Presentation of Magaldi MGTES unit at the event in Salerno, Italy. Image: Enel X / Magaldi Group

Partners Enel X and Magaldi Group have begun construction in Salerno, Italy, on a 13MWh thermal energy storage (TES) plant based on a patented technology.

Called Magaldi Green Thermal Energy Storage (MGTES), the storage tech was developed by ultra-high temperature material handling company Magaldi and utilises a fluidised sand bed to store heat, which is then released as steam at temperatures between 120-400°C.

Aimed at helping to decarbonise industrial processes that require heat, the technology was described as the “first worldwide patented sand-based battery” to store energy as high-temperature steam.

The first 125-tonne installation will be powered by a 5MW solar PV array and is being deployed for IGI, a food company based in the Salerno province of Buccino.

Enel X, the digital, smart energy and energy efficiency arm of Enel Group, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Magaldi Group’s Magaldi Power subsidiary to find suitable sites and begin deploying MGTES systems in Italy.

MGTES can “ensure high levels of efficiency” in industrial processes that require high temperatures, Enel X CEO Francesco Venturini said, noting that the Italy-developed technology is backed by an Italian supply chain, while claiming opportunities for it will be found outside Italy too.

It can be a drop-in replacement for burning gas for various industrial applications, according to Magaldi Group president Mario Magaldi.

“Italy has the resources and know-how required to play a prominent role in the battery industry for energy storage, which is instrumental in producing renewable energy on a continuous basis, and in this way will help make the whole system stable and safe,” Magaldi said.

The 13MWh system is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2024, covering about 20% of IGI’s energy consumption and making renewable energy available to it around the clock.

Sand-based energy storage was in the news recently with the inauguration of an 8MWh project in Finland that stores heated sand in a cylindrical tower to be used for district heating, through tech startup Polar Night Energy.

Brenmiller to have thermal storage ‘gigafactory’ this year

Elsewhere, and further down the road to commercialisation, Israel-headquartered Brenmiller Energy said it will reach 4,000MWh annual production capacity of its TES modules by the end of this year.

The thermal storage specialist is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Its technology uses electricity and waste heat to heat crushed rocks to high temperatures, storing it for later use including long-duration energy storage (LDES) and multi-day applications. Like MGTES, the stored heat is outputted as steam, which can be used as heat, or drive turbines to generate electricity.

Brenmiller in fact inaugurated a 24MWh project in Italy last November with Enel X parent company Enel Group, at a power station in Tuscany.

Called bGen, the Brenmiller modules are going to be made at a factory site in Dimona, Israel. The factory is set to begin production in May and Brenmiller said key equipment has recently arrived, financed through a non-dilutive credit facility worth €7.5 million (US$8.17 million) with the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The TES technology is like Magaldi Group’s sand battery aimed at industrial processes, but also power generation applications, with Brenmiller touting that it can be fully powered by forms of energy including waste heat and biomass.

“We believe Brenmiller is on track for another TES industry first—that, by the end of 2023, it will become one of the first global TES companies with an operational TES production facility that will enable it to service the growing market demand.

“The impending completion of our production facility is well timed, as we expect to increase commercial orders based on our current project pipeline and the completion of pilot projects now underway,” Brenmiller Energy president and CEO Avi Brenmiller said.

Nearly half of all global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from heat processes, making the need to decarbonise both an urgent challenge and a major opportunity that energy storage technologies can help tackle. A report last year from the Long-Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council) analysed and outlined the size of the addressable market for thermal storage, measured in terawatts of energy and billions of dollars.

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Shell Energy trades power from the 100MW Minety BESS (pictured), which is in England. Image: Shell Energy Europe.

Green Investment Group (GIG) and Shell Energy have announced a 200MW/400MWh battery storage project in Victoria, Australia.

GIG, which is owned by Macquarie Asset Management, and Shell Energy, the integrated energy services subsidiary of the fossil fuel major, will co-develop the project at Rangebank Business Park in the city of Cranbourne, southeast Melbourne.

Financial close has already been reached, clearing the partners to begin execution of the project, for an expected commissioning date in late 2024.

The battery energy storage system (BESS) equipment will be supplied by Fluence, using the company’s sixth generation Gridstack modular BESS solution. Fluence will build, service and maintain the asset.

The region of Melbourne it is being developed in is experiencing fast growth in population, with a corresponding increase in demand for electricity and the BESS will help to stabilise electricity supply in the state of Victoria “by providing additional storage capacity which can be discharged at times of peak demand,” Shell Energy Australia CEO Greg Joiner said.

Shell Energy has signed an offtake deal with a 20-year term for 100% of dispatch rights to the BESS. CEO Joiner noted that the Rangebank BESS project marks the company’s first direct equity investment into a BESS project anywhere in the world, as well as being its first investment in a project of this type in Victoria.

Shell Energy’s activities in Australia include supplying electricity to commercial and industrial (C&I) customers as well as project engineering and other services. Its website lists numerous applications in the business case for battery storage, including frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) markets, demand response, reliability and energy reserve trading, arbitrage and a suite of behind-the-meter services like solar load shaping and demand charge management.

Meanwhile, equity investment from Green Investment Group in the project will transfer to Eku Energy, the battery energy storage platform the company set up last year. At the time of its launch, GIG said Eku Energy would develop, build and manage assets across a wide range of markets, revenue sources and market structures.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news last November, the platform kicked off by continuing two GIG portfolio projects: a 40MW/40MWh project in England and a 150MW/150MWh project at a former coal power plant site in Victoria, the latter co-funded privately by GIG and Engie, with Fluence the technology provider in that instance too.

Other BESS projects for Shell Energy in Australia include two 500MW/1,000MWh facilities in development in New South Wales, one co-developed with AMPYR Energy in Wellington, Central West NSW, the other at another former coal power plant site near the town of Lithgow, with Shell holding full development rights. The company also has a 100MW/200MWh offtake deal and partnership signed in 2021 with utility Edify Energy from a 300MWh portfolio of projects, also in New South Wales.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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The majority of BESS deployed in Canada to date has been large behind-the-meter C&I systems in Ontario like the one pictured, but this could be set to change. Credit: PRNewsfoto/Convergent Energy + Power

Canada will introduce tax credit incentives and invest in developing and manufacturing solar PV, energy storage and other renewable energy technologies in an Inflation Reduction Act-style scheme.

The Government of Canada has released its 2023 budget, which positions growing the clean economy as one of its core priorities, alongside healthcare and ‘affordability’. Under the budget, the government has confirmed the 30% refundable tax credit on investments made by taxable entities into clean energy technologies like solar, battery storage and wind. This builds on its first announcement in the Fall Economic Statement 2022 plan, which was covered on EnergyStorage.news.

A 15% refundable tax credit for investments into clean electricity generation and energy storage by non-taxable entities – like indigenous communities and municipally-owned utilities – was announced as well.

It also proposes to introduce a 30% refundable tax credit for clean technology manufacturing, applying to investments into machinery and equipment used for manufacturing processes as well as extracting, processing and recycling critical materials to clean supply chains.

The US’ landmark IRA, which set aside huge credits for energy transition investment, has seen others like the EU – and now Canada – trying to follow suit and remain competitive. Details of the scheme are yet to be clarified.

To read the full version of this story including further details of the fiscal budget, go to PV Tech.

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Fluence has long touted the potential of storage for the transmission network. Pictured is a promotional rendering for the launch of its sixth generation BESS solution a couple of years ago, but Ultrastack is its first bespoke product for the market segment. Image: Siemens.

Fluence has launched a battery storage solution aimed at the market for energy storage as a transmission asset, called ‘Ultrastack’.

The global energy storage manufacturer, system integrator and clean energy digital services provider revealed the Ultrastack yesterday.

It is designed for applications that help transmission and distribution (T&D) system entities to lower the costs of operating and upgrading their networks, with batteries used to increase utilisation of power lines, reduce the curtailment of renewable energy on the grid and reduce grid congestion.

Fluence described it as the company’s highest-performance energy storage product to date. That’s because it needs to be, according to Fluence VP of EMEA region sales and market development Brian Perusse. Grid operators have extremely tight requirements to keep their networks running safely and smoothly, often answerable directly to regulators and governments if anything goes wrong.

Essentially, storage-as-transmission, as Fluence calls it, places batteries into the category of critical grid infrastructure and that means the Ultrastack has 99% system uptime to meet expected requirements on  availability, enhanced cybersecurity measures and more – taking a lot of the features and functionality of BESS equipment “to a whole new level,” Perusse said in an interview with Energy-Storage.news.

The company has patent pending for Ultrastack’s control applications, allowing it to deliver system stabilisation and utilisation services such as synthetic inertia, and power oscillation damping.

Fluence is already working on two high-profile storage-as-transmission projects in Europe: a 200MW/200MWh project with Lithuanian grid operator Litgrid, and a 250MW/250MWh so-called ‘Grid Booster’ project in Germany with transmission operator TransnetBW.  

“Storage-as-transmission is starting to have a foothold in Europe,” Perusse said with regard to those projects.

“They might look like storage projects but the technical requirements are substantially different from any other storage deployed in any other markets. You have a higher availability, reliability, cybersecurity requirements, it becomes critical grid infrastructure at the transmission level, and it’s quite different in its requirements [to other projects].”

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Ross Campbell

Duke Energy is expanding its battery storage capabilities in North Carolina and has begun commercial operation of the state’s largest battery system, an 11 MW project in Onslow County.

The battery system will frequently be operated in conjunction with an adjacent 13 MW solar facility located on a leased site within Marine Corps Base (MCB) Camp Lejeune, which has been generating carbon-free energy since 2015. The two sites can also be operated independently.

Both projects are connected to a Duke Energy substation and will be used to serve all Duke Energy Progress customers. Future work could enable the solar and battery systems to improve the resiliency of MCB Camp Lejeune against outages.

“Integration of the solar plant with a battery energy storage system, unthinkable a decade ago, presents the installation with a number of opportunities to achieve energy resilience objectives,” says U.S. Navy Commander Ross Campbell, director, public works at MCB Camp Lejeune.  “These systems are part of the ongoing collaboration with the Department of Defense and its utility providers to ensure energy security at federal facilities.”

The battery’s chemistry is lithium iron phosphate with the system rated at 11-MW/11-MWh, and its physical footprint is about 1 acre. Duke Energy partnered with Black and Veatch construction entity OCI, which acted as the prime contractor for engineering, procurement and construction.

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Mark Widmar

EDP Renewables has placed a multi-year order for 1.8 GW of First Solar’s advanced thin film photovoltaic solar modules. The modules, which will be delivered up to 2028, will power U.S. projects developed by EDP Renewables North America (EDPR).

EDPR is a global pure renewable energy company that operates in 28 markets around the globe. 

“EDP Renewables joins a growing roster of large, sophisticated developers choosing long-term pricing and supply certainty, and responsibly produced solar modules by powering their projects with First Solar’s technology,” says Mark Widmar, chief executive officer, First Solar. “This validates the value that our customers place in our differentiation, not just in technology but our way of doing business.”

With this agreement, EDPR de-risks its solar pipeline in the U.S. by securing equipment for its expected growth in the utility and distributed generation segments. Additionally, this allows EDPR to increase its commitment to local content in the U.S., while also pursuing its strategy of supply chain and technology diversification. 

The partnership between both companies started in 2019, when EDPR acquired a 50% stake in a 278 MW solar portfolio developed by First Solar.

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June Sauvaget

SunPower, a residential solar technology and energy services provider, says it designated Stitt Solar and Sun N Us Solar LLC as Master Dealers. 

The Master Dealer program is designed to deliver customers expertise and service through local and independent solar companies.

Participation in SunPower’s Master Dealer program is by invitation only. To earn the designation, dealers must obtain stringent customer satisfaction scores, complete rigorous training requirements, pass all residential inspections, meet revenue targets, agree to carry the SunPower moniker in their brand, and exclusively sell SunPower solar solutions. SunPower works with more than 850 dealers across the U.S., 35 of which are now Master Dealers.

“SunPower Master Dealers share our commitment to provide a superior customer experience with a unique ability to execute with an intricate knowledge of the markets they serve, trusted relationships with their consumers and a high level of craftsmanship,” says June Sauvaget, EVP and chief marketing officer for SunPower. 

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Wartsila GridSolv Quantum BESS. UL9540A testing is carried out at four different levels from cell to complete system. Image: Colbún S.A./Wärtsilä.

Finnish energy technology company Wärtsilä’s battery energy storage system (BESS) product GridSolv Quantum has achieved the “best possible outcome” in UL9540A testing.

Wärtsilä said earlier this week that its fully integrated, modular platform, using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells from manufacturer CATL, had met all of the fire safety tests requirements for Outdoor Ground Mounted BESS equipment.  

UL9540A, created by UL Solutions in conjunction with the US-based National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), tests for fire hazards associated with electrochemical energy storage systems when a cell goes into thermal runaway.

It focuses especially on the risk of propagation – thermal runaway causing heat and then fire to spread from one cell to another – which if unchecked or uncontained can lead to more serious fires or explosions.

In a recent webinar presented by Energy-Storage.news with system integrator IHI Terrasun, battery and BESS safety experts from DNV discussed UL9540 codes and standards for battery storage, including an overview of the UL9540A tests: what their intention is, as well as examining some typical test data and what it showed.

As DNV energy storage safety lead Carrie Kaplan explained in the webinar, UL9540A determines a system’s cells capability of going into thermal runaway, as well as evaluating a system’s fire and explosion hazard characteristics. It is part of key certifications required by many authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) in the US, such as NFPA 855 code and IFC 2021, and is required for most large-scale projects to get financing and approvals.

The test can inform better BESS design, as well as the requirements for spacing between units to prevent spread of fire. Kaplan said it is important to note that UL9540A is not a ‘pass/fail’ test, but instead has four outlined levels of testing with corresponding performance criteria.

These are: cell level, module level, unit level and installation level, and a BESS needs to go through each one to meet those performance criteria.

It was proven that if a cell in Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum went into thermal runaway, it would not propagate to adjacent cells or units, while the Lower Explosive Limit of the equipment at system level is below 25%, without risk of deflagration.

The product exhibited no explosion risk, and no flames caused from the thermal runaway went beyond the outer dimensions of the units. Wärtsilä touted that the results mean GridSolv Quantum units can be installed within 10ft of one another and stay in line with relevant fire codes and standards.

‘Scenario did not become hazardous’

Noah Ryder, a managing partner at Fire & Risk Alliance, one of the parties overseeing the testing, said Wärtsilä had “achieved the best possible outcome from the tests”.

“There was no external flaming observed, the concentration of gases was manageable and the scenario did not become hazardous. This is as good as it gets from a results standpoint,” Ryder said.

Nick Warner of Energy Safety Response Group, one of the other overseeing parties, recently co-wrote a Guest Blog on the critical importance of energy storage fire safety for Energy-Storage.news with Wärtsilä energy storage director of product management and hardware, Darrell Furlong.

Warner and Furlong said that while industry fire codes require testing to be done as per UL9540A, “safety conscious manufacturers have expanded their testing to go beyond the focus on thermal runaway”, with some also seeking to validate explosion protection systems using full-scale testing.

Fluence also completed UL9540A tests for its Fluence Cube BESS product a few weeks ago, while Wärtsilä’s battery supplier CATL recently got accredited to carry out its own UL9540A tests through a partnership with UL Solutions.

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Project site of the Madero and Ignacio BESS assets in South Texas. Image: Wärtsilä

The US state of Texas continues to be a hotbed for energy storage activity, as CATL announces a major supply deal and the country’s first battery storage project to get ITC incentives comes online.

Just a few weeks ago, developer Eolian claimed the first project to avail of the newly-introduced investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage through tax equity financing.

Eolian’s 200MW/429MWh pair of interconnected battery energy storage system (BESS) assets in the Texas city of Mission was also claimed to be the largest fully merchant BESS project in the world. Tax equity investment came from a fund managed by Churchill Stateside Group.

The projects had begun construction in January 2021. Wärtsilä, the BESS technology provider and system integrator selected by Eolian, said earlier this week that the commercial operation date (COD) has been reached for the twin projects, called Ignacio and Madero, each of 100MW output.

The two companies had to work through an “exceptionally difficult period” to carry out the project installation and commissioning due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain issues, Wärtsilä said.

“Texas needs more flexible capacity solutions like energy storage for grid support and energy resource optimisation,” Wärtsilä’s VP of Americas Risto Paldanius said.

“This will help the state as it faces the natural replacement cycle of older inflexible generators and adapts to more frequent extreme weather events.”

Eolian invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” to construct the Madero and Ignacio BESS assets even during a time when the ERCOT market is undergoing a redesign, Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty said.

“We did this because of an unwavering belief that the highly flexible and instantly-dispatchable multi-hour resources at this site will do the hard daily work of fast-ramping and quick starts, allowing ageing, inflexible and increasingly fragile generators to remain available to the system in backup roles.”

As with other Wärtsilä BESS projects, the Texas duo uses the company’s GridSolv Quantum integrated modular BESS solution, and onboarded with the Wärtsilä GEMS Digital Energy Platform, the company’s energy management system (EMS). The latter is key to the assets being able to deliver ancillary services effectively to the ERCOT grid, and the Eolian systems are the first in ERCOT to qualify to deliver new fast frequency response services.

As noted in a recent news story on Energy-Storage.news, the ITC’s requirement for tax equity financing means transactions and financing structures required to avail of the incentives will be complex and expensive to negotiate. Despite that caveat meaning the big players with deep pockets might be best placed to benefit from it, the ITC is however widely expected to boost the business case for energy storage projects across the US.

CATL signs 450MWh Texas deal rising to 5GWh

CATL has signed a supply deal with energy storage project developer HGP Storage for projects in Texas, starting with a single 450MWh site.

The two companies announced their deal on Monday (27 March), with the Chinese battery maker – the world’s largest lithium battery manufacturer – set to supply its EnerC containerised liquid cooled BESS solution to the developer.

Dallas-headquartered HGP is relatively new to the battery storage space but its leadership has a track record of delivering energy and infrastructure projects including thermal backup generation and currently has a claimed 1GW/1.4GWh pipeline of distributed and utility-scale battery projects in Texas.

No further details of the 450MWh project were given in a release, although the companies did say it will begin commercial operations in 2024. Beyond that, CATL and HGP have entered into a “long-term partnership to facilitate up to 5GWh” of BESS in the state, including distributed and utility-scale projects.

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Seed and Greet EV charge station, one of just two projects in Germany featuring large-scale BESS at an EV charging facility. Image: Tesvolt.

Germany’s installed based of large-scale energy storage facilities is predicted to roughly double in the next couple of years, after 2022 saw a comeback for the segment.

After a few consecutive years of declining in size, Germany’s utility-scale energy storage market saw a record 434MW/467MWh deployed during 2022, a record figure, according to a market review published by a consortium including experts at RWTH Aachen Technical University.

In the latest edition in an annual series, last year the researchers found that in 2021, the residential segment continued to lead the market but a renaissance in the underperforming large-scale systems segment (defined as over 1,000MWh energy capacity) was forecast for 2022.

That came after just 36MW/32MWh of large-scale installs were estimated for 2021, meaning 2022’s figures represent a 910% increase, RWTH Aachen expert Jan Figgener told Energy-Storage.news.

The residential segment still dwarfs large-scale for market share however: in 2021, 145,000 household systems totalling 739MW/1,268MWh were installed, compared to 1,164MW/1,944MWh of new residential installations in 2022 across about 200,000 homes. That represents 52% growth year-on-year in energy terms and 60% growth in power output for residential, defined for the purpose of the study as projects below 30kWh capacity.  

Commercial and industrial (C&I) systems of between 30kWh to 1MWh capacity were a distant third by comparison to the other segments in 2022, with just 43MW/84MWh of systems approximated to have been installed, albeit it has also grown from the 27MW/57MWh recorded in 2021.

The report’s authors said cumulative installs for grid-scale projects reached 1,072MW/1,204MWh by the end of 2022, across 149 large-scale storage assets. However from adding up publicly announced projects alone, a further 1,123MW/1,414MWh could be installed within the next two to three years.

Unlike other advanced markets for utility-scale BESS where a wave of smaller sub-10MW projects leads to later waves of project twice or even ten times as large, project sizes in Germany remain relatively small. Around 77% are below 10MWh, although the authors noted that multiple projects of over 200MWh are announced for future deployment.

Evolving applications for Germany’s grid-scale BESS

The use cases for large-scale storage systems in Germany are beginning to shift. Ancillary services still remain the main application, with around 658MW/750MWh of energy storage built for this purpose to date. However, while prior to 2019, almost all large-scale performed frequency containment reserve (FCR) exclusively, saturation in that market led to declining prices paid by grid operators and a corresponding slowdown in the market to 2021.

Today’s energy market, characterised by high prices across the board, mean Germany’s FCR prices are again attractive enough for energy storage. This is not expected to last and increasingly, the recently introduced automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR) market which is estimated to be three to four times bigger in size than FCR is becoming an attractive option.

Large-scale energy storage used for renewable energy integration is also on the rise, with about 200MW/250MWh in operation today and 700MWh more projects announced. This is driven partly by the introduction of so-called ‘Innovation Tenders’ by the regulatory Bundesnetzagentur, which award contracts to projects that combine two forms of clean energy technology. This has led to a growth in mostly solar-plus-storage projects, with only one wind-plus-storage project winning through such an auction to date.

On a related note, this week the Bundesnetzagentur increased the maximum feed-in tariff (FiT) that PV-plus-storage projects can get through the Innovation Tenders by 25% from previous auction rounds, to 9,18ct/kWh (US$0.995/kWh). This has come after a recent auction round was severely undersubscribed.

There are also 130MW/150MWh of BESS in what the report called multi-use operation, where assets are combining functions such as behind-the-meter peak shaving with ancillary services.

Other use cases include 50MW/50MWh of large-scale storage in operation at large industrial sites and a very small wedge of others such as EV charge stations.

The final other use case highlighted by the report has drawn some interest from the global energy storage industry for its application of energy storage as a transmission asset: Germany’s transmission system operator (TSO) ‘GridBooster’ projects.

There are 450MW/450MWh of these planned as pilots, including the 250MW contract awarded to global technology provider Fluence by TSO Transnet. The GridBoosters essentially add N-1 redundancy to transmission lines, reducing the TSOs’ need to invest in expensive grid infrastructure with the BESS assets helping to increase the network’s carrying capacity.

The pilots are expected to come online in the next three years and their sole application will be as grid management resources.

Again, as with the Innovation Tenders, there has been some recent news about GridBoosters, with TSOs including requests to get a further tranche of such projects approved in long-term planning proposals filed with regulators this month.

In a September 2022 article for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (vol.32), Energy-Storage.news writer Cameron Murray took a look at Germany’s grid-scale energy storage market and the drivers behind its expected return to life.

What remains to be seen is the impact of bigger picture topics that have already dominated energy industry conversation across the European Union in 2023. Those include the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan which includes measures to reform Electricity Market Design to promote the uptake of clean energy on the grid, and measures to stimulate economic activity across the clean energy value chain from raw materials extraction to manufacturing and deployment.

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