Since the turn of the century, there has been a global explosion in the production of renewable power. According to the 2018 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, global renewable energy production in 2000 was 218 Terawatt-hours (TWh). By 2018, that number had reached 2,480 TWh, with average annual growth over the past decade averaging 16%.

This rapid increase in renewable power has been driven by falling cost curves, and aided by legislation directed at reducing air emissions like carbon dioxide. But it has also required utilities to accommodate this influx of intermittent renewable power.

Storing Power

Because renewable sources like wind and solar power can suddenly change output with little warning, the ability to store intermittent power has become more important. Historically, pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES) has been the primary type of grid-scale storage. PHES involves pumping water uphill to a reservoir, and then allowing that water to flow back downhill through a turbine as needed.

PHES still accounts for about 95% of all grid-scale storage, but that number has been falling in recent years as battery storage solutions have become more economical.

In December 2017, the largest battery storage system to date was connected to the grid in South Australia. The 100 megawatt (MW) Hornsdale Power Reserve was built by Tesla to back up the adjacent 315 MW Hornsdale wind farm.

That’s still only about 1/30th the capacity of the world’s largest PHES facility. However, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently reported that battery storage capacity has quadrupled in the past four years. A 409 MW solar battery storage project is expected to start up in Florida in 2021.

Which power systems boost city resilience during power outages — and for how long?

Answering that question is one of the objectives of a report from American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Community Resilience Planning and Clean Energy Initiatives

The report rates 66 cities based on their resilience efforts, including investments in energy efficiency and renewable resources. The cities of Berkeley, California, Oakland, California, New York, San Francisco and Honolulu are among the cities identified as having strong resilience plans.

In the report, microgrids and solar plus storage systems are identified as providing high levels of resilience.

The report rates 66 city resilience plans selected from 100 Resilient Cities, an international program.

Diverse microgrids best
Climate change poses unprecedented challenges and disruptions, said the study. “In response, cities are actively planning to improve energy efficiency and promote renewable energy to make their neighborhoods more resilient in the face of climate change as well as other shocks and stresses.”

Microgrids that include solar, storage and diesel have a 90% chance of operating for about 3.5 days after an outage. That rate falls to 50% after 4.5 days, said the study.

Microgrids with only diesel generators don’t fare as well.

“Microgrids that only incorporate diesel generators have a less than 90% probability of surviving an outage that lasts more than two days and almost no chance of surviving an outage of three days or more because of uncertainties surrounding fuel resupply,” said the report.

Microgrid designs should include diverse resources – solar, storage, combined heat and power and diesel — to ensure that power supply is consistent, the report said.

When recently impeached US President* Donald Trump tapped an auto industry lobbyist to lead the US Department of Energy last fall, eyes rolled back into heads. Well, it looks like the wrong eyes rolled. Despite the Commander-in-Chief’s oft-repeated promise to save coal jobs, coal power plants are still closing and the latest energy storage news from the Department of Energy practically guarantees the death of coal for industrial use in the US.

Energy Storage & Advanced Manufacturing
The energy storage news was wrapped into a newly announced $187 million round of funding that aims to “strengthen U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.” Apparently that’s a different way of spelling n-o-m-o-r-e-c-o-a-l.

Fifty-five R&D projects in 25 states won awards under the initiative. As a group, they steer the US manufacturing sector toward high-efficiency processes that reduce the use of energy overall.

Heating and drying account for 70% of energy used in manufacturing processes, so that’s one key area of focus with $28.7 million in funding.

Projects relating to energy recycling, and onsite electricity and heat generation, get a $33.5 million chunk of the funding.

Projects related to energy storage get the lion’s share, with $124 million dedicated to 36 university and private-sector research efforts.

The Energy Department anticipates that these projects will “catalyze domestic battery manufacturing, phase-change storage materials for heating and cooling applications, and the development of innovative materials for harsh service conditions.”

As energy storage is the key that unlocks the full potential of wind and solar, the effect will be to admit more renewables into industrial processes.

The renewable energy trend is already beginning to take shape in the steel industry as well as aluminum production and other industrial sectors.

Not for nothing, but none of this is good new for natural gas, either.

The Q4 results from Tesla (TSLA) have received much attention. The startling success of auto developments had led to a much-warranted increase in the stock price.

The future of the company’s automotive business does indeed look very promising. Much of this is based on Tesla’s technological advantages over the competition. However, the less “sexy” business of energy storage and battery development are a key reason why the lofty stock valuation is justified.

As I detailed in an article in November, Tesla had re-iterated at their Q3 earnings that at a future date they expected the automotive division to represent only 50% of company revenues. That would pre-suppose a huge increase in energy storage revenues. Their senior management and major investors have repeated this since. The “Battery Investor Day” slated for April should give more substance to the story. It is likely to give a further boost to the stock price when it occurs.

The growth in the energy storage business in revenue terms is illustrated below:

In most companies, a revenue growth of 136% year-on-year would have sparked a lot of positive comments but things often work differently with Tesla.

A graph from the 8K illustrates the growth:

The new commercial Megapack is driving a lot of new interest. Its first deployment was made in Q4. It should drive even stronger growth. In the unaudited operational summary commentary the company stated:

“Since the introduction of this product, the level of interest and orders from various global project developers and utilities has surpassed our expectations”.

The Megapack is pre-assembled at the Nevada gigafactory. It comprises a 3MWh integrated system as one unit.

In 2019 Tesla’s energy storage division supplied 1.65GWh, more than all previous years combined. The residential “Powerwall” range has been supply constrained for a long period while Tesla gave priority to meeting Model 3 demand. This is due for revenue take-off as much as the commercial products.

In the United States, 29 states, three territories and Washington, D.C. have adopted Renewable Portfolio Standards and many experts agree that storage deployments are going to be critical to integrating the influx of renewables on to the grid. But going into 2020, the industry appears to be less bullish about the prospects of grid-scale battery storage over the next decade.

In Utility Dive’s 2020 State of the Electric Utility survey, 27% of participants said they expect their organization will significantly increase grid-scale battery storage in the next 10 years — a significant reduction from 37% in 2018, and 34% in 2019. This is despite analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which forecast a spike in utility-scale battery storage beginning in 2021.

“I think that from 2015 up until 2018, 2019, there was just a lot of rapid movement in this market and from chemistry to chemistry, in some cases, large promises were made. In some cases, they were met and in others, it was observed that they were not reliable, or there were issues involved, or the return on investment was not what was suggested,” Matthew Raiford, manager of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, a research organization focused on lead batteries, told Utility Dive.

There’s also the looming issue of safety — the last couple of years have witnessed some high-profile safety-related issues with battery storage, including an explosion at an Arizona Public Service facility last April and multiple storage-related fires in South Korea. But at the same time, there are promising markets for energy storage across the world, whether in areas where energy is expensive or where electricity is highly heterogenized and isolated.

“I would venture to guess that over the next few years, there will be a refocusing in the market, looking at things like safety, reliability and the kind of technical economics of utilizing these systems,” Raiford said.

Utility-scale battery storage capacity in the U.S. quadrupled between 2014 and March 2019 — from 214 MW to 899 MW, according to the EIA. Last July, the EIA forecasted that utility-scale battery capacity could exceed 2,500 MW by 2023, if current planned facilities go up and no capacity is retired. But data from last November indicates battery storage capacity will exceed 4,525 MW by the end of 2023, Glenn McGrath, the EIA’s leader of electricity statistics, uranium statistics and product innovation team, told Utility Dive.

Virginia lawmakers have passed a bill to support the US Commonwealth’s electric grid going 100% “clean” by 2050, which includes an energy storage deployment target of 3.1GW by 2035.

The new goalpost is slightly higher than New York’s much-celebrated 3,000MW goal, although New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has set his state’s sights on reaching that goal five years earlier than Virginia’s.

With those – perhaps irrelevant – comparisons to New York aside, the Virginia Clean Economy Act was passed on Tuesday 11 February, after what local news outlet The Virginia Mercury described as “dramatic” debate in the House of Representatives and “fiery” debate in the Senate.

While it has not yet become law, requiring another hearing in the bicameral state legislature, Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam is reportedly keen to sign it in whichever form lawmakers can agree, with Northam himself having set out an Executive Order to attain the 100% clean energy goal.

Democrat and Republican politicians have followed up what Mercury environment and energy correspondent Sarah Vogelsong pointed out had been weeks of negotiation over the 75-page plan. It was almost scuppered at the last by a number of House Democrats who felt emission reduction targets were not aggressive enough, Vogelsong wrote.

Under the Act, all of the six existing coal power plants in Virginia operated by utility Dominion will need to shut by 2030. While all utility-owned gas power plants in the Commonwealth are scheduled for closure by 2045 already, local environment group Chesapeake Climate Action Network said the bill could accelerate this process.

Manz AG, manufacturing equipment supplier, has signed off on a €20 million (US$21.83 million) deal with “high performance” battery maker AKASOL for planned ‘gigafactories’ in Germany and in the US.

Manz supplies industries including solar panel and lithium battery manufacturers and is likely well known to readers of our sister site PV Tech. AKASOL said it has ordered “fully automated production lines” from Manz, with delivery of the first production lines expected before the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Manz said that the deal worth €20 million in total is split across several tranches. The first tranche is worth €8 million and is for a module production line at AKASOL’s Gigafactory 1 in Darmstadt, Germany. That facility is currently under construction.

Then, the buyer retains an option to supply further production lines for what Manz said will be an “identical” module production line at Gigafactory 2. AKASOL said this facility will be in Hazel Park, Michigan, in the US. AKASOL added that tenders will be held for further production lines for both gigawatt-scale manufacturing facilities.

AKASOL said the devices will be used in buses and other commercial vehicles. The lithium-ion battery maker said it received an order for the supply of “ultra-high-energy battery systems in the high three-digit million Euro range”. While the size and cost of that order was not revealed, AKASOL CEO Sven Schulz did say that the Darmstadt Gigafactory 1 has a planned production capacity of “up to 5GWh”.

It’s the latest high profile announcement of battery production facilities at massive scale in Europe, although others have focused on stationary energy storage as well as e-mobility applications. Other obvious contenders include Tesla, which is establishing Giga-Berlin, while Emad Zand, business development head at Sweden-headquartered Northvolt told Energy-Storage.news in an interview to be published in the coming days that as much as 25% of output from its planned European facilities could service the energy storage system (ESS) space.