California Gov. Jerry Brown and the state legislature signed four bills into law that should positively impact energy storage investment in the Golden State.

Collectively, these bills will grow the behind-the-meter and utility-scale energy storage markets, create new clean energy jobs, reduce distributed energy resource interconnection challenges, and ensure that bulk energy storage is part of California’s renewable energy future, according to a release from the California Energy Storage Alliance.

The bills signed by Brown on Monday include:

·         AB 1637—Increases the Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) funding by $249 million, sending a clear market signal to industry stakeholders that behind-the-meter energy storage will play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting the next-generation electric grid. Thanks to the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) recent SGIP reforms, 75 percent of the program budget going forward is now reserved for energy storage.

·         AB 2868—Requires the CPUC to direct California’s three investor owned utilities (IOUs) to accelerate the deployment of distributed energy storage by filing applications for new programs and investments of up to 500 MW. This bill directly increases the market for energy storage in California, as the 500 MW is in addition to the 1.325 GW procurement goal that California established in 2013.

·         AB 2861—Authorizes the CPUC to create an objective, expedited dispute-resolution process for distributed, behind-the-meter energy resources attempting to establish an interconnection to an IOU’s electricity distribution network. This bill and resulting dispute resolution process will accelerate and reduce Rule 21 interconnection costs.

·         AB 33 (Quirk)—Directs the CPUC and California Energy Commission to evaluate and analyze the potential for all types of long duration bulk energy storage, such as pumped hydro, to help integrate renewable generation into the grid. This bill ensures broader consideration of bulk energy storage’s unique capabilities and market roles.

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September 27 (SeeNews) – New York City has set a new target of 1 GW of citywide solar capacity by 2030, mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday.

In 2014, the city committed to installing 100 MW of solar power on public buildings and spurring the installation of 250 MW on private buildings by 2025. Mayor de Blasio said progress made so far has encouraged the administration to adopt the new target, which is equivalent to the power needs of more than 250,000 households.

The mayor also set the city’s first ever energy storage target that calls for the deployment of 100 MWh by 2020.

According to the announcement, New York City’s solar capacity has almost quadrupled to 96 MW from 25 MW since mayor de Blasio took office at the start of 2014. There are 69 MW of private solar installations plus another 17 MW scheduled to be installed, while almost 9 MW of solar has now been constructed on public buildings.

New York City has a target of reducing carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

Separately, de Blasio on Monday announced the completion of a 3,152-panel rooftop solar installation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

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The US Department of Energy has set aside US$37 million to improve energy storage and conversion technologies in transportation batteries, grid-level storage, and fuel cells.

The department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) will fund 16 new research projects into how new technology, specifically solid ion conductors, can overcome the limitations of current battery and fuel cell products.

Current fuel cells convert chemical energy into electricity, and back again, and can therefore store electricity from intermittent resources like wind and solar power, and also generate it as required from stored energy, whether from carbon free sources or natural gas or hydrogen. At the same time, the inherent limitations of electrochemical batteries has “stifled further innovation,” reckons ARPA-E.

Instead, batteries using parts built with solid ion conductors – solids in which ions can be mobile and store energy – offer a high-performance alternative to traditional liquid electrolytes or expensive materials used in current fuel cell stacks.

The new research will focus on how to overcome associated drawbacks such as low ionic conductivity and expensive processing, and how to finally integrate these parts into energy storage devices. It will also explore how to increase battery energy capacity while preventing short circuits and degradation, and how expensive elements like platinum can be replaced with more common metals.

ARPA-E director Ellen Williams said: “While battery technologies have improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years, there remain some imposing physical and chemical barriers that have stifled further innovation. Solid ion conductors made of affordable, easily produced materials could replace today’s mostly liquid electrolytes and expensive fuel cell parts, helping create a next generation of batteries and fuel cells that are low-cost, durable, and more efficient.”

This week, the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) set out a three-year research programme to improve the performance of lead batteries in energy storage and electric vehicles, and close the gap on lithium-ion in the energy storage and electric vehicle markets.

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Duke Energy announced plans last week to expand its 1,065-MW Bad Creek pumped storage project by 200 MW, with an anticipated completion date of 2023.

This upgrade was included in the Duke Energy Carolinas Integrated Resources Plan that was filed Sept. 1. The company plans to file a license amendment for this work with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2017.

Work to increase capacity will involve installing a more efficient and powerful pump-turbine, a new generator and higher-rated generator output circuit breakers.

“The upgrade is part of our strategy to increase renewable energy and reduce our carbon footprint,” says Kim Crawford, Duke Energy corporate communications. “The additional energy storage will provide a benefit to more renewables in the region. It will also help meet our winter peak demand in the morning hours — when solar power is typically not available.”

Bad Creek is about 8 miles north of Salem, S.C., and began operating in 1991. The upper reservoir is called Bad Creek Reservoir and the lower is Lake Jocassee. The underground powerhouse contains four pump-turbine and motor-generator units.

Bad Creek provides about 10 percent of Duke Energy’s power capacity in the Carolinas.

A second Duke Energy pumped-storage facility, 660-MW Jocassee, uses water from Lake Jocassee, which is its upper reservoir. The utility upgraded this plant a few years ago, increasing its capacity by 50 MW.

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The U.S. energy storage market is in a period of transition.

Last year was a big one for storage, with Q4 2015 alone logging more total megawatts deployed than 2013 and 2014 combined. This growth drew increased attention from investors, regulators, consumers, and system operators. And in 2016, battery storage has expanded its foothold beyond its historically favorable markets, capitalizing on improved economics and a renewed focus on reliability. GTM Research has analyzed several key indicators of a transition for America’s storage market.

Front-of-the-meter deployment trends

The front-of-the-meter energy storage market logged another strong quarter in Q2 2016, recording 32 megawatts of new installations. This new capacity is down 10 percent from Q2 2015, but up over threefold from Q1 2016, continuing the trend from 2015 of deployments increasing toward the end of the calendar year.

Grid-scale energy storage is getting traction outside of its historically strong markets. New deployments in PJM are down in 2016 following the institution of an interim cap on RegD resources the frequency regulation market. For the first time since Q2 2014, PJM did not represent the majority of utility-scale deployments.

Front-of-the-meter policy trends

Policy developments dominated news in the front-of-the-meter market. Energy storage procurements in response to the Aliso Canyon gas leak in California could serve as a case study for energy storage as an expedited solution to capacity issues. SDG&E has signed an agreement with AES to install and commission 37.5 megawatts of Samsung batteries by January 2017. SCE has announced two 20-megawatt projects, one to be built by AltaGas with Greensmith batteries and one using Tesla batteries, along with a 2-megawatt project by Powin Energy and a 5-megawatt project from Western Grid. Successful deployment in the short timeframe required would be a tremendous success story for grid-scale batteries, and serve as further proof of the technology’s speed of installation and potential to enhance reliability.

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This summer, just after Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) showed off its Gigafactory to the press, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would have an announcement related to its energy storage business later this year. The teasing continued when Musk mentioned upcoming “next-generation technology” for its energy storage solution during the company’s second-quarter conference call. 

Now, Tesla is giving investors a clearer idea of what to expect, and it’s putting a target date on this new technology’s unveiling. “Aiming for Oct 28 unveil in SF Bay Area of new Tesla/SolarCity solar roof with integrated Powerwall 2.0 battery and Tesla charger,” Musk said on Twitter Thursday morning. 

Here’s a closer look at what this product might look like and what investors should know about it.

What to expect

An integrated solar and energy storage product in partnership with solar panel company SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY), where Musk is the largest shareholder and board chairman, isn’t necessarily news. Indeed, Tesla has described a product like this on several different occasions.

In July, shortly after Tesla revealed its proposal to acquire SolarCity, Tesla teased an integrated solar and energy storage product in the company’s update to its Master Plan. Tesla plans to launch “a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works,” the plan read, “empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.”

In August, when Tesla announced it had reached an agreement with SolarCity to combine, Tesla said an acquisition would enable the company to “create fully integrated residential, commercial and grid-scale products that improve the way that energy is generated, stored and consumed.”

And Musk specifically noted during SolarCity’s second-quarter conference call in August that the differentiated product the solar company has been promising to unveil later this year is “a solar roof.” In other words, the solar roof will be the roof itself.

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US automotive manufacturer General Motors (GM) has said its expertise in electric vehicle batteries will help it to power 100% of its global operations with renewable energy by 2050, meeting annual demand of upwards of 9TW/h.

GM said its “pursuit of electrified vehicles and efficient manufacturing”, combined with its expertise in electric vehicle batteries, will see it meet its 2050 target. “Energy storage can ultimately address the intermittency or reliability of wind and solar energy,” it said in a statement.

GM is using repurposed Chevrolet Volt batteries, originally used in Chevrolet’s Volt extended-range electric cars, for energy storage from solar and wind generation at its vehicle testing facility in Milford, in Michigan. The Volt batteries supply power to its Milford data centre; excess energy is returned to the grid supplying the rest of the Milford site.

A similar scheme is in place in Japan, where Japanese trading company Sumitomo has a joint venture with Nissan Motors to reuse electric vehicle batteries.

The company said solar power will continue as the major part of its international energy generation. GM is in the process of adding 30MW of solar arrays in China, with 10MW of rooftop solar to be installed at its Jinqiao Cadillac assembly plant in Shanghai, and 20MW of solar carports, covering 81,000 paring spaces, at its distribution centre in Wuhan.

GM’s 11.8MW rooftop solar installation in Zaragoza, Spain, is one of the largest in the world, after Italian renewable energy firm Enel Green Power 25MW array in Naples, Italy, and Indian conglomerate Tata’s 12MW project in the Punjab, in India.

GM reckons it saves US$5 million per year, and has saved US$80 million to date, from using renewable energy. The company said costs to install and produce renewable energy will decrease further, resulting in more “bottom-line returns”.

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RICHMOND, Calif., and NEW YORK — Owners of grocery stores and other cold storage facilities in parts of Brooklyn and Queens can now receive incentives from Con Edison’s Neighborhood Program for installing Axiom Exergy’s thermal energy storage system. The Axiom Exergy Refrigeration Battery stores cooling instead of electricity to help businesses manage their energy usage, reduce demand charges on their electric bills, and prevent food spoilage. Over $5 million worth of Refrigeration Battery systems are set to be installed at supermarkets and other businesses in the Brooklyn and Queens areas covered by Con Edison’s Neighborhood Program. The 1.5-2 MW of energy storage set to be installed has the capacity to shift in aggregate of 6-8 MWh of energy. Businesses are eligible for incentives under the program and Con Edison is working with customers to reduce their energy usage while still having the lighting, heating and cooling, and appliances they need to run their businesses.

“We’re thrilled to see that Con Edison is taking an innovative approach to help address surging power demand on its grid by working with grocery store and cold storage facility owners to reduce their energy bills and enhance their razor-thin profit margins,” said Amrit Robbins, president and co-founder of Axiom Exergy. “By deploying Refrigeration Battery systems, these locations can convert power-hungry refrigeration systems into intelligent ‘batteries’ that can respond dynamically to the needs of the facility and the grid operator, taking into account energy prices, weather patterns, and grid programs like demand response.” 

Using the Axiom Exergy thermal energy storage technology, businesses with large refrigeration-based energy loads can reduce their peak electricity demand by up to 40 percent, said the company. The Refrigeration Battery can shift six hours of a building’s refrigeration-based electricity loads. It uses the existing refrigeration system’s excess capacity to “store cooling” at night by freezing a tank of salt water.

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TULSA, OK–(Marketwired – September 22, 2016) – 3DIcon Corporation (“3DIcon”) (OTC PINK: TDCP), which is scheduled to close on its acquisition of Coretec Industries LLC this month, announced that, through Coretec and its silicon materials technologies, it will commence the commercialization of Coretec’s proprietary high value liquid silicon precursor, cyclohexasilane, Si₆H₁₂ (“CHS”), for use within the growing battery energy storage market.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are rechargeable batteries commonly used in portable electronics where weight, size and time between charging are critical. Theglobal market for Li-ion batteries is witnessing a significant growth owing to their increasing use in smartphones, tablets/PCs, digital cameras, and power tools and is estimated to be $46.2 billion dollars by 2022. Additionally, the demand for Li-ion batteries in the automobile industry is increasing as electric vehicles enter the market in greater volume.

A key challenge remaining for the broader adoption of Li-ion batteries is a need for further improvements in the amount of energy stored combined with the number of times the battery can be recharged before it must be replaced. Under current practice the capacity of Li-ion batteries is being enhanced by adding silicon while advances in improving the lifetime continue to be made by varying how the silicon is added. Currently in these cases, monosilane (SiH₄) gas is commonly used as the starting material.

Coretec has licensed technology for the manufacture of CHS and derivatives of CHS. Our strategy is to replace monsilane gas with CHS in these applications. A significant competitive advantage of CHS is that it is a liquid at room temperature and not explosive, making it easier and safer to handle than monosilane gas. CHS can also be converted into silicon directly from a liquid or gas, allowing greater flexibility in processing. We have shown that CHS can be easily converted into films, nanoparticles and nanofibers, all of which have been considered for use in Li-ion batteries.

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