Ameresco has completed a 4-MW, 16-MWh energy storage project for Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO).

The project began four years ago when Ameresco secured two energy storage facility agreements with IESO to design, build, own and operate the “Battery Solid” storage systems. The two solid-state lithium-ion battery systems connect to the Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution grid at a capacity of 4 MW.

“The investment that IESO has made in its grid infrastructure is worthy of celebration,” said Bob McCullough, president of Ameresco Canada Inc. “Battery storage is central to the better utilization of all assets within the electricity system, better value to ratepayers, and reduction of our carbon footprint.”

Both systems absorb power during periods of excess energy supply and deliver it back to the grid when energy demand is high. This project also demonstrates the value of future ancillary services, which would allow IESO to charge or discharge instantly to provide frequency regulation, voltage control and spinning reserve services to the grid, according to Ameresco.

“Taking this action now will demonstrate how energy storage facilities deployed at the distribution level can facilitate more cost-effective designs of both transmission and distribution infrastructure while providing greater power reliability to local areas, regardless of peak energy demands,” McCullough added.

Massachusetts-based Ameresco is focused around energy efficiency, infrastructure and renewable projects. Founded in 2000, the company has more than 1,000 employees in the U.S., Canada and U.K.

There are many battery-related companies exhibiting at Solar Power International/Energy Storage International this year. And with plenty of big storage announcements from companies not necessarily directly involved with batteries before, there was a lot of top tech to sort through. Here were the most interesting battery products I saw on the show floor today.

SunPower came out with its own LFP storage system for the residential market, including a simplified service panel. Company reps said they wanted to reduce the number of products for their installer network, offering a fully integrated storage system designed and warranted by one company. With a rated energy capacity of 13 kWh, Equinox Storage can also easily be expanded for larger home loads. SunPower’s new storage product is an obvious addition to its full suite of residential offerings only offered by SunPower dealers.

I promise I saw this in-person; I just did not get a good photo as the booth was packed. Panasonic took lessons learned with its partnership with Pika Energy to release its own energy storage system this year. EverVolt can be AC- or DC-coupled and installed easily by one person. It’s also super easy to add on: EverVolt can be scaled as small as 5.7 kWh or expanded up to 34.2 kWh. And with one warranty, this storage system provides a simple option for homeowners.

Although Generac has traditionally been in the not-so-green generator business, the company is shifting gears in a big way with its battery offering. Generac acquired Pika Energy last year and now has over 150 employees dedicated to breaking into the solar-plus-storage market with its PWRcell energy storage system. Consisting of an expandable battery park, inverter and advanced sensors assembled in Vietnam, PWRcell will begin shipping in December. The batteries are 8.6 kWh and the system can expand up to 17.1 kWh.

What if you could easily use portable power products as home backup? The Yeti storage system from Goal Zero is a really interesting concept for partial-home-backup. The Yeti 3000 Power Station (seen above) can provide 3 kWh of lithium storage for important loads at home or be picked up and transported for tailgating or camping energy needs. If you want more power, the Yeti Link expansion module allows you to add more batteries — of any chemistry. Yeti Link allows users to chain batteries of different chemistries, so you can add some lead-acid batteries to the original lithium-based system.

In 2014, the vast majority of storage projects Greensmith Energy was working on might have best been described as science projects, often dependent on grants or utility R&D budgets devoted to figuring out emerging technologies.

But there was one 20-megawatt project in PJM territory that was unlike all of the others, and not just because of its size. “That was the first project Greensmith ever did in the company’s history that was driven primarily by the financial returns of the project to their customers,” said Risto Paldanius, director of business development for Wärtsilä Energy Storage, Solar and Integration division, who played a key role during the Greensmith acquisition by Wärtsilä in 2017.

It’s a testament to just how much the economics of battery storage and the renewables it supports have improved in less than a few years. Today, potential projects are evaluated primarily on their business case. “If we don’t think the business case is real, we won’t target projects,” said Paldanius. “Close to 100 percent of our projects are commercially driven.”

In 2018, global energy storage deployments grew 147 percent year-over-year to reach 3.3 gigawatts, or 6 gigawatt-hours, according to Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. That’s nearly double the average 74 percent compound annual growth rate for the industry from 2013 to 2018. In fact, last year’s deployments made up more than half of the total amount of storage deployed in the past five years, “indicating an inflection in storage demand,” Ravi Manghani, WoodMac’s head of storage research, said when the findings were published in April.

There are other signs of a maturing storage market. For example, customers and manufacturers considering a storage project used to insist on a warranty based on a worst-case scenario.

“Today we are talking about fully flexible warranties that are truly based on the system’s actual operational profile. If it’s one cycle per day, you degrade 20 percent, for example, or for one-and-a-half cycles, you degrade 30 percent. This way, system operational cost is based on actual operations and the warranty matches how the asset owner operates the system,” said Amy Liu, manager of applied technology at Wärtsilä, Energy Storage, Solar and Integration.

For instance, Wärtsilä now knows the small, but noticeable, difference in availability in different size systems. For example, a 6-megawatt project could have an average availability of 97.97 percent, while a 10-megawatt system may have a 98.36 percent availability, and a 20-megawatt system could have an average availability of 98.28 percent.

Generac Power Systems today introduced PWRcell: a fully-integrated solar energy storage system. PWRcell boasts exclusive technologies including expandable battery capacity and on-board power monitoring and management as standard.

The PWRcell system consists of an integrated ecosystem of components, including an expandable battery pack, inverter and associated hardware. Each component is specifically engineered to seamlessly install and work together. PWRcell features modular battery packs, equipped with 8.6-kWh batteries, and expandable to 17.1 kWh to match any budget.

“The flexibility of modular battery packs, combined with the most power available make this system best-in-class technology,” said Russ Minick, Chief Marketing Officer and leader of the Clean Energy business for Generac.

PWRcell also provides homeowners with up to 50 amps and 12 kW of surge capacity, enough to start heavy loads such as air conditioners. Once engaged, PWRcell provides 8 kW of continuous power. When more power or capacity is needed, additional PWRcell inverters and batteries can be added for up to 34.2 kWh of DC-coupled storage.

PWRcell is equipped with Generac PWRview technology, an easy-to-use home energy monitoring system that tracks home energy use and provides powerful insights into the home’s electricity consumption. With the intuitive PWRview app, data is processed into useful information that allows homeowners to make smarter decisions regarding their use of energy, lowering usage to extend the amount of time the home can run on PWRcell-provided energy.

PWRcell weighs less than 75 pounds and is easy to install. Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2019, PWRcell will be sold through Generac’s many distribution partners.

Two companies who recently announced they are creating what they consider North America’s largest behind-the-meter (BTM) deployment of energy storage technology have said they plan to expand the service, providing a long-term solution for controlling costs and promoting energy sustainability for businesses.

Executives of the two companies—Honeywell and NRStor C&I—told POWER in a Sept. 23 interview at North America Smart Energy Week (NASEW) in Salt Lake City, Utah, that they see the market for their service expanding as power generation continues to become more decentralized.

The Honeywell-NRStor collaboration is one of several distributed power generation projects being highlighted at NASEW this week, for both energy storage and solar power. More than 700 companies are showcasing their products and services.

NRStor and Honeywell on Sept. 20 announced the launch of their Experion Energy Program, offering energy storage as a service to commercial and industrial customers. NRStor and Honeywell plan to develop and operate 300 MW of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the U.S. and Canada starting early next year. The companies said they would operate the systems remotely and “provide customers with electricity cost savings, improved sustainability and resiliency.”

“The first 90 megawatts are earmarked for the Ontario [Canada] market early next year,” Moe Hajabed, CEO of Toronto, Ontario-based NRStor C&I, told POWER. “There’s a big market for energy storage in Ontario for cost savings, putting battery storage systems at customer sites. This battery energy storage system can reduce a customer’s cost of electricity, primarily by [reducing] demand charges. There’s a cost aspect, an environmental aspect, and a community aspect.”

Hajabed in announcing the program last week said, “This BTM deployment alone matches North America’s total energy storage deployments in 2018. This collaboration brings Honeywell’s operational excellence, precise equipment and construction to NRStor’s projects and expands the customer base that can take advantage of our energy solutions. This also creates an opportunity for other developers to fund and implement their projects through NRStor’s platform.”

The companies said the BESS will be supported by two remote operations centers that use artificial intelligence-based peak prediction and value stack optimization algorithms. The centers will automatically start the battery systems, with a goal to maximize savings for C&I customers. Control technologies from Honeywell will enable battery dispatch and support network security and cybersecurity protection.

Energy storage is becoming a hot product in corporate energy procurement, with everything from solar paired with energy storage to stand-alone storage systems on companies’ wish lists. The market is still small, but it’s growing quickly, and as companies consider their procurement plans for the future, we should see more growth in 2019 and beyond.

As much as energy storage may be important for making large amounts of renewable energy work effectively in the grid, the reason companies are investing in energy storage is all about the bottom line. There’s real financial justification for energy storage, and that’s what keeps the business going.

How energy storage makes money

Energy assets like energy storage need to make financial sense before companies deploy them at scale, and it’s not a slam-dunk that energy storage meets the minimum return on investment. Still, there are a few ways energy storage can make financial sense both through cost savings and revenue from the battery’s value to the grid:

Demand charges can be up to half of a commercial building’s energy cost and are based on the peak amount of electricity demand going to the building. So, a big spike in demand for 15 minutes for one hour a month can mean thousands of dollars in added costs. Energy storage can help reduce those peak demand numbers and therefore save customers money.

Virtual power plants are a relatively new concept in energy, and what they’re essentially trying to do is band a group of energy storage assets together to act like a much larger power plant. When they work together, they can offset the need for expensive peaker plant power by using up cheaper electrons generated in off-peak hours. Utilities are starting to pay companies like Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWR), and Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN) for their virtual power plants, adding value to the energy storage they put into buildings.

Backup power is a more intangible benefit, but companies who rely on electricity to keep operations going definitely put a premium on having a quality backup, which energy storage is perfect for.

These aren’t the only ways energy storage can add value to companies or the grid, but they show the biggest selling points. When corporations are looking at their energy needs, energy storage can be a lot more appealing when you consider the cost savings, revenue potential, and value in backup power.

Highview Power recently unveiled its modular, giga-scale cryogenic energy storage technology, the CRYOBattery™. The company has announced a partnership with Tenaska to help develop four giga-scale plants in the U.S., with the first expected in in Texas. The company also is working on a fifth project in the Midwest.

The technology uses ambient air to store energy. Highview Power’s CEO, Javier Cavada, recently told POWER that the technology “can enable renewable energy baseload power … making 24/7 renewable energy a reality today.” Highview in a news release said the company’s “proprietary cryogenic storage technology … is currently the only long-duration energy storage solution that is locatable and offers multiple gigawatt-hours of storage, representing weeks’ worth of storage, rather than hours or days.”

Highview Power recently won the 2019 Ashden Award for Energy Innovation with the CRYOBattery. Ashden is a London, UK-based charity that works in the field of sustainable energy and development. Highview earlier this year announced a joint venture with TSK, a global engineering, procurement, and construction company, to co-develop CRYOBattery projects in Spain, the Middle East, and South Africa. The company also has partnered with Finland-based Citec to modularize the CRYOBattery system, helped by simplified design and streamlined engineering from Citec.

Highview said the modular cryogenic energy storage system is scalable up to multiple gigawatts of energy storage and can be located anywhere. It said the technology “reaches a new benchmark for a levelized cost of storage (LCOS) of $140/MWh for a 10-hour, 200 MW/2 GWh system.” The company has said the system “is equivalent in performance to, and could potentially replace, a fossil fuel power station,” and enables “renewable energy baseload power at large scale, while also supporting electricity and distribution systems and providing energy security.”

The technology uses liquid air as the storage medium. It provides time shifting, synchronous voltage support, frequency regulation and reserves, synchronous inertia, and black start capabilities. The CRYOBattery has a small footprint, even at multiple gigawatt-levels, and does not use hazardous materials, according to the company.

Highview Power has developed and optimized its own proprietary BLU2 core controller system, which integrates the control of all CRYOBattery components to provide optimal facility performance, which Highview said enables “managing the balance between flexibility, efficiency, and response. The BLU controller enables a system to be configured to a particular application through the selection of individual operational modes. It also provides operation and performance monitoring feedback, ensuring a facility’s optimal efficiency. The system’s embedded flexibility further ensures that the controller has the built-in capacity to adapt as a facility’s demand varies with market development.”