Robert Pohlman

The Global Sanitary Landfill in Old Bridge Township, N.J., moved another step closer to becoming a solar energy facility with AC Power’s sale of the solar project and its 25-year lease to NJR Clean Energy Ventures (CEV). 

Meanwhile, Superfun LLC, an AC Power affiliate, took title to the real estate. 

“With projects like Old Bridge – our first New Jersey community solar project – we are committed to repurposing brownfields and other beneficial use sites to create clean energy,” says Robert Pohlman, vice president of NJR CEV. “Any time we can transform underutilized space to produce renewable energy to benefit customers and advance the state’s clean energy goals, it is a win-win for all.”

The Global Sanitary Landfill is a former municipal and non-hazardous industrial waste site that was designated as a superfund site by the EPA. The landfill has been inactive since 1984 and a financial burden to the township for decades. AC Power began development of the site in 2020 with the goal of securing community solar offtake for the generated power.

In October 2021, the 2.8 MW DC project was awarded capacity by the N.J. Board of Public Utilities in the second year of its community solar pilot program. The program provides subscribers an opportunity to reduce their electricity costs with local renewable, clean energy. 

The program also ensured that ancillary benefits were deployed in the community with AC Power partnering with Solar One and the County College of Morris to sponsor student enrollment in an interactive workforce development program.

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EU Member State since 2004, Bulgaria targets to have an installed capacity of 3.3GW for solar PV by 2030. Image: Neven Myst on Unsplash.

The Bulgarian Ministry of Energy and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have signed two agreements for the development of renewables in the country.

A key part of the National Plan for Recovery and Sustainability, the agreements will support the growth of new solar PV capacity as well as energy storage within the national infrastructure for the storage of electricity from renewable energy sources (RESTORE).

The EBRD will conduct an analysis of all existing energy storage technologies in order to determine the best-suited ones for the country, and will also organise tenders for the delivery of two turnkey systems.

To read the full version of this story, visit PV Tech.

Energy-Storage.news publisher Solar Media is extending its Large Scale Solar conference series to Southern Europe with the first edition in Athens, Greece during 4-5 July. The event will focus on an ever-growing market with a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders. More information, including how to attend, can be read here.

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Scale Microgrids Solutions describes itself as a vertically integrated distributed energy platform. Image: Scale Microgrids Solutions.

Scale Microgrids Solutions will build a renewables microgrid for a Native American tribe in California, announcing the new project a few weeks after securing a US$225 million debt facility.

The company will build and install a microgrid pairing 1.5MW of rooftop solar and a 6MWh energy storage system for the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians. The tribe is based in Riverside County, California, and the project will be installed at its Soboba Casino Resort.

Scale said that tribal communities historically suffer from higher service costs, higher interconnection fees, more blackouts or brownouts and remote and distant service locations.

“The impact of the Soboba Microgrid project goes beyond kilowatt-hours and savings. It secures the community’s long-term energy sovereignty and will inspire more public and private sector distributed energy development efforts on tribal lands,” said Guillermo Gomez, business development manager at Scale Microgrids.

The project is very similar in scope to one on which Energy-Storage.news reported a few months ago, also being deployed for a Native American community in California. That 60MWh project for the Viejas Tribe of Kumeyaay Indians combines technologies from long-duration energy storage (LDES) firms Invinity and Eos Energy Enterprises.

In an interview about the project, the Viejas Tribe Chairman John Christman told Energy-Storage.news that the plan was to eventually take the community off-grid.

Casino resorts serve as the economic lifeblood of many of these Native American communities and provide critical services during grid outages. Scale will provide 24/7/365 on-site and remote monitoring for the project.

“This project serves our mission to strengthen our tribe’s sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and prosperity,” said Soboba’s Tribal Council. “We are responsible for helping our people and our land thrive for generations to come, and we believe this microgrid system is an important step towards advancing our objectives.”

Scale’s development team secured funding for more than half of the project costs from California’s Self Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) and the Direct Pay Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Direct Pay means getting cash payments instead of an ITC, the latter of which reduces your tax liabilities and requires tax equity financing to get.

The Direct Pay for tax credits was brought in by the Inflation Reduction Act specifically to allow non-tax paying entities to benefit from clean energy credits, so is only available to them. According to law firm Arnold & Porter, this includes tax-exempt organisations, states, political subdivisions, Indian Tribal governments, Alaska Native Corporations, rural electricity cooperatives and the Tennessee Valley Authority, while pension and endowment funds may also qualify.

Some industry sources have speculated that this means these types of organisations will eventually become the biggest owners of renewable energy assets in the US.

The announcement comes a few weeks after Scale Microgrids Solutions announced it had secured a US$225 million debt facility arranged by KeyBanc Capital Markets and City National Bank. The company is owned by global private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

“We thank our partners KeyBanc Capital Markets and City National Bank for demonstrating leadership in the commercial banking sector with the closing of this debt facility. With the closed facility, Scale has increased its access to the debt capital markets, which is a cornerstone of our strategy to deliver microgrids and distributed energy projects at favorable rates,” said Julian Torres, chief financial officer at Scale Microgrids.

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An Archtech solar tracking solution

Arctech, a solar tracking and racking solution provider, is poised to provide a 365.8 MW SkyLine II solar tracking solution to Puerto Penasco Solar Park in Mexico. 

Located in Puerto Penasco in the Sonora state of Mexico, the project is led by the Mexican government as a flagship project to expedite the country’s energy transition.

In November 2022, Mexico announced aggressive renewable energy targets during COP27, aiming to reduce emissions by 35% by 2030. 

Arctech supported several projects including the 167.12 MW Sonora project and the 118MW Horus project in the country since entering the Mexican market in 2018. In late 2022, Arctech inked three deals to supply nearly 10 MW solar tracking solutions in Mexico. 

The three projects, SkyLine II, SkyLine and SkySmart, show the diversification of the market needs of the region and Arctech’s solution catering to various scenarios. 

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A CS Energy solar farm

CS Energy and CVE North America have broken ground on a 22 MW portfolio of four community solar projects in New York. 

CVE North America developed these projects which will utilize Solar FlexRack solar trackers. These projects will bring the total amount of solar energy projects completed between CS Energy and CVE North America to over 50 MW. 

All four projects will provide discounted electricity bills for over 4,000 low-to-middle income residents and are expected to reach completion by Q4 of 2023.

“We chose CS Energy for this set of projects due to our strong alignment in terms of transparency, integrity and efficiency,” says Ben Dereume, technical director of CVE North America. “CS Energy provided exceptional customer service on the last seven projects we completed together in Massachusetts – from value engineering to overcoming supply chain constraints to assisting with permit and town requests. We fully anticipate CS Energy will prove to be a reliable partner on these additional projects as well.” 

On average, community solar projects in New York have been found to provide a 5% to 10% discount on energy bills for local residents.

In addition to providing savings to local residents in western New York State, this portfolio of projects will also contribute to the state’s goal to generate 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and the governor’s goal to achieve 10 GW of solar by 2030. In total, these projects will also have the effect of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 192,330 miles driven by gasoline-powered cars per year.

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Steve Baker

Savion LLC says Indiana Michigan Power (I&M), an operating company of American Electric Power, entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) to receive the total output of renewable solar power from the Elkhart County Solar Project in Indiana.

Located in Benton Township, the Elkhart County Solar Project is projected to be a 100 MW AC solar energy generation facility on approximately 850 acres of land.

Estimated to begin production in late 2025, the new solar power facility will be Savion’s first project to break ground in Indiana.

“Indiana Michigan Power is pleased to work with Savion to provide more clean energy for our customers,” says Steve Baker, I&M president and chief operating officer. “[The] Elkhart County Solar Project will play an important role in I&M’s continued transition to cleaner, more diverse energy sources to best serve our customers, the environment and the economies of the communities we serve.”

In September 2022, Elkhart County Commissioners approved a rezoning application and the economic development agreement for Elkhart County Solar Project. The project is currently advancing through the site diligence phase.

Elkhart County Solar Project is the second PPA between American Electric Power Company  subsidiaries and a Savion-developed solar project.

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Key Capture Energy’s KCE NY 1 project, New York’s first grid-scale BESS. Image: Key Capture Energy.

It’s often considered among the leading US states for energy storage, but to date this reputation New York enjoys has been based more on ambition and favourable policy direction than action. Andy Colthorpe hears why this is expected to change in the next couple of years.

This is an extract of a feature which appeared in Vol.34 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

New York, New York,” goes a popular song from 1978: “so good they named it twice”. Energy storage industry observers may have been reminded of those words in early 2021 when New York governor KathyHochul doubled the state’s energy storage target from 3GW to 6GW, to be achieved by 2030.

That upping of the target set under Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo is in line with the New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and its goals, which include achieving a carbon-free electricity system by 2040 and net zero emissions will be achieved by 2050, should all go to plan.

It’s also important to note the relevance of the ‘Community Protection’ part of the legislation, which was enacted in 2019. Along with standards on labour and job protection, and stimulating the statewide economy, there is a strong intended environmental justice aspect to the CLCPA.

New York’s fleet of thermal power plants includes about 6GW of peaker plants, often the most polluting to run among fossil fuel assets – and some of New York’s peaker plants run on kerosene or heavy fuel oil, which are even dirtier than natural gas. Those were often built in poorer areas of New York City, which also housed many communities of colour.

Towards the end of 2022, the New York Climate Action Council, convened to oversee the CLCPA’s implementation, published its Scoping Plan. This was followed by the publication of the long-awaited Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the state’s Department of Public Service, which set out how that 6,000MW energy storage target will be achieved.

Due largely to its favourable policy landscape, New York has sometimes been grouped among the US’ leading states for energy storage. However, unlike the leaders Texas on roughly 2GW and California with double that for cumulative grid-scale installations, New York only had just over 116MW, albeit 1,230MW had been awarded or contracted for already by the end of 2021.

So, what has held New York back? And can Roadmap 2.0 put it into the fast lane?

‘Missing money’

One answer to the first question above is “missing money”, according to CEO Jeff Bishop of energy storage developer-owner Key Capture Energy.

“We’ve been developing in New York state since 2017, and we have a portfolio of about 1,000MW of projects that are under development there, including two projects that are currently in operation, KCE NY1, KCE NY 3, [and] we have one that is at the very end of construction now,” Bishop says.

“For the rest of the state, the key question has been: how do you get the missing money? Where New York doesn’t have the volatility of a market like Texas and so hence, there’s not really the same value proposition there is down in Texas.”

However, with its goals under the CLCPA, New York will need storage, and lots of it, to integrate all the new solar, wind, enable the retirement of fossil fuel plants and so on.

Regular readers of Energy-Storage.news will have seen that a key component of Roadmap 2.0, as it pertains to utility-scale energy storage – or ‘bulk storage’ – as the state defines it, is the planned introduction of tenders.

Those solicitations are still at the proposal stage, require regulatory approval and may change before being rolled out, but they appear likely to be an effective way to structure a market for battery storage, Bishop says.

“We really think that after this goes through all of the regulatory processes, and once they start issuing requests for proposals (RFPs), that this will be a way that we’re going to be seeing storage really taking off in New York State by 2025.”

Good market design, challenging timing

The result of that is the proposed Index Energy Storage Credit (IESC) programme. Similar to a Renewable Energy Credit (REC) mechanism, developers bid a strike price into a state-led procurement, indicating the revenue levels they need to realise to make a project work economically.

This strike price is benchmarked against a reference price indicator set by the state, in other words a “mechanism to look at what the project can reasonably earn in the standard ISO markets for capacity and day ahead energy,” and then pays the developer the difference between reference and strike prices.

It preserves some of the best features of renewable energy procurement programmes, Dr William Acker, executive director of trade association and technology accelerator New York BEST (NY-BEST) says, keeping sufficient performance risk on the developers and encouraging their market participation.

The big risk, and the big persistent challenge, is that of timing, according to energy storage market analyst Vanessa Witte at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. With NYSERDA unlikely to open up RFPs until 2024 at the earliest, it remains unanswered whether the state is able to hit its target in time.

The New York ISO market is “not an easy market to construct in,” and 2030 may be “cutting it close,” Witte says, observing that a couple of developer contacts have expressed that opinion. New York will get to its targeted 6GW and likely surpass it, “but when is that really going to happen?”

There has also been frustration, Witte says, that New York utilities such as Con Edison have not been procuring large volumes. RFPs issued have set prices that aren’t reflective of market value. That said, this is the sort of challenge the Index Credit has been created to solve.

One immense boon for energy storage development is the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). While there are many facets to that legislation, the introduction of the standalone energy storage investment tax credit (ITC) could unlock opportunities for New York developers.

Ravenswood
Generating
Station, New
York’s biggest
thermal power
plant, is being
repurposed as a
clean energy hub,
including energy
storage. Credit: Wikimedia user rhododendrites

Developers keen on New York despite uncertainties

“Companies like mine are attracted to states that have aggressive policies, and goals and that are backing those up with opportunities to have stacked revenue streams around energy storage,” says Kelly Sarber, CEO of Strategic Management Group, a developer of more than US$6 billion of US clean energy projects, and on the Board of Directors at NY-BEST.

New York doesn’t quite have those fundamentals in place, with utility-scale storage only able to play into capacity and wholesale arbitrage markets, which “doesn’t support building big merchant energy storage projects,” Sarber says.

“California and Texas are leading the nation in the deployment of energy storage, and it all has to do with the way that those markets are constructed, and developers are not afraid of risk,” the developer says.

“You’ve got different revenue streams that are more predictable in those markets. You’ve got the benefits of energy storage being able to be monetised in those markets, to a degree that they’re not currently being monetised in the New York market.”

Nonetheless, Sarber has “probably 3,000MW incubating” in the New York market, with sites and substations acquired. In fact, as of April 2022, there was 12GW of energy storage in the NYISO interconnection queue, double the 2030 target.

That congested queue could however give the impression, or an “artificial comfort level” that achieving the goal will be relatively easy, due to a lot of developers seeing an opportunity coming, possibly with a view to flipping projects and selling them on.

‘Good projects will always get built’

Sarber says, however, that as a prolific developer, she is bullish on the New York market’s growth path ahead. The type of energy storage projects Strategic Management Group is working on are “necessary” for the state, and backed by strong policies, New York can achieve 6GW.

“I’m just nervous about the time that’s going to take, and whether we have enough time to get 6,000MW of energy storage built in New York by 2030, based on where we’re at today.”

Fellow developer Jeff Bishop at Key Capture Energy is similarly bullish and says the company has been encouraged by the state’s proactive approach and “massive amount of work” by stakeholders, citing that it’s a question of when, not if, New York’s bulk storage buildout will happen.

“My macro view is: good projects will always get built. It’s just a question of timing. As we’re looking at New York, with all of their climate goals, 6,000MW is going to be the minimum of storage, quite frankly, where they’re going to be needing longer duration storage coming up, they’re probably going to be needing some clean hydrogen.

“I learned a long time ago not to ever bet against New York and New England, where they definitely will achieve the climate goals that they have in place. Sometimes it takes longer, but [they] always get there.”

This is an extract of a feature which appeared in Vol.34 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

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Centrica’s Roosecote battery energy storage system (BESS) project in England. Image: Centrica.

The UK Infrastructure Bank plans to invest up to £265 million (US$331.45 million) in energy storage development in the UK, in partnership with British Gas owner Centrica Plc.

In a statement, Centrica said: “The Bank will invest £75 million on a match funding basis into the Gresham House Secure Income Renewable Energy & Storage LP (SIRES) alongside a £65 million investment from Centrica.”

Another part of the deal will see the UK Infrastructure Bank invest £125 million of match funding into Equitix UK Electricity Storage Fund.

Centrica said it was the Bank’s first investment in electricity storage, and “could facilitate around 1300 jobs and will unlock at least a further £200 million in match-funded private sector capital.”

The Equitix UK Electricity Storage Fund is a UK-based, infrastructure specialist asset manager, which will “focus on a combination of innovative business models across both short and long duration storage”, according to the UK Infrastructure Bank.

The Bank said that the fund would aim to deploy both short duration solutions like household and commercial battery storage systems, as well as long duration technologies like “pumped-hydro, a type of energy storage that uses water reservoirs at different elevations to generate and store electricity. The fund is expected to facilitate 900 jobs across the UK.”

The UK added the most battery storage of any European nation in 2022 according to consultancy LCP Delta,

To read the full version of this story, visit Solar Power Portal.

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The panel discussion about long-duration energy storage on Day 1 of Energy Storage Summit USA, in Austin last week (28/29 March). Image: Solar Media.

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) may be in something of a ‘dot-com’ moment, but grid operators cannot afford the ‘hiccup’ of any bubble bursting, a senior ISO manager said at the Energy Storage Summit USA.

That was the message from Mike DeSocio, director for market design at the New York Independent System Operator (NY-ISO), a speaker on the ‘Long-Duration Energy Storage Powering the Future’ panel discussion at the Energy Storage Summit USA last week, hosted in Austin, Texas by our publisher Solar Media. 

Balki Iyer, CCO and US country manager for LDES startup e-Zinc, introduced the analogy in his opening remarks. 

“All the predictions to-date about energy storage rollouts have been wrong by a factor; wrong by a factor in the right direction,” he said. 

“If we think about the late 90s, ‘internet dot-com’ era – I feel we are in a ‘dot-com’ moment in LDES. I say that because in 1999-2000, no one would have predicted all the eventual use cases of the internet. They knew there was a technology but the use cases came on faster than they could even adopt it. I almost feel it’s the same thing happening in LDES.” 

Joe Ferrari, VP sales Americas for Italy-based CO2 battery company Energy Dome agreed: “It’s not that long ago that the utilities rolled their eyes at the thought of lithium-ion. They weren’t familiar with it, and we’re in that phase with LDES.” 

DeSocio was then asked for his perspective on the main benefits of LDES to a grid operator like NY-ISO. 

“The main benefit is optionality. We need to balance supply and demand on a second-by-second basis. We’re not at the point where renewables can be baseload, and we’re starting to face not a megawatt-capacity issue but a megawatt-hours issue,” he said, before addressing the ‘dot com’ analogy. 

“With the dot com thing, remember that in 2000-2001 there was a bit of a bubble burst. We need to be careful about just adding storage for storage’s sake, and it needs to be done in a way that is balanced and keeps up with new supply resources.”

“We need to build renewables and then add the storage. If we build the storage and then add renewables we’re gonna have a problem.” 

In response, LDES Council executive director Julia Souder said that the world’s climate goals needed a substantial push to adapt LDES technologies at scale. 

“LDES is an affordable, flexible and reliable resource. Our challenge is raising awareness that our products have been commercialised for 10, 20, or even 100 years if we count pumped hydro. The technology is there, we just need to adopt it quickly because we’re dealing with the challenges of decarbonisation today.” 

“With the ‘dot-com’ analogy, yes there was that little hiccup which we all learned from, but we accelerated past it and we need to accelerate on this together.” 

To which DeSocio said: “We just can’t afford that hiccup on the grid.”

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Sodium-sulfur NAS battery installation at IGO’s Nova mine in Western Australia. Image: Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC).

Image: Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC)

Invinity Energy Systems and chemicals company BASF have announced the first deployments of their non-lithium battery storage technologies in Hungary and Australia respectively.

Anglo-American Invinity makes its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage systems, while BASF has the license to distribute the sodium-sulfur (NAS) battery storage technology developed by Japan’s NGK Insulators.

Both technologies are targeted at medium and long-duration energy storage (LDES) market segments, aiming to provide storage at discharge durations longer than the typical 4-hour upper limit at which lithium-ion is widely considered most economical.

Invinity said last week that it has sold a 1.5MWh vanadium flow battery to STS Group, a Hungarian renewable energy project developer. It will be installed at an STS solar-plus-storage project in central Hungary, near the municipality of Öskü.

The sale follows the signing of a multi-party commercial partnership agreement between Invinity, STS and the developer’s strategic partner Ideona Group, which is an asset management company also based in Hungary.

London Stock Exchange-listed Invinity said that the Hungarian partners have identified a potential pipeline of opportunities for VRFB deployments of more than 50MWh in the EU Member State. The flow battery maker has given its two partners a mandate to deploy its devices at solar-plus-storage and grid storage projects.

The initial 1.5MWh deployment will be coupled with a 2MWp solar PV array in an EU-funded project. Seven of Invinity’s VS3 model flow batteries will be installed with up to 6-hour discharge duration. Storing and dispatching surplus renewable energy, the batteries will provide grid-balancing ancillary services.

The project near Öskü will be owned by asset manager Ideona, and installed and integrated by STS Group, which won contracts for the project through a tender held by Hungary’s National Research, Development and Innovation Office.

Invinity has deployed or is contracted to deploy 65MWh of VRFBs at 70 sites in 15 different countries, with a factory in Scotland and offices and operations in the UK, Canada, the US, China and Australia.

Formed by the merger of the UK’s redT and North America’s Avalon Battery in 2020, some of the company’s bigger projects underway include a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Alberta, Canada, a handful of US solar-plus-storage microgrids, a recent 15MWh order in Taiwan, and Australia’s first-ever grid-scale VRFB installation, a 2MW/8MWh system.

Field test for non-lithium battery tech at mining site

Staying with Australia, a nickel-copper-cobalt mine site in Western Australia is now host to the country’s first NAS battery installation.

It’s a demonstration project where the 250kW/1.45MWh sodium-sulfur system’s operation will be tested and assessed by the Queensland University of Technology’s National Battery Testing Centre together with the University of Western Australia.

Announced yesterday by the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC), a government, industry and academic research partnership launched by the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program in 2019, the project is located at resources company IGO’s Nova mine site in Western Australia’s Fraser Range in the Outback.

FBICRC said the NAS battery system entered operation in mid-February.

The trial “is an important way to field test the suitability of this unique technology in a mining environment and how this will contribute to a clean energy future,” IGO acting CEO Matt Dusci said.

The NAS battery, commercially available for nearly two decades and with around 5GWh of capacity deployed at over 250 sites around the world, is being touted as suitable for storage applications requiring 6-8 hours duration.

Chemicals company BASF marked its entry into the energy market by forming a partnership with manufacturer NGK in 2019. Since then, Energy-Storage.news has reported on various projects announced by both NGK and BASF, including a 3.6MWh NAS battery for Mongolia’s first solar-plus-storage project, a 950kW / 5.8MWh system at a BASF production facility in Antwerp, Belgium, and various deployments in Japan and South Korea.

For both Invinity and BASF, the projects in Hungary and Australia are among the smaller projects they have supplied recently, but could be important in staking out their claim to wider rollout in each territory for their non-lithium technologies. Hungary is committed to achieving net zero emissions as a country by 2050, while in Australia FBICRC CEO Shannon O’Rourke said the NAS battery technology could “help to accelerate our clean energy future”.

Read more of Energy-Storage.news coverage of Invinity Energy Systems here, and more coverage of the sodium-sulfur NAS battery here.

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