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SuperGreen Solutions is debuting state-of-the-art software that allows homeowners to get a quick, ballpark solar estimate in less than 60 seconds.

This software utilizes Google Earth imagery to analyze roof shape and local weather patterns to create a personalized solar plan.

It will then calculate the estimated electricity savings over the course of 10 years as well as walk homeowners through financing options.

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This year, Habitat for Humanity chapters throughout Wisconsin partnered with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) for the Grow Solar for Humanity initiative, created to bring solar to households that will significantly benefit from reduced utility bills. The program, coordinated by the MREA, implements affordable renewable energy on homes built by Habitat for Humanity within the last year. Thirty-five of the forty-nine Wisconsin Habitat for Humanity homes receiving solar are in the city of Milwaukee, spanning the Harambee and Midtown neighborhoods. 

“By reducing energy costs, this project will bring long-term savings for these families, while increasing the value of their homes,” Chris Garrison, construction director of Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity, explains that the organization works to help families achieve financial stability through affordable homeownership.

Focus on Energy funds the solar portion of these homes. For more than 20 years, Focus on Energy and Wisconsin’s electric and natural gas utilities have partnered to help residential and business customers across the state make cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades.

“Habitat for Humanity is committed to helping Wisconsinites live in comfortable and affordable homes,” says Scott Bloedorn, Focus on Energy’s program manager. “Building energy-efficient homes is the most cost-effective way to control energy bills. By adding solar, Habitat for Humanity helps reduce energy costs even further.”

Since 2011, Focus on Energy has delivered more than $1 billion worth of economic benefits to Wisconsin. For every $1 spent, Focus on Energy returns more than $4 to Wisconsin’s economy through energy savings, jobs and environmental impacts.

Solar installations began in November and will be completed early next year. The project was awarded to Arch Solar, a local Wisconsin solar company, through a competitive bid process.

“For Arch, these installations are exciting because they bring the financial and environmental value of solar power to communities who have not had much, if any, access to solar power in the past,” states Dexter Peirce, an energy consultant at Arch Solar. “The electricity from solar panels provides financial stability by both avoiding rising utility costs and significantly reducing energy bills, all by powering their home with a clean, sustainable energy source.”

The Grow Solar for Humanity program is offered on behalf of the following Habitat for Humanity affiliates: Chippewa Valley, Door County, Fox Cities, Lakeside, Dane County, Kenosha, Washington and Dodge Counties, Wisconsin River, Milwaukee, and St. Croix Valley. When all the Grow Solar for Humanity solar projects are finished, roughly 414 kW of solar will be installed.

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Gregg Felton

Altus Power Inc. has entered a definitive agreement to acquire approximately 220 MW of newly developed and in construction solar assets for approximately $293 million from funds managed by True Green Capital Management LLC (TGC). Altus Power and TGC currently expect the transaction will close during first quarter of 2023 upon satisfaction of certain closing conditions. The company intends to fund the transaction with its long-term funding facility led by Blackstone Structured Finance and cash on hand.

“We are excited to welcome this new set of customers to the Altus Power brand, deepening our reach, particularly in New York and California, where a majority of the assets in this portfolio were developed and constructed by our partner, TGC,” says Gregg Felton, co-CEO of Altus Power. “TGC has a long history of successfully investing in commercial-scale solar with underwriting standards consistent with our own. Altus Power’s strengths in asset on-boarding and long-term customer servicing combined with our scalable funding architecture create a natural partnership.”

“Altus Power’s capacity to execute with efficiency and focus on building long-term relationships has made them an extremely valuable partner in both of our transactions,” states Panos Ninios, managing partner and co-founder of TGC. “They share our founding belief that commercial-scale distributed solar generation is the most attractive segment of our industry. Our collaboration has facilitated TGC’s successful forays into new solar markets.”

The acquired portfolio, once closed, will promptly add approximately 207 MW of commercial-scale solar assets to Altus Power’s operations, with the remaining 13 MW in the final stages of construction and expected to be completed in the coming months. This portfolio offers additional scale in Altus Power’s existing markets including California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York, and provides entry into two new markets of Delaware and South Carolina.

“We are pleased to expand our long-standing strategic partnership with Altus Power as it continues to meet the growing demand for low cost, renewable energy across the country,” adds Robert Camacho, co-head of asset-based finance within Blackstone’s Structured Finance Group. “Our investment-grade rated long-term funding facility provides Altus Power with competitive financing in this rapidly growing market.”

Altus Power expects to own, operate and service these new assets and new customer relationships over the long-term with the potential to offer additional electrification solutions, including battery storage, as well as electric vehicle or fleet charging stations.

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Crimson Energy Storage, the largest battery system to have been commissioned in 2022 at 1,400MWh. Image: Recurrent Energy.

A roundup of the biggest projects, financing and offtake deals in the sector that Energy-Storage.news has reported on this year.

It’s been another landmark year for energy storage, part exemplified by the following news stories which marked the largest announcements of their kind over the course of 2022 (so far) and some of the largest ever in the energy storage sector.

Click the sub-headings to go to Energy-Storage.news coverage of these at the time of announcement.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) that came online this year was in California, the leading market for energy storage.

Developers Axium Infrastructure and Recurrent Energy, part of Canadian Solar, started operating the four-hour Crimson Energy Storage system in Riverside County in October.

The energy from the 350MW/1,400MWh project will be split roughly 60:40 between 14/15-year offtake deals with utilities Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), respectively.

At the time the project was commissioned, California had around 3,000MW of grid-scale BESS online as per the latest figures then, while today it stands at around 4,700MW. Nearly all projects that have come online over the past year have been four-hour systems, in order to qualify for Resource Adequacy, the California ISO’s (CAISO) framework for ensuring utilities have enough capacity to meet demand.

Technically speaking, the largest system to have come online this year was Vistra Energy’s 400MW/1,600MWh system at Moss Landing, which was re-energised in July after several months offline due to battery overheating incidents. That system was originally commissioned prior to 2022.

In June, an infrastructure group owned by billionaire Enrique K Razon proposed building a solar-plus-storage project in the Philippines with a 4,000-4,500MWh of battery storage capacity.

Razon’s Prime Infrastructure Holdings (Prime Infra) would oversee the project which would combine the BESS with 2,500-3,500MW of solar PV.

July also saw the announcement of the largest commissioning of an energy storage project not using lithium-ion batteries or pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), the two dominant technologies in the sector.

A 100MW/400MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) was brought online, the first half of a larger system connected to the Dalian grid, in May.

The system in Liaoning Province in northeastern China is by far the largest VRFB in the world and could quite easily total more than all the other VRFBs put together.

Rongke Power, a spin-off from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, supplied the battery technology

In April, Energy-Storage.new reported on a debt and equity financing worth US$1.9 billion for Gemini, a 690MWac/966MWdc solar PV with 380MW/1,416MWh BESS project in Clark County, Nevada.

System integrator IHI Terrasun is deploying the BESS which will utilise lithium-ion batteries from supplier CATL and is expected to come online in late 2023.

Gemini was originally developed by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners and its subsidiary Primergy, which sold a 49% stake in the project to Dutch pension asset manager APG in October.

The biggest announced offtake deal by size was announced in May, when Norwegian lithium-ion battery gigafactory group FREYR agreed to sell system integrator Powin Energy 28.5GWh of its battery cells between 2024 and 2030.

The cells will first be supplied from FREYR’s gigafactories Norway – operational in 2023/24 – before later coming from FREYR’s planned facility in the US. It recently acquired a site in Georgia for the latter and accelerated its timeline and capacity plans although its still not clear when the US site will start producing.

Powin will integrate FREYR’s batteries into its BESS solutions across the globe.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the eighth annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 22-23 February 2023. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

A month later comes the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

Then on 11-12 July, 2023, Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia 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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Tim Larrison

Primergy Solar LLC, a developer, owner and operator of utility-scale solar, distributed solar and energy storage, has closed with Rabobank on a $75 million revolving credit facility with the option to increase up to $200 million. The facility will be used to support a growing development pipeline of solar and solar+storage projects across the U.S. Primergy’s near-term portfolio exceeds 3.2 GW of solar PV and  2.3 GW of storage projects targeting operational dates through 2026, which includes the previously announced Gemini and Iron Point/Hot Pot projects in Nevada. A further 5 GW of solar PV and 4.3 GW of storage projects are planned for operational dates after 2026.

“We are grateful for Rabobank’s partnership and support,” says Tim Larrison, CFO at Primergy. “This facility will allow Primergy to continue to expand our project portfolio, as we focus on developing large-scale solar and storage projects that deliver impactful decarbonization of power supplies in multiple U.S. regions and create positive financial impacts for local communities.”

The new debt facility further diversifies Primergy’s financing sources and supports the continued growth of a diverse portfolio of projects which now spans 17 states.

“As leading utility-scale developer, this facility provides Primergy a flexible financing vehicle through which it can efficiently grow its development pipeline targets,” states Claus Hertel, managing director of project finance. “Rabobank is pleased to have structured this financing to allow Primergy to meet its growth targets in diverse geographies and supporting the energy transition, representing a strong alignment with the bank’s strategy of supporting clients’ decarbonization goals.”

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Smartville’s first commercially operating energy storage system, in San Diego, California. Image: Smartville Inc.

We caught up with Mike Ferry, president of California-based second life energy storage firm Smartville Inc.

Second life energy storage, the repurposing of EV batteries into stationary systems, has taken off this year. As readers of Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of the space will know, this year has seen several new companies appear and raise tens of millions of dollars, procurement deals with vehicle OEMs in the hundreds of MWh and even now GWh-scale, and even systems using multiple battery chemistries.

California-based Smartville is one of those looking to capitalise on the opportunity in North America, along with its main competitors Moment Energy, Element Energy and B2U. Ferry discussed the company’s product and value proposition, its existing and future deployments and plans, growing its manufacturing capacity and its project using Tesla batteries, reported on separately here.

Energy-Storage.news: Tell us about Smartville Inc, why it was founded and what you do today?

Mike Ferry: CEO Antoni Tong and I founded the company three years ago in San Diego, California. As researchers at the University of California, San Diego, our advanced energy storage lab received US$2 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) through the ARPA-E programme. Our technology was really focused on how to safely and reliably repurpose used lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries for grid storage, and being able to both predict and extend their useful life.

We realised early on that the only way to grow a real market for this type of technology is to be able to absolutely warranty or guarantee the performance of these batteries in a repurposing application and a second life.

We validated our technology using battery modules obtained by disassembling EV battery packs, and we cycled modules of different chemistries from different automakers. As a result, we now have software and hardware that can use batteries of different states of health within the same system and we’re able to improve total system state of health over time, and then we’re able to warranty the performance of those batteries in that second life. At that point, we decided to shift from repurposing simple modules and to design our system to repurpose entire battery packs.

We believe focusing on battery packs rather than disassembly and modules allows us to scale. For this market to reach the MWh and even GWh projects it does not make sense from a labour or financial perspective to disassemble.

So what is your main physical product?

Our main product is an energy enclosure called MOAB, which can hold between six to 10 battery packs with a nominal rating of anywhere between 200-500kWh depending on the type of battery packs we’re using and the state of health of those battery packs.

We have a number of systems that I would characterise as laboratory type systems but our first system that is out in the field is one that we commissioned last month (at UC San Diego).

It has one enclosure with Tesla batteries, and the other enclosure contains Nissan LEAF battery packs. And then we operate those two MOAB enclosures as a single energy storage system, which provides energy services to the buildings that the system’s adjacent to.

So we consume solar power during the day, and discharge the battery after the sun goes down. And then we also provide backup power to critical facility loads within the warehouse that the batteries service.

What are the advantages and challenges of using entire battery packs instead of individual modules?

We see mostly advantages and not challenges. But the main challenge is that we have to be able to speak to each battery pack. Each battery pack speaks a slightly different language and has variation in how the battery management system is engineered.

So we need to speak to each battery pack and then have that all those battery packs roll up into our universal battery management system (BMS). We spent quite a bit of time developing that communication technology and that software.

And even within battery packs, different generations of battery packs will have slightly different communication and data protocols. And in speaking to battery packs, we’re not just able to tell the battery: “turn on turn off, open a contacter or close a contacter, charge discharge,” etc.

We’re also gathering critical data from each battery pack on cell voltages and on cell temperatures on internal resistance.

And we’re using all of that data, not just to control the battery pack – so that we can operate an energy storage system consisting of all different kinds of battery packs – but we’re also feeding all of that data into our database, so that we’re able to monitor the state of health of all those batteries and then feed that into our lifecycle modelling software.

We’re then able to predict how those batteries are going to perform over time. So not just in terms of their overall energy storage capacity, but in terms of their power-to-energy ratio, their efficiency, their internal resistance.

These are all elements that you need in order to make a real product out of these batteries. You need to understand exactly how the batteries are going to perform, and exactly how long they’re going to be able to perform at those different performance metrics.

And to what extent are the battery packs you use true ‘second life’ packs which have been in a vehicle out on the road, versus off-the-factory-floor, discarded, or test vehicle ones?

We’re working with automakers that want to see how battery packs throughout the different parts of their lifetime can operate in an energy storage system. Battery packs that are on the one end of the spectrum have completely gone through their useful life in a vehicle and might be at less than half of their original state of health, and the automakers want to see how those packs behave in an energy storage system.

We also have incorporated battery packs that are almost brand new. There are a large number of what I call ‘orphaned’ battery packs coming out of the salvage market. So you’ll have a vehicle that’s in an accident, where the front end and back end will be smashed and the insurance company will write off the whole car and sell the vehicle into the salvage market. But even though the vehicle is no longer useful, the battery, being tucked between the wheels and engineered to withstand collisions, is still very usable and undamaged.

So we’ve repurposed new battery packs and mixed them with old battery packs and shown how we can operate battery packs of different states of health within a single system.

Our technology allows us to be incredibly flexible in what type of batteries that we’re able to repurpose. And we think that is pretty critical for growing this market at this stage where the numbers of electric vehicles in the market and the number of batteries that are being produced is really starting to grow and build, and I think it’s hard to predict where the next big volumes of battery supplies are going to come from.

So let’s say an OEM whose battery packs you’ve never worked with before tells you they have 100 packs they want you to put into a system – how quickly could you incorporate that into your BMS and enclosure into a usable product?

If it uses standard CANbus data protocols we could incorporate it into our BMS in a few weeks. Fitting the battery packs into our physical enclosure would be in the order of a few months.

Did you work directly with Tesla and Nissan or through third-party sellers?

For Tesla we work through third parties, for Nissan and other automakers we work directly with them.

So Tesla is the exception – why is that?

Our experience in the US is that Tesla does not seem to be interested in working with outside partners. They’ve also publicly stated that they’re not focused on battery repurposing, not in their current business model at least, which I think might change over time. But that’s their public stance at the moment. We’re absolutely open to working directly with them but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.

To what extent do you do your own manufacturing and system integration and how are you approaching UL 1974 certification, which competitor Moment Energy told us is needed to manufacture second life storage systems in the US?

We’re currently working with national testing laboratory Innertek to qualify our facility here in Carlsbad, San Diego, as a UL 1974 manufacturing facility. We see UL 1974 and UL 1973 as critical to certify in our system as well as another regulation called UL 9540. Our intention is to achieve those certifications by the first quarter of 2024.

We’re working with outside manufacturers at the moment but all of the final assembly and testing and commissioning will be done at our Carlsbad facility. In August we received US$2 million from the California Energy Commission (CEC) to ramp up that facility.

We’ll carry on working with a third-party manufacturer to build the physical enclosure and racking systems but that Carslbad facility will be doing the assembly, putting together the batteries, power electronics, high voltage cabling, communications, thermal management systems and the final testing and commissioning.

It’s not currently a hard requirement for a system to be built in a UL 1974-certified facility. Our first operational system isn’t. A great deal depends on the local permitting agency that you’re working with which is responsible for ensuring the safety of individual installations, and most of their staff want to see certified equipment, which make sit far easier to permit on-the-ground projects.

But permitting agencies can permit individual projects without UL certifications if they feel that the project is safe and meets certain requirements. So in our first project we worked very closely with the permitting agency so that we could get the system installed and operational.

But that strategy is not something that is scalable, because you’re spending a lot of money and time to permit a single project. To achieve scale, you really need to have the certifications so that permitting agencies can easily permit your equipment and a construction project that utilises your equipment.

Give us an idea of the scale of your manufacturing capacity in the coming years?

For next year we’ll be fairly low scale. We’ll manufacture 20-30 of our 250kWh enclosures. By early 2024 we want to have a certified product and want to deploy 50-100MWh of product that year.

Do you have your own energy management system (EMS) platform and how big a focus is that for you?

We do have our own proprietary EMS platform that’s currently operating at our deployed system in here in San Diego, at another system operating in Irvine, and in all of the test systems working at our facility in Carlsbad. The interface between our master battery management software and EMS platform is really the focus for us, and moving forward we see this interface as one of our many long-term areas of competitiveness and value.

Tell us about how you’ll use the US$6 million you recently received from the DOE and second life projects you’ve got coming up?

Much of that money will be helping us to productise our enclosure system at a much faster pace than we could otherwise. We have operating prototypes but we’re iterating on our product and developing our second and even third versions. The money will also help us to certify our product to UL 9540 and our manufacturing facility to UL 1974.

Beyond our product, a significant portion of the funding is allocated to a large demonstration project which will be a 4MWh system in central California that will be co-located with an existing power plant. That will probably be deployed in 2024 as well and is in partnership with California’s largest privately-owned independent power producer (IPP).

At the end of Q2 next year we’ll be installing another prototype system with utility Southern Power to install one of our enclosures in Georgia. Additionally, we have several other early-stage projects in the pipeline for 2023, but our company’s primary focus is on certification, commercialisation, and scaling our ability to manufacture and deploy systems at large scales, which we really see ramping up in 2024.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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A new approach to manufacturing perovskite solar cells has addressed previous problems and yielded devices with high efficiency and excellent stability, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report in the new issue of the journal Science.

Developing highly stable and efficient perovskites based on a rich mixture of bromine and iodine is considered critical for the creation of tandem solar cells. The two elements, however, tend to separate when exposed to light and heat and thus limit the voltage and stability of a solar cell.

“This new growth approach can significantly suppress the phase segregation,” says Kai Zhu, a senior scientist at NREL, principal investigator on the project, and lead author of the new paper “Compositional texture engineering for highly stable wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells.” His co-authors from NREL are Qi Jiang, Jinhui Tong, Rebecca Scheidt, Amy Louks, Robert Tirawat, Axel Palmstrom, Matthew Hautzinger, Steven Harvey, Steve Johnston, Laura Schelhas, Bryon Larson, Emily Warren, Matthew Beard, and Joseph Berry.

Other researchers involved are with the University of Toledo.

The new approach addressed that problem and produced a wide-bandgap solar cell with an efficiency of greater than 20% and 1.33-volt photovoltage and little change in the efficiency over 1,100 hours of continuous operation at a high temperature. With this new approach, an all-perovskite tandem cell obtained an efficiency of 27.1% with a high photovoltage of 2.2 volts and good operational stability.

In the tandem cell, the narrow-bandgap layer is deposited on top of the wide-bandgap layer. The difference in bandgaps allows for more of the solar spectrum to be captured and converted into electricity.

Perovskite refers to a crystalline structure formed by the deposition of chemicals onto a substrate. A high concentration of bromine causes more rapid crystallization of the perovskite film and often leads to defects that reduce the performance of a solar cell. Various strategies have been tried to mitigate those issues, but the stability of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells is still considered inadequate.

The newly developed approach builds upon work Zhu and his colleagues published earlier this year that flipped the typical perovskite cell. Using this inverted architectural structure allowed the researchers to increase both efficiency and stability and to easily integrate tandem solar cells.

The NREL-led group used that same architecture and moved further away from the conventional method of making a perovskite. The traditional method uses an antisolvent applied to the crystalizing chemicals to create a uniform perovskite film. The new approach relied on what is known as gas quenching, in which a flow of nitrogen was blown onto the chemicals. The result addressed the problem of the bromine and iodine separating, resulting in a perovskite film with improved structural and optoelectronic properties.

The antisolvent approach allows the crystals to grow rapidly and uniformly within the perovskite film, crowding each other and leading to defects where the grain boundaries meet. The gas-quenching process, when applied to high-bromine-content perovskite chemicals, forces the crystals to grow together, tightly packed from top to bottom, so they become like a single grain and significantly reduces the number of defects. The top-down growth method forms a gradient structure, with more bromine near the top and less in the bulk of the cell. The gas-quench method was also statistically more reproducible than the antisolvent approach.

The researchers achieved an efficiency that exceeded 20% for the wide-bandgap layer and operational stability with less than 5% degradation over 1,100 hours. Coupled with the bottom cell, the device reached the 27.1% efficiency mark.

The researchers also tried argon and air as the drying gas with similar results, indicating that the gas-quench method is a general way for improving the performance of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells.

The new growth approach demonstrated the potential of high-performance all-perovskite tandem devices and advanced the development of other perovskite-based tandem architectures such as those that incorporate silicon.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office funded the research.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC.

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Innovative agrivoltaics demo system 2022 (Credit: RWE)

RWE and Forschungszentrum Jülich are planning on generating power and farming land on the same site in the Rhenish lignite mining district. The plan is to generate solar power in tandem with agricultural and horticultural activities on about seven hectares of recultivated land at the edge of Garzweiler Mine in Titz-Jackerath in the district of Düren in North Rhine-Westphalia. The research project is funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia through the progres.nrw program.

“In addition to a faster expansion of wind power, the energy transition in Germany also needs utility-scale solar plants,” states Katja Wünschel, CEO of onshore wind, and solar Europe and Australia at RWE Renewables. “RWE is also playing its part here – during this decade we will be investing up to €15 billion gross throughout Germany in our green core business and implementing every renewables project that is possible. As land is a scarce resource, we want to use this innovative demonstration project to show how agriculture and solar power go hand in hand.”

For Germany to be able to achieve its climate targets, land must be made available for the expansion of solar power and innovative plans must be developed. In addition to floating-PV plants on lakes, agrivoltaics (Agri-PV) offers major potential for expansion. Fraunhofer ISE assumes a technical potential of up to 2,900 GWp in Germany. Agri-PV is the simultaneous use of land for electricity generation and food production or animal husbandry with potential synergies between these different uses. That applies in particular when solar modules protect crops from excessive sunlight or hail, possibly even allowing for crop yields to be increased. At some plants, it is also possible to collect rainwater from the PV modules and use it for irrigation.

“To leverage the full potential offered by Agri-PV, we first need to clarify some fundamental questions, especially regarding suitable crops, the optimal PV system design, and best concepts for cooperation with farmers. These are the relevant areas we want to look at in our demonstration project,” says Wünschel. “We also need to make sure that the right regulatory framework is in place. For example, a dedicated tender segment within the German Renewable Energy Sources Act would be helpful in taking innovative technologies such as Agri-PV to full market maturity so that this technology can make its full contribution to the energy transition in Germany.”

Professor Ulrich Schurr, head of plant sciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich, is certain that the Rhenish lignite mining district, with its high-quality farmland, can benefit from Agri-PV.

“The combined use of land for PV plants and agriculture is a genuine option for the future in our region,” adds Professor Schurr. “Dual use of land could enable farmers to reduce the consequences of climate change, improve crop yields through higher-value crops, and generate electricity at the same time.”

A first, smaller Agri-PV plant in Morschenich-Alt shows that this is possible in principle. This plant is being operated by Forschungszentrum Jülich and other partners as part of the BioökonomieREVIER initiative.

“The larger demonstration project with RWE in Jackerath now gives us the opportunity to compare further technical solutions and investigate the growth behaviours of various crops under real conditions. That will enable us to take the insights we have already gained to a deeper level.”

The aim is to develop suitable cultivation methods and value-adding strategies for operators of Agri-PV plants. Forschungszentrum Jülich is contributing its scientific expertise to the demonstration project. RWE has recultivated land and long-standing connections with regional farmers and is providing the extensive technical expertise it has gained from the development, construction and operation of solar plants worldwide.

Three different technical Agri-PV solutions are planned for the demonstration project in Jackerath, all allowing the simultaneous use of the land for electricity generation and agricultural production. The first system uses a vertical design leaving enough space for harvesting machinery between the module rows. In the second system, the modules are installed in rows as well, but they are mounted horizontally and are automatically tracked to follow the sun over the day. This should optimize energy yields and make additional land available to the farmer.

In the third system, the PV modules are elevated on a high pergola-like substructure, with crops such as raspberries or blueberries cultivated below them. The demonstration plant will have a peak capacity of about 3 MW (more than 2 MW AC). Once the permit has been received, construction is expected to begin in summer 2023.

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Kyle Wallace

PosiGen, a provider of renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions for low-to-moderate (LMI) income homeowners, has added Kyle Wallace as vice president of public policy and government affairs. In his new role, he will work with state policymakers, utility commissions, utilities, and community and environmental groups to help shape energy policies to provide equitable access to PosiGen’s #SolarForAll commitment.

As the vice president of public policy and government affairs, Wallace will lead PosiGen’s state legislative and regulatory work in current and emerging markets. A top priority will be to engage with industry, policymaker and environmental justice stakeholders to develop equitable policies for rooftop solar, energy storage and energy efficiency.

“Kyle is the right person to lead the company’s efforts to establish PosiGen as the national trusted voice for policymakers on how to bring solar to underserved communities,” says Steven Burt, PosiGen’s chief compliance and policy officer.  “His experience and commitment to clean energy will allow him to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and state policies to expand PosiGen’s reach.”

Wallace previously served as the director of public policy for the northeast at Sunrun. He also served on the board of the New York Solar Energy Industries Association. Wallace started in energy through Utah State University’s Energy Policy Initiative as a contributor. He then joined Vivint Solar in 2015 and held multiple roles involving public policy, market expansion and analytics.

“PosiGen’s unique commitment to serving the households who need solar and energy efficiency the most was incredibly powerful to me,” Wallace comments. “Over the last few years energy equity has been a major source of discussion, but too often those words were not actually leading to meaningful policy action. I’m excited to be in this role where I can be a champion for underserved communities to ensure they too benefit from a clean energy future.”

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The 20MW KCE NY 1 project, commissioned in 2019, was New York’s first grid-scale BESS, part of just 115.5MW of total battery storage output cumulatively deployed in the state by the end of 2021. Image: Key Capture Energy.

Energy storage plays an important role in more than just the electricity sector in a plan for the “deep decarbonisation” of New York State approved this week.

The New York Climate Action Council, brought together by the state to help oversee implementation of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act legislation.

The Act, introduced by former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2019, requires 70% of New York’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030 and zero-emissions across the electricity system by 2040.

The council announced on 19 December that its 445-page Scoping Plan had been approved and adopted, after a 19-3 vote of its members that day. It will now be submitted to present Governor Kathy Hochul and State Legislature by 1 January 2023.

The plan goes through New York’s economy sector-by-sector, offering recommendations in each. ‘Energy storage’ is mentioned in the plan 78 times. In the context of the electricity sector, renewable sources like solar PV and an incoming major buildout of offshore wind paired with energy storage is discussed as being key. The technology is then also mentioned extensively as playing an important role in electrification of transport and of buildings.

At the beginning of last year, Governor Hochul had raised the state’s energy storage deployment target, doubling it from 3,000MW by 2030 to 6,000MW.

According to the New York Department of Public Service, as of the end of 2021, 1,230MW of energy storage had been deployed, awarded, or contracted, equivalent to 82% of an interim 2025 target of 1,500MW.

However, data shows the emphasis is very much on “awarded or contracted” rather than “deployed,” with only 115.5MW of battery storage power output cumulatively installed, mostly representing distributed systems and only a couple of grid-scale projects online, mostly in rural Upstate areas.

The deployment of storage will be guided by the New York State Energy Storage Roadmap produced by the state Department of Public Services and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The president and CEO of the latter, Doreen Harris, is co-chair of the Climate Action Council along with NY State Dept of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos.

At this year’s RE+ 2022 national clean energy trade show in September, NYSERDA VP for distributed energy resources (DERs) David Sandbank gave a hint of various incentive programmes and bulk solicitations that may be launched to stimulate investment into energy storage. Sandbank also said that the Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0, the newest iteration since Hochul’s upping of the state target, would likely be ruled on by the regulatory New York Public Service Commission (PSC) by Q2 or Q3 2023.

‘Missed opportunity,’ dissenting New York Climate Action Council member says

The plan was welcomed by the New York League of Conservation voters, which tweeted its support, applauding the Council for its work. The Scoping Plan will put New York on track to be “as ambitious and aggressive as possible while not losing sight of the limits of what is practicable,” the League said.

“From offshore wind, to clean transportation, to clean buildings, today’s vote places New York firmly on the path to a clean energy future. We look forward to working with Governor Hochul, all relevant state agencies, & the Legislature to implement this plan w/ all due haste.”

Meanwhile NY-BEST, the trade group and technology R&D accelerator, congratulated the Council, noting that the plan “features a major role for energy storage across sectors”.

The plan outlines that the cost of inaction on climate and making New York more resilient and lower carbon far exceeds the cost of inaction by US$115 billion, while the net direct costs of the plan’s measures would be small, at up to 0.6% of the size of New York State’s Economy in 2030 and 1.3% by 2050, particularly with the tailwind of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Federal incentives behind it, it claimed.

However, one of the three council members to oppose the plan published a scathing criticism. Gavin Donohoe, president and CEO of the Independent Power Producers of New York trade group, said the plan did not go far enough in addressing concerns around electric system reliability as well as risks to the disruption of heat and transport infrastructure networks that will largely need replacing or upgrading.

Donohoe said the Scoping Plan did not “lay out the most cost-effective and technologically feasible path toward meeting our climate goals,” as it should.

“The State has missed opportunities to address zero emissions technologies needed to keep the lights on. We may achieve our 2030 goals, if absolutely everything goes as anticipated by the Plan. Getting from 2030 to 2040 is going to need magic, since the pathway and timetable for identifying and developing zero emission dispatchable resources, so that they are operating by 2040, is missing,” Donohoe said.

The Scoping Plan can be seen here.

More to follow…

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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