.7bn) in 2024, and to $250bn (£197bn) by 2040. This massive growth in energy storage – first in the utilities sector, and then among corporations seeking to reduce overheads –  will create a “fundamentally different” global power system, BNEF senior analyst Logan Goldie-Scot said at the time.

If 2016 was anything to go by, the energy storage megashift is already beginning to gather pace. The battery market has seen breath-taking levels of growth from utilities over the past 12 months, while non-utilities are increasingly realising that lithium-ion or flow storage systems can act as the perfect accompaniment to on-site renewable energy installations.

Here, edie has rounded up some of the biggest and best energy storage projects across the globe – most of which were installed or agreed in 2016 – which are together demonstrating the vast potential that this low-carbon innovation has to offer for the green economy.

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Maybe you missed it. It happened right before Thanksgiving. FERC announced a proposed rulemaking that will allow energy storage and distributed energy resource (DER) aggregators with resources on both sides of the meter to participate in the wholesale electric market as fully interactive grid resources. Referencing the nearby holiday, is FERC’s new rule a game changer or a turkey?

FERC claims storage resources and distributed energy resources (DERs) functioning under aggregators may not be able to fully participate in wholesale markets. FERC’s solution with the proposed rulemaking is to require each Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) and Independent System Operator (ISO) to revise its tariff to:

 1) Establish rules that accommodate participation of storage resources in the organized wholesale electric markets; and

2) Define DER aggregators as a type of market participant that can participate in the organized wholesale electric markets under the rules and protocols that best accommodates the resources being aggregated.

The FERC announcement and the full notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR) are available at this link.   

Some parts of this proposed rule may seem ho-hum or unnecessary. For example, pumped storage has participated in wholesale markets for a long time. Why are new rules needed to accommodate storage resources?  The answer is that each RTO and ISO has its own rules for the participation of different resource types and without a specific set of tariffs and rules for each one, the resource may have been unable to fully participate in the capacity, energy and ancillary service wholesale markets. Rules developed specifically for storage may make it more profitable for this resource category to participate in the market and thereby increase supply, innovation and competition. Not so ho-hum is the point that the proposed rules would allow storage resources to set the wholesale market clearing price (the price that all suppliers are paid). The ISOs/RTOs also will be required to set a minimum size storage resource not greater than 100 kW for participants in the storage market. Industry pundits claim that whoever can master energy storage will revolutionize the power industry. Will this proposed rule help storage providers move in that direction?

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For the first time, battery storage has won agreements as part of the UK’s latest Capacity Market auction, winning over 3.2 gigawatts (GW) of contracts according to provisional auction results.

The UK’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has published provisional auction results for the T-4 Capacity Auction for delivery in 2020/21, which concluded on December 8. Over 52 GW was awarded at a clearing price of £22.50 kW/year, including new gas generation.

However, the big news out of the provisional auction results was the awarding of over 3.2 GW of energy storage contracts, the first time energy storage has won agreements as part of the market wide auction. Specifically, four battery projects which had previously been successful under the National Grid’s Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) tender were provided with 15-year contracts as new build generators under the T-4 Capacity Auction. These four projects are the 10 MW Cleator and 40 MW Glassenbury projects being developed by Low Carbon, a 49 MW project being developed in West Burton by EDF Energy Renewables, and the 10 MW Blackburn Meadows project under construction in Sheffield by E.ON UK.

“Our homes and businesses need an electricity supply they can rely on all year round. We’ve provided them with that certainty, at a low cost to bill payers, years in advance,” said UK Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark. “Technological innovation, as part of our low carbon future, will create jobs and opportunities across the UK. We are rebuilding an archaic energy system, bringing forward brand new gas power and innovative low-carbon capacity like battery storage to upgrade our energy mix.

“This is about more than just keeping the lights on. A modern, reliable, and flexible electricity system powers the economy and Britain’s future success.”

Hydropower was also awarded agreements of 711 MW, though the lion’s share was awarded to gas generation.

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An Arizona scheme to study the use of energy storage and smart inverters in integrating solar to the grid has contracted the deployment of 4MW of AES Energy Storage’s lithium battery systems.

While regulators in the state are poised to rule next week on the value of solar to the network and consumers, ending what Energy-Storage.News’ solar sister site PV Tech reported today amounts to “years of drawn-out discourse”, execution of this project, for utility Arizona Public Service (APS) is already underway.

The 4MW of storage will be deployed as two separate 2MW installations of AES’ Advancion energy storage systems. They will form part of APS’ ongoing ‘Solar Partner Program’, which evaluates the possibilities for integrating a high penetration of PV on the grid.

The utility has already put 10MW of PV onto more than 1,500 customers’ rooftops through the programme. Participants receive a US$30 monthly bill credit for 20 years and do not have to pay for panels themselves. APS claims this will help inform them and other utilities around the country on how smart inverters and storage can play a part in lowering emissions, maintaining reliability of the system and best manage peak demand while renewable energy assets increase their share of generation.

‘The best renewable energy is the type a customer never thinks about’

AES’ Advancion systems will be located in the cities of Surprise and Buckeye and will be used to keep electricity service reliable and to meet times of high demand and high electricity prices. They will be among the first Advancion systems to be under utility ownership, with AES having opened up the platform to third-party ownership in 2015. There are some 120 customers with PV installed through the APS Solar Partner Program in the two cities.

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