The Valley Center Energy Storage project in Southern California from where the battery packs were stolen. Image: Terra-Gen.

The malfunctioning of a sprinkler system forced the decommissioning of the LG batteries which were eventually stolen from Terra-Gen’s Valley Center BESS in California, the company told Energy-Storage.news.

As we reported last week, the battery packs were taken from the site after having been decommissioned and placed on pallets awaiting transportation. While this resolved the question around how they were taken in the first place, it raised the arguably as-important issue of why they were taken offline just a year or less after the system was deployed.

In response to a request for comment about this, a spokesperson for Terra-Gen told Energy-Storage.news:

“In response to your inquiry about why the battery packs were decommissioned just one year after the system was energized, in April of 2022, a sensor system fault triggered the water-based protection systems resulting in the batteries in question to be taken out of service.”

Sprinklers going off when they shouldn’t have were behind arguably the most high-profile battery overheating incident to-date – the incident which took offline the Moss Landing battery energy storage system (BESS) in California.

A report found it was most likely due to a programming error that the Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA) triggered the spray of water at a threshold of smoke detection below what should have been required, project owner Vistra Energy said.

An insurance source recently pointed to this happening on other occasions too, telling Energy-Storage.news that sprinklers can sometimes cause more harm than they prevent.

Terra-Gen’s clarification coincides with a guest blog published this week about fire safety and energy storage from executives at Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG) and Finland-based power solutions firm Wärtsilä. In it, they wrote about the need for a systems-level approach to fire safety rather than a narrow focus on battery cells themselves.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Reporter Cameron Murray will be attending both days.

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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The ground-breaking event was held last Saturday. Image: Senator Joe Manchin’s office.

Groundbreaking has taken place for a manufacturing hub in West Virginia, US, to be powered by a large-scale solar-plus-storage microgrid, using Our Next Energy’s grid-scale battery technology.

An event was held last Saturday (4 March), attended by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Governor Jim Justice at the site in Ravenswood, Jackson County.

The US$500 million manufacturing park’s first occupant will be a titanium melt facility owned by Precision Castparts Corp, which is owned by investor Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway group.

The site’s microgrid is being delivered by Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s BHE Renewables subsidiary. Using solar PV in combination with the Our Next Energy (ONE) battery energy storage system (BESS), the site’s production is aimed at being 100% renewable energy-powered.

ONE is aiming to become one of the US’ first major manufacturers of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells, closing a US$300 million fund raise earlier this year for its first planned factory in Michigan.

Additionally, the startup has developed its own BESS solution, called Aries Grid, alongside its range of battery rack solutions for electric vehicles (EVs). Aries Grid is available in 2MWh, 3MWh and 6MWh containerised versions with up to 4-hour discharge duration and a cycle life quoted as >5500 cycles.

In addition to supplying an Aries Grid BESS to the BHE Energy microgrid, ONE will also locate its own Aries Grid factory at the Ravenswood manufacturing park, with a planned investment of US$22 million on top of the half-billion dollars the site already accounts for.

ONE did not respond to an enquiry from Energy-Storage.news as to the planned initial or fully-ramped annual production capacity of the factory in time ahead of publication of this story, but a press release from governor Jim Justice said it would occupy 40,000 square feet of the park.

Similarly, ONE did not reveal the planned output or capacity of the Aries Grid BESS to be deployed at the site when asked. However, Justice’s statement referred to the BHE Renewable Energy microgrid being “estimated at 420MWh,” implying that the scale of the project and mix of different technologies is yet to be determined.

BHE Renewables and the state of West Virginia entered a purchase agreement in September last year for more than 2,000 acres of land to host the renewable energy-powered industrial site, while additional businesses are being sought by BHE Renewables and the state’s Economic Development Authority.

Justice recently signed off on a deal to bring ‘multi-day’ energy storage company Form Energy to West Virginia for the construction of its first factory, making the startup’s proprietary iron-air battery storage tech. Form Energy will get a US$105 million incentive package from the state.

“This investment will provide good-paying jobs, help onshore battery supply chains and boost American manufacturing,” Senator Manchin said of the ONE factory.

“Our state is just beginning to realise the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and I can’t wait to see the Mountain State continue our legacy as America’s energy powerhouse.”

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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Rendering of a Rondo Energy system at an industrial site. Image: Rondo Energy.

A thermal energy storage project claimed to the be the first of its kind in the US, utilising the highest temperature thermal storage tech in the world to date, has gone online in California.

Technology provider Rondo Energy made its Rondo Heat Battery commercially available late last year, aimed at decarbonising industrial processes. Electricity fed into the devices is stored as heat in a brick-like material and then discharged as heat, electricity or a combination of both.

The company claims the ‘battery’ is more than 90% efficient, rising to as much as 98% for larger-scale systems, while it can operate at temperatures exceeding 1000°C and up to 1500°C. It is targeted at replacing furnaces and boilers used in sectors like steel, cement and chemicals, in which greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are considered ‘hard-to-abate’.

Able to be fed with variable energy sources such as solar PV and wind, it can output that stored energy continuously over hours or days, offering a long-duration energy storage (LDES) solution using half as much electricity as would be required by today’s green hydrogen electrolysers, according to the manufacturer.

Rondo Energy has partnered with Calgren Renewable Fuels, a biofuels producer, and deployed its 2MWh system at Calgren’s production plant for ethanol, biodiesel, and renewable natural gas, in Pixley, California.

The Heat Battery has been installed on a commercial basis under a heat-as-a-service (HaaS) contract, meaning Calgren got it at no upfront capital cost, and at a cheaper cost of than an equivalent gas-fired heat-based solution. Rondo has claimed it as the first commercial deployment of a thermal storage solution in the US.

About half of emissions associated with biofuels production comes from the use of fossil fuel combustion in the refining processes, whereas the Rondo technology can be a drop-in replacement without changing Calgren’s existing production techniques and was done at Pixley without the facility experiencing any downtime.

“We’re looking forward to this unit proving itself, because we see the Rondo Heat Battery as a potential “perfect fit” solution for us—a low-cost source of zero-carbon heat for our facilities that can extend our reach toward the lowest-carbon, highest-value biofuels produced anywhere,” Calgren Renewable Fuels president Lyle Schlyer said.  

Various companies are looking to commercialise different forms of thermal energy storage technology, many of them aiming at the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector, as Rondo is. They include US-based providers like Malta Inc, which has a proprietary ‘thermal hydro’ technology based on molten salt and Sweden’s Azelio, which stores energy at just under 600°C in a phase change material (PCM), to name just two.

At the recent Energy Storage Summit in London, Julia Souder, executive director of the global Long-Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council) trade association, highlighted that alongside power sector applications, heat is a huge piece of the addressable market for LDES technologies.  

Rondo has put two models of its Heat Battery on the market, and noted that the system delivered for Calgren was made locally in California. The company’s backers include high-profile climate tech VCs Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Energy Impact Partners.

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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Grid operator Eskom is increasingly looking to battery storage to help improve grid resiliency and reduce frequent outages. Image: Eskom.

The Department of Mineral Resource and Energy (DMRE) of South Africa has issued its request for proposals (RFP) for six battery storage projects totaling 513MW/2,052MWh, with a July deadline.

The RFP, issued last week (7 March), is for battery storage projects at five substations run by grid operator Eskom, which will be the buyer of the project’s energy. The deadline for submitting bids is 5 July, 2023.

The substations are Aggeneis (a 77MW project), Ferrum (103MW), Garona (153MW), Mookodi (77MW) and Nieuwehoop (103MW), all in the province of Northern Cape.

The projects will provide capacity, energy and ancillary services to Eskom, specifically Instantaneous Reserves, Regulating Reserves, Ten Reserves and Supplemental Reserves.

All will have a four-hour duration meaning a total energy storage capacity of a little over 2,000MWh. They will also require a minimum round-trip efficiency (RTE) of 70%. Lithium-ion is typically in the high 90%-range, so this requirement potentially opens the tender up to other chemistries like flow batteries.

The projects will be required to perform a maximum of 730 equivalent full cycles per year, meaning an average of two a day with a specified availability of 95% over the whole year (to be confirmed).

The ruling part of South Africa the African National Congress last month tweeted that the RFP was approaching. The government is launching this RFP through its IPP Office (Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme), and it represents one of several big tenders through which Eskom is seeking to shore up grid stability through storage.

The country is seeking a net zero electricity system by 2050 but more pressing is the need to put and end to widespread and frequent grid outages.

The grid operator finalised the procurement of some 343MW/1,440MWh of battery storage in August last year and the end of the year saw the start of construction on some of these. That coincided with procurement notice for 146MWh as part of the same rollout, in December.

A separate round of procurements for solar and storage projects was also finalised last year and saw Norway-based renewable energy developer Scatec start construction on three projects with 1,140MWh of energy storage.

Documents related to the RFP are accessible on the DMRE website here.

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The ALLU Transformer D-Series screening bucket

Cross Country Infrastructure Services, a provider of equipment rentals and supplies for renewable energy construction projects, has debuted the ALLU Blue Transformer Series Padding Bucket.

Along with the SCAIP Pile-Driver and the Padding Machine, this equipment aims to increase productivity and reduce costs for solar and wind farm construction projects. 

The Cross Country ALLU Blue Transformer Series (TS) Padding Buckets process materials on site and are available in ½” or 12 mm sizing.

This equipment complements the company’s SCAIP Padding Machines that process materials to project specifications, further reducing the need for manual labor, increasing productivity and reducing project costs, says the company.

Cross Country’s fully automated SCAIP SDR-108 Pile Driver Machines are designed to drive beams in excess of 20 feet into the ground efficiently and accurately. The machine also includes a 100-gallon fuel tank, along with a GPS system that allows accurate placement without the use of forward survey, string lines, plumb bobs or lasers.

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Smartville, a developer of energy storage systems, has deployed its first commercially available product, the MOAB energy storage system, at the University of California San Diego’s Library Annex. 

MOAB is a “second-life” energy storage system that integrates and controls repurposed electric vehicle battery packs from different manufacturers at varying levels of health in one unified system. MOAB gives EV batteries a second life with ultra-low carbon storage that delivers a high value per kilowatt hour.

UC San Diego will use Smartville’s MOAB system to store solar energy from a 200 kW rooftop solar array to reduce demand on the local utility grid after sunset and avoid peak electricity rates. The 500 kWh system also provides 48 hours of emergency backup power.

“This represents our first step in bringing a truly scalable EV battery repurposing solution to market and providing a domestically manufactured energy storage product to meet California’s and the nation’s infrastructure needs,” says Smartville CEO and Co-founder Antoni Tong. “To accelerate our next commercial milestone, we are now speaking with venture investors interested in advancing profitable, scalable, low-carbon, low-cost solutions to our sustainable future.”

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Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corp., a provider of advanced robotic systems, has completed the final validation of its Outdoor Autonomous Manipulation of Photovoltaic Panels (O-AMPP) project. Sarcos collaborated with Mortenson, JLG Industries, Array Technologies and Pratt Miller to validate the project through a field trial at a Mortenson project site.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), annual solar installations will need to increase by 60 percent between now and 2030 in order to meet the Biden administration’s climate targets of solar energy reaching 30% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030. To meet this solar installation goal, SEIA estimates that an anticipated workforce expansion of nearly 900,000 new workers will be required. 

Given current labor force limitations—the U.S. solar industry employed approximately 230,000 workers in 2020—and a labor-intensive solar installation process, the solar field construction market represents a potentially massive addressable market for robotic technology, according to Sarcos.

The O-AMPP project, which began in 2021 with funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), aims to streamline the process of solar field construction into one harmonized robotic system to deliver, detect, lift and place photovoltaic modules in the field. The benefits of implementing the system for solar construction include lower soft costs for projects; the ability to engage in more projects simultaneously; improved construction timelines and quality; and a safer worksite that reduces the risk of injuries, including lifting and fatigue-related injuries.

During the validation, a proof-of-concept O-AMPP system consisting of an autonomous working vehicle (AWV) featuring the Guardian XM robotic system, and an autonomous delivery vehicle (ADV), was used to optimize the flow of photovoltaic modules from delivery to installation. Sarcos collaborated with several companies to complete this testing: Mortenson provided subject expertise and a validation site; JLG Industries supplied the mobile elevating work platform used for the AWV, onto which the Guardian XM robotic system was mounted and integrated; Array Technologies supplied tracker technology along with engineering resources; and Pratt Miller provided the mobile base with its flexible robotic platform featuring an PM-ADS autonomy system on which the ADV prototype was built.

Sarcos expects to commercially launch its robotic solar field construction solution in 2024.

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John Berger

Sunnova Energy International Inc. has partnered with David Energy, a software-driven retail energy provider in Texas, to bring its Adaptive Retail energy plan to the Texas marketplace.

The Adaptive Retail energy plan uses Sunnova SunSafe solar and battery storage systems to create a virtual power plant (VPP) that optimizes the interactions of the fleet with the electric grid. By aggregating the battery storage and generation capacity of its customers, Sunnova can provide a more reliable and flexible source of energy that can respond to changes in demand and market conditions, the company says.

Sunnova and David Energy will use their distributed energy resource management software to optimize their customers’ distributed energy resources (DERs) and create a VPP in Texas. Sunnova’s fleet of batteries will react in real time to David Energy’s platform, which dispatches the fleet based on the price of energy in the wholesale market. 

David Energy’s platform will also allow these DERs to integrate the value of demand response and bid their capacity into Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) ancillary markets for the creation of the lowest energy rates for Sunnova’s customers.

“Our Adaptive Retail plan represents a significant departure from the traditional centralized power generation model, putting more control and flexibility in the hands of our customers,” says William J. (John) Berger, CEO of Sunnova.

“By combining a retail energy plan with software that connects to a broad range of devices many customers already have, David Energy’s platform can turn Texans’ homes into power plants,”  adds James McGinniss, CEO and founder of David Energy. “The potential to bring hundreds of megawatts of much needed flexible capacity to ERCOT via these VPPs in the near future is very real.”

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A map of the project in the state of Nevada. Image: rPlus Hydro.

rPlus Hydro has submitted a Final License Application for a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in Nevada, US, its second Application in 2023.

The company has submitted the Application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the White Pine Pumped Storage project located in White Pine County, Nevada.

The plant would have a full power output of 1,000MW and be able to discharge that for eight hours, making it an 8,000MWh/8GWh system. That would serve about an eighth of Nevada’s peak power demand on a hot summer day, the company said.

It is the second Final License Application for a pumped hydro plant submitted to FERC so far this year by rPlus Hydro, part of rPlus Energies. In January, it did the same for the 900MW/9,000MWh Seminoe Pumped Storage project in Wyoming as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

White Pine would require an investment of US$2.5 billion and, if approved, could start construction in 2025. FERC will now undertake an environmental review and licensing process with local, state and federal agencies. Construction will take five to seven years meaning the project could come online in the early 2030s.

The upper reservoir is in the Duck Creek Range and the lower reservoir would be 2,000 feet lower in the Steptoe Valley, visualised in the above map.

An interconnection transmission line would be built as part of the project, connecting its switch station to the existing Robinson Summit substation 25 miles away.

rPlus said that the site meets all the other requirements of a pumped hydro site, a rare occurrence.

These are: a large vertical drop over a short distance, a topography that is amenable to building reservoirs, a nearby source of water for initial fall and re-fills, nearby transmission infrastructure, geology that supports engineering and long-term operation underground, and “no or low” environmental impacts.

The US currently has 42 pumped hydro plants which are operational, rPlus said. FERC only lists 24 that it has authorised and are operational, totalling 18,897MW or c.19GW of power capacity. That equates to a few hundred GWh of energy storage capacity based on the technology’s typical duration of between 6-20 hours.

One study meanwhile recently pegged the US’ potential for pumped hydro energy storage at 35TWh.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Reporter Cameron Murray will be attending both days.

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 mock-up of a compressed air energy storage system that Corre Energy will deploy for Dutch utility Eneco. Corre’s investor InfraCapital was on the panel. Image: Eneco.

The UK government is looking to bring in policy specifically around long-duration energy storage (LDES) by the end of next year.

The move was discussed on the “Financial Returns on Long Duration Energy Storage” panel discussion on Day 2 of the Energy Storage Summit in London last month.

In response to an audience question, Tom Vernon, CEO, Statera Energy said, mentioning his firm’s investment in pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) projects:

“Our investment in PHES is not a ‘bet’ – it’s what the sector needs. The government is indicating it will bring in policy to support LDES by the end of 2024. It’s exploring a cap and floor mechanism. We are working towards our assets being ready for that, but we can make our assets work on a merchant basis.”

Also speaking on the panel was Ben Francis, director of InfraCapital which has invested in LDES companies EnergyNest (thermal) and Corre Energy (compressed air energy storage or CAES). Corre Energy is deploying a 320MW system for Dutch utility Eneco, which will have a duration of 84 hours, meaning a potential energy storage capacity of around 27GWh.

“Eneco has said that battery storage alone will only allow it to get to 50% decarbonisation. It needs LDES for the rest,” he said.

This is noteworthy considering that it is often said that LDES will be needed at 60-70% renewables, not 50%.

Later on the discussion circled back to cap and floors – such as the well established Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme – for LDES, on which Vernon added: “I’m not clear on how a CfD works for energy storage. It’s a complex asset that charges and discharges.”

Speaking on PHES and LDES technologies broadly, Robert Hull of Riverswan Energy Advisory said that the market needed to be reformed.

“I don’t see some of these projects making it without financial support or government intervention. We have 3GW of PHES in the UK providing services and trading energy very well. But the big issue is building new ones and getting the capital for it. The market signals are just not there for large flexibility assets. They are ready to go but can’t because of the way the market is designed,” he said.

Independent power producer (IPP) Drax last year announced its PHES projects were contingent on a new market framework for LDES, as reported by our sister site Current. No new PHES projects have gone ahead in the UK since 1984.

Some £68 million (US$80 million) was made available for LDES projects in late 2021 by BEIS, the UK department which was until recently responsible for energy until it was replaced by DESNZ.

Vernon said that the increase of wind power on the grid will drive the need for LDES in the UK because its variations and oscillations are both greater and spread over longer periods than solar PV.

Discussing the broad array of LDES technologies out there, Greg Stevens of Abundance Investments mentioned mechanical energy storage as one area to look out for while Vernon said DESNZ needed to differentiate between LDES technologies when designing policy.

In response to an audience question around pension funds’ appetite to invest in LDES, Hull pointed out that although the 8-10 year project timeline might seem risky, the 50-100 year operational lifetime balanced that out. “That is the right timeframe for that kind of investor.”

Energy-Storage.news this week published a blog covering the five key talking points from the two-day event. LDES, and the US$4 trillion opportunity it is said to represent, was one of those big talking points.

Read more of our coverage from the Summit here. For more information and to register for next year’s 9th edition of the Summit, taking place 21, 22 February 2024 in London, visit the official website.

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