Tesla is getting ready to introduce a long rumored lower-cost, longer-lasting battery for its electric vehicles in China sometime later this year or early next year, according to a new report from Reuters. The battery — which has been colloquially called a “million mile” battery in reference to how long it can last in a car before breaking down — is being co-developed with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd (CATL) and was designed in part by battery experts recruited by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Tesla is already the industry leader when it comes to squeezing range out of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, and it’s expected to reveal more about the new technology at an upcoming “Battery Day” for investors. Musk told investors and analysts earlier this year that the information “will blow your mind. It blows my mind.” The company originally planned to hold the event in April, but has had to reschedule it until at least late May thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company held a similar event focused on self-driving technology in April 2019.

The battery is expected to lower the cost per kilowatt hour (the unit of energy most commonly used to measure the capacity of the battery packs in modern electric vehicles) to under $100. Many experts believe that reaching that mark would allow Tesla or other automakers to sell electric vehicles for the same prices as gasoline-powered ones, thereby making them far more accessible. General Motors is also trying to hit that mark in its work with battery maker LG Chem, as it recently shared during its own big “EV Day” event in March, though the automaker is not expected to get there until the mid-2020s.

General Motors said last month that its new generation of batteries will use 70 percent less cobalt, an expensive and precious material that is often mined by workers who are subject to brutal conditions. Musk has long sought to remove cobalt from the equation entirely, and Tesla is getting closer to doing that in its work with CATL, according to Reuters.

Information about Tesla’s next-generation batteries has steadily trickled out over the last year or so thanks to the experts Musk hired and their public works, like patents, academic papers, and university presentations. The group has been funded by Tesla since 2016, according to Reuters.

Welcome to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change, energy and the environment in California and the American West. I’m Sammy Roth, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, I woke up early and drove east from Palm Springs along Interstate 10, stopping just before the California-Arizona state line, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix. The desert was even flatter than normal here. Thousands of acres had been scraped and graded for solar panels, which tilted en masse to face the rising sun, looking like a gleaming black sea against a backdrop of jutting mountains and blue sky streaked with wispy clouds.

Various dignitaries had gathered to commission this massive solar farm, which produces electricity for Southern California Edison. It’s now being expanded to serve additional utility customers in Los Angeles County, San Francisco and the San Joaquin Valley.

Another big change is coming to the solar facility. It’s going to get some enormous lithium-ion batteries.

Edison announced this month that it’s buying 770 megawatts of batteries, more than half of which will be installed at this remote outpost near the city of Blythe. The batteries will help Edison replace four gas-burning power plants along the Southern California coast, in part by storing electricity generated by solar panels for times when the sun isn’t shining.

For context, 770 megawatts is more energy storage than was installed in the entire United States last year. It’s enough batteries to meet about 3.5% of all the mid-afternoon electricity demand on California’s main power grid so far this week.

Renewable energy developer Strata Solar sent an update on its landmark Ventura Energy Storage (VES) project — a 100-MW, 400-MWh battery energy storage system in unincorporated Ventura County, Calif. Strata awarded an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract to Tesla for its Megapack battery system.

Pre-construction development is now complete. Construction, using local union labor, is scheduled to commence in July 2020. As the largest project selected in the paradigm-shifting solicitation by SCE, the project is helping Southern California to move away from the Aliso Natural Gas Storage facility and coastal power plants without compromising reliability.

“This precedent setting project is a testament to Strata Solar’s 12 years of success in the energy industry and our commitment to battery storage development as a core business line,” said Strata’s founder and CEO Markus Wilhelm. “We focus on smart development, value for our customers and strong returns for our investors with a team that has the experience to deliver market-leading results.”

Following a breakneck development effort, the project recently completed entitlements and finalized all necessary commercial agreements. Equity interest in the Project is scheduled to close in the second quarter. The substantial investment in Ventura’s energy infrastructure would not be possible without the numerous local stakeholders and supporters committed to the Project’s success.

“I’m excited to see this project moving forward,” said Mike Powers, Ventura County CEO. “Given the disruptions taking place during this time, Planning Department staff has done a great job, approving the project during the County’s first virtual Planning Administrative Hearing. The Project will help to ensure local energy reliability, and in the event of a Public Safety Power Shutoff the facility will convey stored energy to the grid, providing power to our local homes and businesses.”

Lithium-ion battery storage is one of the most exciting new and innovative energy options changing the energy landscape, but it also poses some unique challenges for fire safety design. Dr Rui Sun, one of Hydrock’s leading fire safety experts, explores how to keep your building safe without compromising the benefits of this new smart energy solution.

Driven by the worldwide changing energy landscape, the development of smarter energy storage is accelerating. A smart energy strategy presents a brilliant opportunity to access cheaper, cleaner and more reliable energy for businesses and homes by allowing consumers (domestic and commercial) to store energy to access as needed, avoiding reliance on the grid. The commercial benefits of this are vast.

From a technology perspective, in the current market, the most popular accumulator is the lithium-ion battery. It is lightweight, rechargeable and stores a lot of energy in relation to its size for a reasonably long period without losing voltage. More importantly, thanks to the use of lithium-ion technology, the cost of energy storage has been reduced by 50%.

However, energy accumulation systems using lithium-ion batteries present unique challenges for fire safety design within buildings. They pose a new fire hazard that could be difficult to control and has no current UK regulation.

Fire risks associated with the use of lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion cells consist of two electrodes: negative and positive, with an ion-conducting, flammable electrolyte and separator in between, housed in cabinets or equivalent configurations that protect them.

Any damage to the battery structure, mainly the separator, could casuse an internal short-circuit that can lead to ‘thermal runaway’, an unstoppable chain reaction resulting in rapid temperature increase and sudden energy release within the battery system. This could eventually lead to a catastrophic rupturing of battery cells and result in the remaining material burning at a very high temperature (over 8000C).

Extinguishing fires caused by battery thermal runaway presents a challenge for firefighting. The combustion of lithium-ion cells produces oxygen which actually contributes to fire growth. The lithium-ion battery can also be seemingly reignited days or weeks after the initial extinguish.

Utility group PacifiCorp is about to open a gusher of opportunity for wind, solar and energy storage developers in the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions.

Last year PacifiCorp finalized a landmark integrated resource plan (IRP) that for the first time envisions it relying on large amounts of wind farms and solar backed by energy storage to meet its long-range energy needs.

Now the utility, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, is preparing a solicitation for projects to meet that plan’s needs through 2024, taking a concrete step toward its vision.

PacifiCorp’s new all-source request for proposals “is a big deal,” said Spencer Gray, executive director of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition, a trade group with members including EDF Renewable Energy, Invenergy, Constellation Exelon, Shell Energy North America and others.

Through its two utility subsidiaries, Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power, PacifiCorp claims to be the largest grid operator in the Western U.S., serving 1.9 million customers in six states. PacifiCorp’s utilities have long relied on federally operated hydropower or utility-owned fossil-fueled generation for their electricity.

While many details still need to be worked out before the request for proposal’s anticipated opening in July, “from our perspective, this is a major shift in the region,” Gray said in a Friday interview.

For renewables developers, several things stand out about PacifiCorp’s upcoming solicitation. First and most obviously, “it’s just so large,” Gray said. PacifiCorp’s IRP preferred portfolio includes 1,823 megawatts of new solar resources co-located with 595 megawatts of new battery energy storage system capacity, and 1,920 megawatts of new wind resources — all by the end of 2023.

A 1MW battery storage system with as much as 150 hours of storage duration, using an as-yet unrevealed battery chemistry, is being deployed in a pilot by Minnesota electric utility Great River Energy.

Form Energy, a startup developing what it claims is an “ultra low-cost, long duration” proprietary energy storage system has remained tight-lipped on what’s inside its batteries since first coming to prominence in 2017 when it was the recipient of investment from MIT accelerator programme The Engine.

Form Energy was then known as Baseload Renewables and was in fact partly the brainchild of Yet Ming-Chiang, the MIT professor who also started up 24M, a maker of ‘semi-solid’ lithium-ion batteries made with thicker electrodes than other manufacturers’ devices that is claimed could reduce the cost of production by as much as 50%. Japanese technology manufacturer Kyocera selected 24M’s batteries for its residential energy storage systems and officially launched them at the beginning of this year.

Form Energy meanwhile has said since 2017 that it is working on two types of battery to meet the need for longer duration storage than lithium-ion is typically known for enabling: one is an aqueous-sulfur flow battery designed to provide several hours of storage at low cost, while little is known about the makeup of the other battery the company has developed, save for the fact that it is apparently an “aqueous-air” device that Form Energy said “leverages some of the safest, cheapest, most abundant materials on the planet. The company successfully closed a US$40 million Series B funding round in August last year and counts the likes of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Macquarie Capital and Italian oil firm Eni among its investors.

Just under a year before that Series B closing, Form Energy also netted close to US$4 million in funding from the US Department of Energy as the government sought out long duration storage technologies for up to 100 hours duration for demonstration through the DoE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Form Energy also has a partnership in place with Enel Green Power, and funding from the Enel Foundation, with the trio recently co-authoring a white paper on long duration storage and its viability for both integrating renewables and participating in energy markets.

Delmarva Power has selected distributed energy resource (DER) controls and aggregation firm Sunverge to spearhead a proposed behind-the-meter virtual power plant (VPP) and energy storage project in Maryland.

The VPP project will be focused on the Elk Neck peninsula in Cecil County, Maryland. Sunverge will provide DER control and aggregation services on residential meters to deliver energy storage capacity for grid reliability.

“We are honored and excited to be selected for this project and to have the opportunity to work with Delmarva Power to demonstrate the value of residential battery systems for the residents at Elk Neck and to the electric grid. We are confident that Sunverge’s advanced DER Control and aggregation solution will demonstrate the value of aggregating residential behind-the meter systems for the Maryland electricity grid and participating residential customers.” said Martin Milani, CEO of Sunverge. “The combination of real-time dynamic load flexibility and grid services is a powerful tool for managing the grid of the future and integrating the growth of distributed energy resources.”

The VPP will provide backup power during outages to homes located on a peninsula on the Chesapeake Bay. These homes are located in a heavily forested area and served by a four-mile long overhead and underground distribution feeder. Because of this isolation, these customers are vulnerable to grid outages and can benefit greatly from reliable backup generation.

The goal of the project is to increase overall grid reliability, DER integration and allow for potential participation in the PJM wholesale electricity market. The VPP will enable additional grid services, including peak shaving and reactive power support.

The project is planned to have 55 MW / 2.2 MWh capacity and is projected to create $2 million in value over a 15-year period. The proposal is currently under review by the Maryland Public Service Commission and subject to its approval.

DelMarva Power, which is owned by Exelon, delivers electricity to customers in Delaware and Maryland.

New battery technologies and innovations are paving the way.
The phrases “turning winds” and a “a new sun rising” are often used to describe change, and these metaphors could not be more appropriate in describing our energy system today, as the wind and sun themselves are driving the transformation. Even the casual energy observer has noticed that the Texas wind rush is on. Texas by far has the most wind capacity installed than any other state and solar is gearing up for a red hot run in the coming years.

Wind and solar are powerful forces in their own right, mainly given their ever lower costs and their rare ability to provide some long-term stability in a turbulent world. The U.S., including Texas, has deployed large numbers of wind turbines and solar panels and deployment will continue to grow. But once another emerging technology — cheap energy storage — shows up, they might very well explode onto the landscape. That is on the verge of happening.

You can’t make the sun shine at will or the wind blow when it doesn’t want to. Thus, in that regard, these technologies have earned some fair skepticism. The past and current strategy has generally been to use other dispatchable power plants and flexible demand to help respond to variability in wind and solar output when balancing supply and demand on the grid.

This strategy has largely worked because there have been plenty of dispatchable power plants available and the Texas electricity market — the best, most competitive and efficient in the world — makes sure they are compensated fairly for their services. Today, we are much better at predicting changes in wind and solar output and thus are in a much better position to manage them. Wind and solar deliver energy at some of the lowest costs of any source and new technologies keep making them cheaper and easier.

Cheap energy storage is often seen as the “holy grail” technology that forms, along with solar and wind, an “energy trinity” that ushers us into the promised land of clean, cheap, and abundant resources. None of these technologies are particularly new. The energy in wind has been harvested to grind grain or lift water for hundreds of years the first U.S. patent on a device to generate electricity from the sun was awarded in the late 1800s, and the first rechargeable battery was developed even before that.

A US utility is to trial a new battery storage technology that promises to deliver the holy grail of a grid based around wind and solar – ultra long storage of up to 150 hours that could revolutionise the way the storage technology is used and deployed.

Great River Energy – a major non-for-profit energy co-operative based in Minnesota – is teaming with Form Energy, a battery storage technology developer backed by Bill Gates, Australia’s Macquarie Capital, and others, to install a first-of-its-kind demonstration of Form’s unique “aqueous air flow” battery with ultra long storage.

The battery pilot will be a 1MW/150MWh, grid-connected storage system capable of delivering its rated power of one megawatt continuously for 150 hours, part of a broader plan to retire Great River’s main generator, a 1,151MW coal unit, and replace it with wind and ultimately battery storage and make 95 per cent of its power emissions free.

And while the battery component of this Great River Energy plan is relatively minor, if the pilot proves successful at delivering super-long duration and low cost storage, the implications for the electricity industry will be enormous.

Most big batteries currently in use in Australia and across the world are based on lithium-ion technologies, and often have very short storage time frames because they are used primarily to deliver super-fast, accurate and flexible grid services such as frequency control and inertia.

Even when used for storing wind and solar, the storage times are usually no more than four hours, beyond which it is presumed that pumped hydro has the cost advantage.

Form Energy was created three years ago by a group comprising a team from MIT, former Tesla battery leader Mateo Jaramillo, and Ted Wiley, a co-founder of Aquion. Its goal is build “ultra low cost” batteries with super long storage durations that would allow grid operators to store energy for seasonal storage, rather than just minutes and hours.