The latest quarterly US Energy Storage Monitor, produced by the national Energy Storage Association and analysis firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, has predicted annual deployments will reach 7.3GW by 2025.

A more than 14-fold increase is forecast, from 523MW recorded in 2019, with the “sharp scale-ups” both regionally and nationally to be driven primarily by a combination of “utility procurements and the accelerating residential market,” the report claims.

Over the next two years alone, the first really big utility procurements of energy storage are set to come online, causing an expected trebling of the market volume this year and then more than doubling again in 2021.

While supply constraints noted in the front-of-meter (utility grid-connected) market are pushing some projects back from the beginning of this year to 2021 or later, even during the period that these delays were beginning to be experienced, “the scale of planned large-scale system planning has surged,” according to Wood Mackenzie analysts.

“The U.S. energy storage market has shown rapid growth over the past decade, moving from pilot to commercial scale, but perhaps most remarkable is the geographic breadth and diversity of its success,” the report said, adding that energy storage is proving a range of services nationwide that shows it has “found a foothold”.

7.2GW annual market roughly equates to US$7.2 billion
These services include grid-level storage delivering ancillary services in territories including the New England ISO system operator service area, PJM Interconnection, Texas’ ERCOT, CAISO in California and others. Meanwhile, storage paired with solar is on the increase, as is the deployment of energy storage in lieu of more expensive transmission and distribution network upgrades.

While it still needs a signature from Governor Ralph Northam, the US Commonwealth of Virginia’s bicameral lawmaking body has finally passed a version of a recent clean energy – and economy – bill that has proven acceptable to both sides of the house.

The finalised, much-amended bill can be viewed here, setting out the technical and policy conditions by which Virginia can reach Governor Northam’s proposed goal of 100% renewables by 2050. This includes peak shaving programmes; support for rooftop solar and for wind energy; coal phase-out mandates for utilities Dominion Energy and American Electric Power, which have held sway in the energy mix until now; and a 3,100MW energy storage deployment target by 2035 (with 2,700MW for Dominion and 400MW for AEP).

The core element of the bill is that it replaces existing voluntary renewable portfolio standards (RPS) for utilities with mandatory ownership or power purchase arrangements. In addition to compliance with energy efficiency programmes, the finally passed bill orders utilities to procure between 5,000MW and 16,100MW of solar PV generation, ranging from commercial rooftop systems from 50kW capacity and up to 100MW. Utilities are also ordered to own or operate up to 5,000MW of offshore wind generation.

The bill also includes protection policies for low-income families, as well as low-interest loans for flood defences in applicable communities.

Andrew Williams, senior director of regulatory affairs and market development at Sol Systems, a US-based solar energy finance, development and investment company, sent a statement to PV Tech that said that Virginia could “catapult” forward as a “clean energy leader by mandating a renewable energy portfolio standard that sets a clear path to meet [Governor Northam’s] goal of reaching a 100% clean energy power sector by mid-century”.

“Once signed into law, the Act will create thousands of jobs and help ensure communities across the Commonwealth have access to and benefit from solar energy and will help ensure that billions of new dollars will be invested in the Commonwealth,” Sol Systems Andrew Williams said.

The US Energy Storage Association’s policy director Jason Burwen meanwhile tweeted on Friday his excitement that the bill’s energy storage target is larger than either California’s or New York’s (albeit with a slightly longer timeframe) and includes a mandatory 10%-plus of customer-sited storage systems and 35%-plus of competitively provided energy storage.

Over half a billion Africans lack access to electric power. As one of the biggest drivers of economic growth, energy is vital to development across Sub-Saharan Africa and yet many are being left behind.

However, new technologies in energy storage and accessibility are changing the continent’s fortunes. As many countries across Africa are not burdened with an ageing energy network, the continent can whole heartedly embrace the clean energy revolution and move to rapidly develop low-carbon and low-cost energy systems.

Central to this transition is small-scale renewable energy combined with storage. Africa has no shortage of daytime sunlight and rooftop solar panels can generate clean energy to be stored in batteries for use at night.

Energy storage-as-a-service models can make it work
The potential for the technologies is vast, but substantial investment is required to meet the continent’s energy needs. The price of solar panels and batteries remains substantially too high for most households. That’s where ‘energy storage-as-a-service’ (ESaaS) can play a huge role.

ESaaS financial models effectively allow off-grid families to rent batteries, solar panels and appliances, such as a fridge, TV or light, for less than $10 a month. This innovative approach is making comprehensive and traditionally costly off-grid energy offerings affordable.

Mobile pay networks are also fundamental in enabling pay as you go (PAYG) schemes such as ESaaS to flourish. As mobile network operators improve connection services across the continent, more Africans can access digital payment capabilities enabling them to make the monthly payments for these clean technologies more easily.

By embracing innovative solutions such as ESaaS, off-grid communities across Africa have the opportunity to rapidly develop a decentralised, low-cost and low-carbon power supply. Under such a network, traditional fossil fuel alternatives – such as kerosene – can be eliminated from the African home, minimising the risk of harm to the user through hot spillages or toxic gasses, and preventing damaging emissions from seeping into our atmosphere.

A revolutionary shift is underway in the electricity we use, and few people are even aware it’s happening. For years, much of the conversation has been about trying to get people to think green and make small changes in their lives to make a difference for the planet.

Meanwhile an idea has been taking root quietly, one with massive scale ramifications. That idea is large-scale energy storage, which has less to do with the average consumer and more to do with the decision-makers on where our energy comes from.

To understand the concept of energy storage, one must first understand the fundamental shortcomings of our electrical grid. The way the grid works sounds straightforward enough: When electricity is generated through wind, solar, or even traditional power-generation sources like coal-fired power plants, that electricity has to be pushed to the grid to be used immediately. If it goes unused, it’s essentially lost forever.

If you’ve ever driven by a wind farm and noticed that some or most of the wind turbines (Fig. 1) aren’t spinning, it’s not always because the wind isn’t blowing. Often, they aren’t spinning because the grid doesn’t need the electricity at that moment, so the wind turbines are shut down, otherwise known as curtailment.

However, energy-storage systems represent the future of utility-scale energy management, theoretically allowing every type of electricity-generation system to harvest the electricity at any time of the day and hold it in reserve for use whenever the grid actually needs it. This stands in sharp contrast to the status quo of “use it or lose it.”

But alas, nothing is that simple. While energy-storage systems have demonstrated their ability to be effective in practice, the cost far outweighs the benefit. That’s why changes in battery manufacturing, small and nuanced as they may seem, are so critical to the energy-storage sector, utilities, and most broadly, human life.

The Li-Ions

More recently, lithium-ion battery storage systems have been developed. These are capable of packing in enough energy, hopefully produced by renewables such as wind and solar at a low-enough price, to make utility-scale energy storage a practical addition for optimizing electricity-producing systems.

LONDON — Europe needs an immense rollout of energy storage and other flexible energy resources if it’s going to hit its 2050 net-zero target. As of today, the market largely remains stuck.

To date, Europe’s big successes on the energy storage front have come from tenders to provide frequency response and other grid services. But those needs have largely been met; prices have fallen and a very short-lived boom has busted.

The decline was accelerated by better integration of Europe’s markets, allowing assets in one country to provide services in others.

“Let me tell you a secret from continental Europe: Batteries are dead,” said Jochen Schwill, CEO of virtual power plant operator Next Kraftwerke, speaking at the recent Energy Storage Summit in London.

Prices on the frequency and primary reserve markets have been halved, Schwill told attendees. “It’s not working anymore,” he said. “When it comes to short-term flexibility, I think we have enough in the market.”

“When we take nuclear power and coal offline in Germany and add in renewables, the market might then send the price up again; we will see.”

The market can, of course, get things wrong, he added.

In any case, things had better start improving for Europe’s storage market. Recent research by Wood Mackenzie found that Europe is going to need 118 gigawatts of flexibility to balance out 298 gigawatts of variable renewable generation expected by 2040. That includes demand-side response, interconnectors and gas peakers as well as energy storage.

Energy storage deployments in New York have grown faster than anticipated since the state began a major push in 2018, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in 2018 that the state had set an energy storage target of 1.5 gigawatts by 2025. The goal is to reach 3.0 gigawatts by 2030. Bridge incentives worth $350 million were authorized to help accelerate New York’s energy storage market.

Since then, NYSERDA has awarded incentive funds to nine projects that total 360 megawatts and nearly 1,400 megawatt-hours, Greentech Media reported.

“Across the board, it’s grown faster than we expected it would when we scoped out the incentive and roadmap,” Jason Doling, who oversees NYSERDA’s energy storage program, told the outlet. Even though the state project incentives decrease over time, that hasn’t slowed development because project costs have been declining, he noted.

Last September saw the completion of the state’s largest ever lithium-ion battery installation — Key Capture Energy’s 20-megawatt project in Saratoga County. Besides being the largest, it was the first under NYSERDA’s energy storage incentive program.

The public benefit corporation says that New York’s energy storage industry could provide an estimated $3 billion in gross benefits by 2030, including reducing carbon dioxide emissions and contributing to the state’s goal of reaching 50% electricity from renewable sources.

“There is a growing appetite for storage and storage paired with intermittent [renewables] to meet peak demand,” Doling said, according to Greentech Media. “That won’t change; that will only increase.”

New job openings at Giga Shanghai (Tesla Gigafactory 3) shine light on Tesla’s plans for solar and energy storage in China. Tesmanian has reported that on March 6th, Tesla China posted two job openings related to solar and energy storage. It seems this was the first time Tesla China had posted any type of job openings on its official Wechat account, and is also the first time Tesla China is looking for project managers in those related fields. This came about after Elon Musk shared a tweet of Tesla’s worldwide solar business expansion.

Tesla China is looking for project managers who will design and execute solar projects for both commercial and residential customers. The other job post is for someone to help develop energy storage projects and will be based at Tesla Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai.

Just as with the vehicle side of its business, China seems like a smart move for Tesla’s energy side. It’s also great for us in America because it shows that China supports an American business operating there despite the drama between our leaders.

As for the environment, well, the coronavirus pandemic has provided some light into what is possible with clean tech. China’s air has been significantly cleaner during the outbreak. Air pollution levels dropped by almost a quarter in February as coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities were ramped down in high-risk areas. This was done to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. NASA reported that nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant from burning fossil fuels, had levels down as low as 30%.

Some critics are concerned about Tesla’s future in solar and energy since Tesla and Panasonic ended their joint partnership at the Buffalo Gigafactory, but this could be due to Tesla figuring out better ways to develop and produce solar technology without the aid of Panasonic. Sometimes good things have to end for better things and better ways of doing those things to come along.

As California experienced uncharacteristically low precipitation in February, normally its peak rainy season, parts of the state are moving into drought conditions. This is likely to increase wildfire prevalence in the state in 2020, and it underscores the point that communities need to be thinking about a range of strategies to increase their resilience to wildfires. One of these strategies is the way that communities approach their electricity systems.

Distributed energy resources (DERs)—such as on-site solar, battery energy storage, and microgrids—can both help decrease the likelihood of wildfires and protect communities from their worst effects. City governments have an important role to play to help accelerate deployment of these technologies and solutions by lowering the barriers to adoption, investing in critical facilities and community microgrids, enhancing energy efficiency, and engaging in utility planning and regulatory processes.

Wildfires Cause Disproportionate Harm to Our Most Vulnerable Communities

The fires in California have recently shown us that severe climate-related emergencies are the new normal (California’s wildfire “season” is becoming a year-round phenomenon), and the costs can be astronomical. The economic impacts of the 2018 fires alone have been estimated at $400 billion—nearly twice the biennial budget for the entire state. The costs of the mandatory blackouts, or Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPSs), that California utilities have been implementing to try to avoid additional wildfire damage are exorbitant as well. Consider, for example, the cost of outages on schools: the PSPS implemented by PG&E during the Kincade Fire caused approximately 500,000 students to miss school, at an estimated societal cost of $14 million dollars per day.

Those most affected by wildfire impacts are the elderly, the very young, the medically vulnerable, and low-income communities, which are disproportionately communities of color. A nationwide study by researchers at the University of Washington showed that Native Americans are six times more vulnerable to wildfire impacts than whites. Blacks and Hispanics are about 50 percent more vulnerable. These communities struggle to pay for fire safety measures and insurance before an event and for rebuilding after an event. These vulnerabilities are further heightened by price-gouging on rentals in the wake of wildfires, exacerbating California’s housing shortage. During and after these events, the rich tend to leave and the poor tend to stay; poverty rates can climb by a full percentage point in areas hit by major disasters.

Cities Must Lead in Promoting Resilience Solutions

While companies can leave in the wake of disasters, cities cannot. Local governments are responsible to their residents and to the local businesses and institutions who remain or return. Cities need to protect their local economies and retain employers and workers. Building resilience is an essential part of that equation.

One way in which cities are acting to build resilience is by taking greater control of their energy systems. At the extreme end of the spectrum, San Jose and San Francisco are evaluating the potential to municipalize their energy systems (i.e., buying the local electricity infrastructure and running it as a city utility), which could allow them to emphasize investments like local microgrids in their resource planning. Others are using their community choice aggregation programs to implement similar solutions.