Tax provisions announced on 17 December in the US left out any mention of a standalone energy storage ITC, with the CEO of industry body the Energy Storage Association registering the disappointment of the group’s 180 member organisations.

While the solar investment tax credit had enjoyed a somewhat unexpected extension in 2017 to 2020, this time around there was no reprieve and the ITC will decrease at the end of 2019. Only the production tax credit (PTC) for onshore wind received a one-year extension, while both electric vehicles (EVs) and standalone energy storage miss out completely once again.

Within the existing ITC framework, energy storage did qualify for tax credit incentives – but only if installed with solar, and only if installed at the same time as solar. The latter stipulation thereby wiped out any potential extra value or impetus that could have been added for retrofit installations of batteries to existing PV systems, for example. Various sources in the industry had said that they were hopeful of an ITC, including Stem Inc’s Alan Russo, who told Energy-Storage.news the company had been “cautiously optimistic”.

Energy Storage Association CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman, a former state utilities commissioner, said in a statement that the group is disappointed but not dissuaded from continuing efforts to introduce an ITC.

“We are disappointed in the tax provisions announced this morning that omitted a provision for stand-alone energy storage. This was a clear opportunity for Congress to address the urgent challenges of climate change and to support clean energy innovation. The Energy Storage Incentive and Deployment Act of 2019 is a bipartisan measure to level the playing field for energy storage technologies that enable a more resilient, efficient and sustainable grid.

The development of the first long-duration liquid air energy storage system in the US has been announced.

The 50MW/400MWh storage system will be located in northern Vermont by Highview Power Storage and Encore Renewable Energy.

The utility-scale scale energy storage plant will help scale renewable energy deployment as well as contribute to resolving the longstanding energy transmission challenges in Vermont.

The system will enable an increase in the capacity of energy generated from renewables such as solar and wind on the power grid to provide consumers with affordable energy.

The project will stabilise the regional electrical grid and ensure future energy security during storms and other disruptions. This includes the ability to store energy for weeks at the lowest levelised cost of long-duration storage in the industry and providing what is called “grid-synchronous inertia,” which balances electrical demand and supply and helps avoid blackouts.

Excess or off-peak electricity is used to clean and compress air which is then stored in liquid form in insulated tanks at temperatures approaching 320 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-196 C). During times when energy demand is high, the pressurised gas is allowed to warm, turning a turbine as it expands and thus generating energy that can be used at peak times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

Other services the facility can deliver include market arbitrage, frequency management, reserve, and grid constraint management services.

The US energy storage market is expected to surge over 700% to nearly $5.4 billion by 2024, driven mostly by utility-scale projects, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewable.

The leaders of the nations of the world declined to go forth and conquer climate change during the COP25 talks in Madrid earlier this month. That leaves the business of saving the planet up to a hodgepodge of activists, inventors, NGOs, and gigantic corporations. In the latest development, IBM has just slipped word of new energy storage research that could help accelerate the renewable energy transition with a next-gen solution for electric vehicles and stationary batteries, too.

New Energy Storage Technology, Without The (Cough, Cough, Cobalt) Baggage
IBM provided CleanTechnica with an advance copy of the new energy storage announcement so we don’t have a link yet, but the company’s IBM Research branch will probably have it online by the time you eyeball this.

The idea is to clean up the energy storage supply chain by clearing out the clutter of certain heavy metals and other materials commonly used in today’s lithium-ion batteries. That would help reduce the environmental impacts of producing rechargeable electronic goods as well as electric vehicles and stationary energy storage systems.

Aside from environmental concerns, human rights issues are also in play.

Here’s IBM Research on that topic:

“Many battery materials, including heavy metals such as nickel and cobalt, pose tremendous environmental and humanitarian risks. Cobalt in particular, which is largely available in central Africa, has come under fire for careless and exploitative extraction practices.”

They’re not kidding around. Just yesterday, news broke that the organization International Rights Advocates has filed suit against Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla over child labor and other abuses in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

For too long, the rhetoric around what storage can do for the grid vastly outweighed the actual doing. This year, the industry closed that gap more than ever before.

Exceedingly few batteries actually live up to the vision of “storing clean power for when the sun isn’t shining.” Batteries perform miniscule adjustments to grid frequency, or lower businesses’ electricity consumption during a peak hour, or sit around waiting to provide clean backup power, but try messaging that to voters.

This year, finally, big renewables projects with batteries attached closed deals and even entered operations. A few states that wanted to incubate storage industries of their own proved that sharp policy really can create new markets in relatively short periods of time.

Big regulated utilities with no prior interest in batteries decided they’d like to own them in copious amounts. All the headlines made it possible to forget that the scientific pioneers of lithium-ion batteries won the Nobel freakin’ Prize this fall.

That said, the U.S. storage market will triple next year and double again the year after that. All this excitement is still just a little snack before the main course. But, like some well-marinated olives or a tin of anchovies, little snacks can pack a lot of flavor.

Here are the tastiest stories that emerged in 2019, in no particular order.

Massive utility procurements

California leads the nation in putting batteries to work for a decarbonizing grid. But try convincing any other state with an argument that starts with “Well, California says…”

Storage advocates no longer need to, because utilities in numerous states are acquiring unprecedented portfolios of grid batteries.

The U.S. Energy Storage Association (ESA) today published “U.S. Energy Storage Operational Safety Guidelines,” which provides energy storage businesses and users a compendium of codes, standards and additional guidelines to plan for and mitigate wide-ranging potential operational hazards.

This is the latest resource to come from ESA’s years-long effort to advance industry safety strategies, which culminated in the April 2019 announcement of an Energy Storage Corporate Responsibility Initiative (CRI) Task Force and Corporate Responsibility Pledge. Currently, nearly 60 signatories have taken the safety and responsibility pledge, including dozens of companies that have contributed plans and guidelines to this latest safety and planning guide.

“The energy storage industry’s top priority is the safety of employees, first responders and our communities,” said ESA CEO Kelly Speakes-Backman. “The ESA Corporate Responsibility Initiative puts our best experts together to create a library of vitally important educational resources on safety standards and guidelines to plan for possible hazards and mitigate risk. We’re proud to see dozens of industry leaders contributing to responsible management practices.”

As part of the CRI initiative, ESA has issued an Emergency Response Plan template for developers, operators, and host sites; a white paper “Operational Risk Management in the U.S. Energy Storage Industry: Lithium-Ion Fire and Thermal Event Safety;” and this newest “U.S. Energy Storage Operational Safety Guidelines.” Forthcoming resources will address reuse, recycling and safe disposal practices.

These CRI safety resources derive from dozens of meetings among industry, codes and standards leaders and other safety stakeholders in 2019 to share insights and strategies on risk mitigation, emergency response actions and end-of-life planning and recycling.

Renovations to six public housing buildings in the small town of Vårgårda, South West Sweden will allow them to run on renewable energy all year round. Electricity and heat from a microgrid combining solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, hydrogen production and storage and hydrogen fuel cells will supply the 172 apartments.

“We will be providing the building with all its electricity and heat via a combined [Nilsson Energy] RE8760 system where we store renewable energy from solar until it is needed,” Martina Wettin, one of the founders of Nilsson Energy, told Microgrid Knowledge.

Working with the municipality of Vårgårda, Nilsson Energy will provide a system designed to provide renewable energy for 8,760 hours a year.

Sweden’s long summer days
The roof of each of the six buildings has been fitted with around 5,400 square feet of solar PV. During the long Swedish summer days, the solar electricity powers the building and charges the battery. Any excess is fed to an electrolyzer and compressor for centralized hydrogen production and storage for the winter.

During the winter, stored hydrogen is fed to each building’s 5 kW fuel cell for electricity generation. Waste heat from this process tops up the heating provided by a geothermal heat pump. The systems of the six buildings connect to form a microgrid, providing flexibility and security of supply. The RE8760 operating system controls the energy flows.

Accumulating running hours
For the time being, the individual apartments receive their electricity from the main grid until the system demonstrates enough successful running hours. However, the system already provides heating and hot water demand, allowing expensive district heating to be disconnected. Power for shared services like lighting for the stairwells is also provided.

The production, storage and use of hydrogen in residential properties has broken new ground.

“We spent a lot of time working with the authorities. It is new, people aren’t that used to having hydrogen out in a densely populated area… It has been a very important process that has been going on for more or less three years,” Wettin said.

The India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) has published its fifth edition of its India Stationary Energy Storage market report, which predicts that the market for energy storage in India will grow at a CAGR of 6.1% by 2026.

The report is split into four sections, looking at the total stationary energy storage market, the grid-scale stationary energy storage market, stationary storage in behind-the-meter (BTM) applications and railways. It uses 2018 as the base year, before forming predictions for 2019 through to 2026.

IESA reports that in 2018, the energy storage market in India was worth US$2.8 billion, and will continue to grow at pace in coming years.

Total annual MWh additions were 24.4GWh last year, and are expected to grow to 64.5GWh by 2026.

These storage additions will be used in applications such as renewable energy integration, Transmission & Distribution deferral, ancillary services, railways, microgrids, telecom, and BTM application.

Of these, BTM is likely to account for the majority, with 68-77% of the cumulative market share during the period. Inverters and telecom make up the major part of this BTM market.

This year has seen a number of important steps in India’s energy storage market, in particular given disappointing tender cancellations in 2017-18. But in February, three huge renewables tenders were announced including one for 1.2GW of solar PV combined with 3,600MWh of energy storage.

In March, further government backed support was announced in the shape of India’s Union Cabinet chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi approving the ‘National Mission on Transformative Mobility and Battery Storage’. While in July, India’s full year budget was published, and included discussion of support for lithium battery and electric vehicle manufacturing.

A Model 3 ramp-up that resulted in a quarterly profit was a sign that Tesla’s automobile business finally may be financially stable. If so, it is a good time for Tesla to turn its attention to the energy business — encompassing solar and energy storage — that has for long taken a backseat to getting the electric vehicle assembly line in order.

Elon Musk has been broadcasting this message since Tesla reported a surprise profit in the third quarter. On the call with Wall Street analysts after the earnings in November, the Tesla CEO said, “For almost two years we had to divert a tremendous amount of resources.”

Now Musk claims Tesla is poised for “the really crazy growth for as far into the future as I can imagine. … It would be difficult to overstate the degree to which Tesla Energy is going to be a major part of Tesla’s activity in the future,” he said.

Never one to shy away from bold claims or ambitions, Musk said Tesla Energy could grow to roughly the same size as Tesla’s automotive business, and solar would grow, on a percentage basis, the fastest of any, with storage second.

“I think both over time will grow faster than automotive,” Musk said. “They’re starting from a smaller base.” He added, “I think, especially, if you look at sort of — if you look at, like, year-over-year growth, it will be absolutely incredible … over the course of, say, a year, gigantic increase.”

In a recent internal email to Tesla employees, Musk outlined two critical year-end priorities: delivering all cars to their customers and boosting the rate of solar deployments by a significant degree.

Skeptics point to a variety of other reasons why Musk may be in solar- and energy-business salesman mode, beyond the Model 3 inflection point. The solar business has in recent years been associated with more negative than positive news. Tesla faces a lawsuit from shareholders over its controversial 2016 purchase of SolarCity; the solar roof that Musk has been touting for years is off to a slow start; its solar panel plant in Buffalo, New York, has been dogged by issues; and its solar business has faced unfavorable customer-service reviews.