Thermal power has had its day in India, the head of a national PV trade body has claimed after the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) concluded what it called the world’s largest renewables-plus-energy-storage capacity tender.

The procurement exercise was held to contract 1.2 GW of capacity in the form of assured supply of 600 MW of clean power for six hours daily during peak demand hours – 5.30-9.30am and 5.30pm-12.30am – on a day-ahead, on-demand basis. The successful bids comprised at least 3 GWh of energy storage capacity – pumped hydro or battery storage – plus associated clean energy generation assets.

The tender was staged to secure reliable, fixed-price energy supply for state electricity distribution companies otherwise hidebound to the vagaries of spot markets.

The procurement round was oversubscribed, with bids received for 1.62 GW of capacity and Hyderabad-based developer Greenko secured 900 MW of pumped-storage project capacity with the most competitive tariff bid for the clean energy to be supplied. Greenko offered a weighted average tariff of Rs4.04/kWh and a quoted peak tariff of Rs6.12/kWh.

Haryana-based ReNew Power secured the remaining 300 MW of capacity with a weighted average bid of Rs4.30 and quoted peak price of Rs6.85, marking a world record for renewables-plus-battery storage capacity.

For the renewable energy supplied during off-peak hours, SECI will pay a pre-specified tariff of Rs2.88/KWh. The tariffs granted will be paid over a 25-year period.

The Indian government has mandated all electricity distribution companies to source at least 21% of their energy from renewables by 2021-22 and has said grid operators will not incur transmission charges or losses on clean power.

“With this, thermal power in India has become priced out,” said Pranav R Mehta, chairman of the National Solar Energy Federation of India. “The most recent thermal power tenders in the country have yielded levelized tariffs in the range of Rs5-7/kWh ($0.0694-0.0972) at 85% annual PLF [plant load factor – a measurement of the output of a power plant compared to its maximum generation capacity]. The peak tariff under this SECI tender is highly competitive vis-à-vis the recent peak tariffs in international markets like [the] USA (Rs8-9/kWh or $0.1111-0.125).

“This is also lower than the recent stressed thermal projects tender conducted by [state-owned power trading company] PTC, where the tariff discovered was Rs4.24/kWh ($0.0589) for only [a] three-year supply [contract], whereas the tariff discovered under this tender is fixed for 25 years.

An energy storage system made up of ‘second life’ batteries previously used in Renault’s electric vehicle (EV) has been deployed for Umicore, a multinational materials technology company headquartered in Belgium.

Taken from Renault’s Kangoo utility EVs, the batteries will provide firm frequency response to the grid, acting as a revenue generator for Umicore’s industrial site.

Maintaining stability of the network at its operating frequency of 50Hz is vital for enabling the addition of more distributed energy resources, as the world’s grids move away from centralised generation, also meaning that renewables – described as intermittent, or more accurately as variable energy resources – can be more readily accommodated. The system delivered for Umicore also helps the materials company maintain power quality for running its own operations.

Technology provider Connected Energy said that using EV battery packs as stationary energy storage systems (ESS) in this way can extend their lifetime by as much as seven years. The UK-headquartered company, based in England’s northeast automotive sector powerhouse, celebrated the inauguration of the Umicore project as its biggest to date at 1.2MW of output and 720kWh capacity.

‘Doubling the value of the battery asset’
“We, typically, are receiving the battery packs when they’ve reached, or fallen to 70% capacity,” Mark Bailey, Connected Energy chief commercial officer (CCO), told Energy-Storage.news.

“The batteries that are supplied to us have met our technical criteria and specification, and effectively certified before we reuse them in our stationary storage applications.”

Connected Energy “stays at the battery pack level,” Bailey said, seeing a keen opportunity to tap what remains in batteries that are, he says, built to the highest technical specifications and standards, given that they have to have met the stringent criteria of being safe and reliable for use in manned vehicles in their “first life”.

Renault is one of a number of OEMs and carmaker groups that Connected Energy is working with, while remaining open to other battery and tech partnerships, Bailey told Energy-Storage.news in an interview.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) has successfully concluded world’s largest renewable energy-cum-storage tender. The agency allocated 1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity among two of India’s leading developers.

Greenko Energy Holdings and ReNew Power secured 900 megawatts and 300 megawatts of renewable energy capacity in a first-of-its-kind tender issued by SECI last year. As per the conditions of the tender developers are required to supply firm renewable energy throughout the day. Developers were required to bid separate tariffs for supplying power during peak and off-peak periods. Peak period constitutes 11 hours in a day.

Greenko Energy Holdings has secured rights to develop 900 megawatts of capacity with a peak period tariff of Rs 6.12/kWh (US¢8.55/kWh) and an off-peak period tariff of Rs 2.88/kWh (US¢4.02/kWh). ReNew Power secured a capacity of 300 megawatts with peak period tariff of Rs 6.85/kWh (US¢9.57/kWh) and off-peak period tariff of Rs 2.88/kWh (US¢4.02/kWh). To meet the firm supply of 1.2 gigawatts, developers would be required to have storage capacity of 3,000 megawatt-hours.

During the technical bidding round Greenko Energy had bid for 900 megawatts, ReNew Power for 600 megawatts, and HES Infrastructure for 120 megawatts. While ReNew Power halved its bid in the financial bidding round, HES Infrastructure did not participate at all.

While ReNew Power is not known to have worked on any large-scale energy storage projects, Greenko Energy Holdings perhaps the most experience in this field among all Indian developers. We had reported earlier that the company is working on two renewable energy-cum-storage projects in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In each of the projects the company will set up 2 gigawatts of solar and 2 gigawatts of wind energy capacity. While the project in Andhra Pradesh will have pumped hydro storage capacity of 8,000 MWh, the project in Karnataka will boast a pumped hydro storage capacity of 9,600 MWh.

Greenko Energy Holdings, which bought out SunEdison’s India assets, is backed by the likes of Singapore government-backed group GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). ReNew Power, one of India’s leading renewable energy companies, counts Goldman Sachs, ADIA, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Global Environment Fund as its investors.

Energy storage is, in fact, a very traditional technical solution for driving up the efficiency of every energy network.

This old ‘trick’ of common sense is currently experiencing a revival as a key technology for the transformation of the energy system in the European to combat climate change in Europe. EU decision-makers have recognised the key role it can play, integrating it into the EU’s Clean Energy Package (CEP) in some critically important ways. These decision-makers will, prospectively, continue to regard energy storage as important system-integrating technology in the course of developing the EU’s own landmark Green Deal.

First and foremost, the CEP sets a steady foundation for the network integration of energy storage and the further growth of a market for energy storage that is open to all relevant technologies. That is to say: The CEP introduces a definition of energy storage valid for all EU Member States (see Footnote #1).

To date, there exists no precise and appropriate definition for energy storage in Germany. Our organisation, BVES, is the German industry association for energy storage systems. From the very beginning, the BVES has worked hard to see energy storage integrated as the “fourth column of the energy system”.

It’s one simple sentence to sum up the complexity of the otherwise absent definition of energy storage in the field of energy law in Germany – which again is generally a very complex set of legislature in its own right.

Production, consumption, transport – and now storage
Existing energy law in Germany refers to three columns of the energy system: production, consumption and transport. Energy storage is, therefore, by default, mostly (wrongfully) legally defined or described as “producer” or “consumer”.

One major effect of this is that energy storage systems are economically disadvantaged due to the so-called “double charges”, fees and/or taxes. This legal gap must finally be filled by 2021 at the latest, when the Clean Energy Package legislation needs to be implemented by all Member States – including a Europe-wide definition of energy storage.

As a new decade dawns, there’s cause for optimism that the 2020s will see the transition to clean energy accelerate. Prices of renewable energy and battery technologies are at an all-time low, and the number of electric vehicle (EV) sales are on the rise.

Analysts predict that by 2040, more than half of all vehicles on the road will be electric. With transportation contributing to nearly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, electrifying how people get from point A to point B is a critical step in reducing our global carbon footprint.

But increased electric demand from the expansion of EVs poses challenges to an already strained electric grid. Experts are calling on solar energy, storage solutions and software to play critical roles in supporting this surge to the grid.

Fortunately, some companies are already thinking creatively about these challenges and developing solutions that make the interplay between these technologies easier.

Grueling grid challenges
Over the past few years, the e-mobility industry has identified certain patterns in the grid’s capacity. Researchers warn against the “dragon curve” (Figure 1), a name for spikes in energy demand that occur during weekday mornings when drivers charge their vehicles at work and in the evenings when drivers charge at home.

This will likely worsen as ultra-fast charging comes into play and faster charging times increase energy demand.

This is similar to the solar industry’s “duck curve” (Figure 2), which describes the energy imbalance of solar generation during the day and peak energy usage in the evening. The key takeaway is that existing grid infrastructure is not prepared to support the electric mobility boom.

This challenge, however, opens the door to new business opportunities.

As the global energy market, piece by piece, slowly but surely, moves towards a renewables-centred paradigm, dispatchable solar and uncurtailed wind, along with other forms of clean energy, are requiring longer and longer durations of storage to integrate them to the grid. While there’ll be a place for lithium-ion for many years yet, the technology really excels at applications of up to around four hours. For everything else, there’s a growing list of contenders, with diverse technologies and at different stages of commercialisation. Here’s a handy guide to some of those technologies and their providers, electrochemical and otherwise, that promise anything from five hours to even days or weeks of storage.

Who’s got a head start
Pumped hydro

It’s worth remembering that more than 90% of the world’s installed base of energy storage in megawatt-hours is still pumped hydro. Lithium-ion may take the plaudits and the new market share today, but historically, the legacy of pumped hydro remains huge.

Water is elevated using pumps into a retained pool behind a dam. When electricity is required, the water is unleashed and runs through turbines, which then creates electricity. While the amount of energy required to pump the water back up is far less than the amount generated as it falls, systems can also be paired with renewable generation to pump the water back to the top. However, while the system is cheap once built and can last for many years, finding appropriate sites and getting permission to build pumped hydro plants remains an obstacle to widespread further development in most parts of the world.

In June 2019, Australia-based firm Genex Power announced it was set to receive a second round of debt funding from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), for what will be the world’s first pumped hydro project to utilise an abandoned gold mine.

In Chile, a 300MW pumped hydro project is under development, having recently received an injection of US$60 million in fresh funding from the Green Climate Fund. The Espejo de Tarapacá project, which will also see a 561MW solar PV plant, is being developed by Chilean renewable developer Valhalla and construction is set to begin next year.

French energy giant Engie is also a proponent of the technology, with its First Hydro Company owning the Ffestiniog and Dinorwig pumped hydro assets in Wales. Engie lauds Dinorwig as the fastest power generation asset in the UK, with the ability to deliver 1.7GW in 16 seconds.

There could be 10 guiding principles for integrating energy storage as a vital “pillar” of the energy transition, a private members’ and stakeholders’ meeting by Bundersverband Energiespeicher (BVES), a national trade organisation in Germany has proposed.

Valeska Gottke, communications and markets representative for BVES, told Energy-Storage.news that the overall strategy and concept are still going through further development, refinement and discussion and will likely not be published in full until after the Energy Storage Europe trade event taking place in Dusseldorf, Germany, in mid-march.

Nonetheless, Gottke said, it was clear to attendees at the BVES ‘conclave’ event held in Dresden this week that the energy storage industry should have a “natural interest in applying energy storage systems to receive energy [reliably] from climate-friendly sources”.

It should also be recognised that as a set of technologies that can aid with and enable system-wide integration of resources, energy storage systems (ESS) are “‘connectors that bring flexibility to every system,” Gottke said.

On the clear understanding that it therefore remains a work in progress and should be considered in this way, BVES shared 10 guiding principles that could or should help integrate energy storage as the “fourth pillar” of the energy transition (known in Germany as ‘Energiewende’). The other three pillars are the production, consumption and transport of energy.

Germany’s energy system in 2030 should be “decarbonised, safe and secure”, BVES said in its statement on those 10 principles, which, in brief, are as follows:

1. Germany’s EEG, the surcharge payments through which the country, including the general public via a line on their energy bills, pays for green energy policies, should no longer be the “main legal basis” for the energy system by 2030, as it is now.
2. A definitive pricing system for CO2 should be applied, in all sectors, on a strict “polluter pays” principle.
3. Energy storage should be recognised as the fourth pillar of the energy transition.
4. There needs to be better “transparency” or cross-sector unification between the electricity, mobility and heat sectors. Attendees at previous Energy Storage Europe shows – or indeed readers of Energy-Storage.news’ coverage – will be aware that this ‘sector coupling’ principle has been discussed at a high level for a while now, far in advance of that seen in most other markets.

Building on a successful and uncharacteristically transparent third quarter, Tesla has reported even greater installation figures across solar and storage.

The company installed 530 MWh of energy storage in Q4 2019, beating out last quarter’s record mark of 477 MWh by 11% and delivering on Q3’s expectation that that record would be short-lived.

Tesla also installed 54 MW of solar in Q4, up 26% from Q3’s 43 MW and the highest mark since Q4 of 2018, when 73 MW were installed. Year-over-year, storage installations are up 126%, while overall solar installations are down 26%. To add further perspective, the company deployed 93 MW of solar in Q3 2018, so while the rebound is speeding up, the company has not quite caught up to where it was.

The early portion of the call was dominated by Elon Musk’s admiration for the Tesla Cybertruck, saying that, in regards to demand for the vehicle, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Musk also shared that the company is seeing “exponential demand” in regards to how the California home solar mandate is affecting solar roof sales prospects, though he did follow that up by saying that it’s difficult to estimate figures.

“It’s the future we want”

The company also shared that it’s hiring at the Buffalo Gigafactory, which produces the solar roof tiles. Outside of excitement, there was little said about the solar roof, with the report focusing on Tesla’s efforts to partner with roofing companies, allowing them to perform the installation.

Energy storage was not the only sector where Tesla broke newly-set records. The company delivered 112,000 vehicles in Q4, beating the previous record of 97,000 set in Q3 2019 by 14%. In fact, demand was so high that finished vehicle inventory levels reached just 11 days of sales at the end of Q4, meaning demand is closer to supply than it has ever been. The company also shared that it is already expanding its Shanghai Gigafactory, as Model Y demand projections continue to grow.