A 60 MW ground power station project of SEG Solar in Florida

SEG Solar is establishing a photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing plant in Houston, Texas with an anticipated annual capacity of more than 2 GW. The facility is expected to commence construction at the end of 2022 and be fully operational by mid-2023. The plant will be equipped with three state-of-the-art production lines capable of producing high efficiency N type Topcon solar modules with 182mm or 210mm solar cells. 

The development of this facility is the next step in SEG’s long-term product localization strategy designed to better serve customers in the United States.

“SEG is very excited to enter the U.S. manufacturing market at this time,” says Jim Wood, CEO of SEG. “The establishment of this facility now makes sense on a number of different levels due to the recent incentives for solar manufacturing included in the Inflation Reduction Act and the current legislative climate. This plant will give SEG more control over the supply chain and simplify transportation logistics, thereby providing customers with competitive pricing and even more assurance of on-time deliveries.”

SEG is committed to sourcing components and other materials for the production of the modules at this facility from local suppliers in the United States. As a result, SEG anticipates that the modules manufactured at this facility will qualify for local content incentives and avoid or significantly reduce many of the tariffs and other restrictions facing manufacturers outside of the United States. The modules produced at this facility will be “Assembled in the U.S.” and may also be eligible for certain other certifications.

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Hi-MO 5 54-cell module

Solar technology company LONGi has launched a new solar module specifically designed for residential and commercial applications in the U.S. market. The new Hi-MO 5 54-cell module, based on the new market standard M10 182-mm-monocrystaline wafer, will be available in early 2023, first as a monofacial module with a bifacial module to follow later in the year.

Based on the same technology used in the company’s large-format utility-scale 72-cell modules, the Hi-MO 5 54-cell module delivers superior power generation, reliable performance, high module efficiency and reduced system costs with an aesthetic appearance for rooftop distributed generation projects.

The Hi-MO 5 54-cell module features power outputs up to 420 W and maximum efficiencies of 21.5%. The monofacial module comes in an all-black design and has a 12-year warranty for materials and processing and a 25-year warranty for linear power output. The bifacial module will be a dual-glass design and carries a 12-year warranty for materials and processing and a 30-year warranty for linear power output.

Weighing less than 50 lbs., the Hi-MO 5 54-cell can be handled and installed easily on rooftops and is compatible with standard module racking and mounting systems. With its optimized electrical parameters, the Hi-MO 5 54-cell is compatible with smart module-level power electronics (MLPE) devices such as Enphase microinverters and SolarEdge optimizers as well as mainstream string inverters.

“We have strong customer interest in the new Hi-MO 5 54-cell module. Since its older sibling the Hi-MO 5 72-cell module has been our best-selling product for the utility sector in the U.S., we expect very high demand for the new format,” says Aaron Thurlow, head of distributed generation for LONGi Solar North America. “The full weight of LONGi’s advanced M10 technology, vertically integrated manufacturing, and financial strength stands behind the Hi-MO 5 54-cell product, making it one of the most promising distributed generation solar products LONGi has brought to the U.S. market to date. It’s yet another example of how LONGi is helping to propel the clean energy transformation into the terawatt era.”

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Toledo Solar, an American manufacturer of PV solar panels, is expanding its domestic manufacturing plans at its Perrysburg, Ohio, manufacturing facility to reach 2.8 GW of manufacturing capacity by 2027.

“We are excited to continue our commitment to investing in U.S. solar manufacturing right here in Ohio,” says Aaron Bates, founder and CEO of Toledo Solar. “Now that Congress and President Biden have moved forward to protect American jobs by fighting the use of slave labor overseas with the enforcement of the Uyghur Act and the leveling of the playing field in solar with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Toledo Solar is going to match that dedication by committing to our domestic expansion. We are grateful for the leadership of representatives Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan and Sherrod Brown, Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and the Biden-Harris administration for their efforts to advance the country’s renewable energy capacity for generations.”

Toledo Solar was also a partner in the team that recently won a proposal to establish a Cadmium Telluride Accelerator Consortium with a funding from a $20 million program that was established by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office to hasten the development of cheaper, more efficient cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells.

“Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act’s smart investments in American-made solar, Ohio’s energy industry is on the move. Toledo Solar represents the best of American energy innovation, and I will continue working to ensure we invest in production and good-paying jobs right here in Northwest Ohio,” states Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur.

“This is an exciting day for Ohio and the future of American energy production. I want to thank Toledo Solar for continuing to lead the way into the next generation of manufacturing, creating new good-paying jobs for Ohio workers, and lowering costs for working families,” adda Congressman Ryan. “Thanks to our Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, we’re creating an environment that positions our state to reap investments from businesses like Toledo Solar to ensure we are at the forefront of innovation happening in the United States and the rest of the world. I will continue to work to level the playing field for American businesses and stop countries like China from undermining domestic solar production with unfair competition and illegal practices.”

“The Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization at the University of Toledo looks forward to continuing to work with Toledo Solar to support their development through collaborative research efforts and by providing a creative and well-equipped workforce. The exciting expansion plans announced by Toledo Solar confirms our region’s international leadership in solar energy,” comment the University of Toledo’s Drs. Frank Calzonetti and Michael Heben in a joint statement.

Image: Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash

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GoldiSolar, an India-based solar brand, has launched its HELOC̣ Pro module series. It features mono-facial and bi-facial modules with M10 wafer size. With a power of 560 W and 400 W, the new modules can be widely used in utility, industrial, institutional, agriculture and rooftop applications. The 560 W module will be in glass-to-glass, and 400 W will be in an all-black variant.

“Goldi Solar is proud to roll out HELOC̣ Pro in the USA,” says Bharat Bhut, director of Goldi Solar. “The company has earmarked a significant solar module production capacity for exports. With the strong and favorable bilateral relations between the two countries, we believe that the USA will continue to be an important market for India. Goldi Solar aims to leverage the opportunity with our Made-In-India panels.”

Vigorous quality tests have been undertaken, and the modules have been shown to provide mechanical support up to 5400 Pa snow load and 2400 Pa wind load. The panels come with a 12-year product warranty and a 30-year performance warranty and certifications such as CEC (California Energy Commission and UL (Underwriter Laboratories), and DNV (Det Norske Veritas). The advanced lab tests comply with IEC (The International Electrotechnical Commission) and ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials and Standards.)

Goldi Solar’s existing facilities in Gujarat (India) have a module manufacturing capacity of 2.5 GW.

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CESA/Strategen’s Jin Noh spoke to Energy-Storage.news at this year’s RE+ event in Anaheim. Image: Sean Rai-Roche / Solar Media

This year, Solar Power International and Energy Storage International, two of the biggest shows in the US for their respective industries, are taking place in California under a new brand, called RE+ 2022.

Energy-Storage.news is at the event this week in the city of Anaheim. While it is both a national and very international exhibition and conference, we considered it a good opportunity to learn about the progress California has made as a leading state for energy storage – and the challenges it faces in its energy transition.

Jin Noh, a policy director at the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) and director at Strategen Consulting, spoke to the site on the eve of the show.

CESA is focusing on three or four main initiatives to advance the deployment of energy storage the state needs, Noh says, with the recent heatwaves showing just how important a role batteries already play in helping keep California’s lights on.

That means working to overcome challenges in getting projects permitted and interconnected to the grid, negotiating supply chain issues and more. Sometimes this will mean getting down into the weeds of policy and advocating for changes like its recent win over property zoning rules.

“Our focus is really on deployment. The heat wave clearly demonstrated that storage really did well and performed on the margins to provide anywhere from 3,000 to 3,500 megawatts of operating capacity during each of those days,” Noh says.

However, there have also been well-publicised delays in getting new storage facilities onto the CAISO grid in California, for which there have been a “multitude of sources”.

For instance, a lot of the most recent delays tracked by Jin Noh and his team have been for solar-plus-storage projects, rather than standalone battery storage. This is because of the recent uncertainty over US trade tariffs for imported solar modules, amid claims that Chinese forced labour has been involved, with subsequent alleged attempts to circumvent tariffs by routing production through Southeast Asian supply chains.

Whereas for standalone energy storage, it’s a more “case-by-case” picture. In some cases, lockdowns in China have led to battery containers or other major components like transformers being stranded at ports, in others it can be long interconnection wait times.

Impacted companies are “most likely renegotiating some of their contract,” according to the CESA expert, especially if they are running a risk of missing guaranteed delivery dates for project completions or development milestones. Some developers might seek an extension to the delivery date in exchange for a reduction in the agreed power purchase agreement (PPA) price, for example, explaining to their customers that the circumstances faced are unprecedented.

Need for long-duration and even multi-day storage is clear for California

CESA and Strategen together have long advocated that the role long-duration energy storage (LDES) will play in California’s low carbon grid of the future needs to be recognised quickly so that investment decisions impacting the next 10 to 20 years or more of development can start to be made. A study from the two modelled a potential need for up to 55GW of LDES on the CAISO grid by 2045.

“The need for long-duration storage is clear in my mind,” Noh says.

How much exactly is needed remains subject to inputs and assumptions at the modelling level but, nonetheless, Noh said many regulators, legislators and buyers and sellers of technology are all clear that the basic need will become acute as California reaches ever-higher levels of renewable energy penetration on the grid.

“Right now, what we’re focusing on is: how do we commercialise these [LDES] technologies?”

At state level, policy support has been offered by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom including US$140 million of funding for LDES technologies in the state’s most recently passed legislative package on clean energy. At national level, CESA hopes some of the Department of Energy’s US$500 million funding for LDES demonstrations will find its way to projects in California.

“The key question now comes to [be], how do we commercialise LDES? What will bring financiers, insurance folks, to start investing in these technologies, and to be comfortable? What’s the level of operational track record that’s needed, so that we can start getting these things actually deployed?”

Famously, a group of California community energy providers – so-called Community Choice Aggregators – hosted first-of-its-kind RfPs for LDES, seeking eight-hour duration storage projects.

The result was the selection of two long duration lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, which surprised some people. The expectation had been that some emerging non-lithium alternative might be picked.

As we heard in our February interview with the CEO of one of those CCAs, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, the energy suppliers received proposals with a wide range of technologies including different types of flow batteries, zinc-based batteries and mechanical storage like compressed air.

Reasons behind lithium projects being selected were “nuanced,” and didn’t necessarily mean lithium had “beaten” the other technologies, SVCE’s Girish Balachandran said, with the grid likely to need many different kinds of energy storage to meet California’s needs.

However, Jin Noh said that from his own conversations with some of the people involved, the selection of lithium-ion projects indicated that to some extent the commercialisation gap still very much exists between the most popular electrochemical energy storage technology today and its various alternative long-duration contenders.

CESA’s work in this area is focusing on bridging that gap, helping tech providers overcome the dreaded “Valley of Death” and get their technology operational in the field, not just at lab or pilot deployment level.

“Being grid-connected, responding to ISO (grid) dispatch signals, having real performance guarantees under a contract: I think that is the tipping point to actually having these things widely deployed, and then having them just be procured on an all-source, day-to-day RFP basis,” Noh says.

Earlier this week, a team from LDES startup Form Energy blogged for this site on California’s emergent need for long-duration (more than eight-hour duration) and multi-day (more than one day’s duration) energy storage.

Noh says that the recent heatwave showed that that need might come sooner rather than later. One interesting learning that he got came towards the latter stage of the events in the second week of September.

Solar PV generation dropped quite significantly due to factors like smoke from wildfires and imminent hurricane conditions. A usual 13GW of solar production on the grid became 8GW.

“As we look to depend on a grid that’s heavily solar, heavily renewable, it’s kind of highlighting how we probably need to look at this more closely, as to how much do we need multi day [storage]? How do we develop products so that, we hold those for those days and deliver it?”

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Rendering of the Edwards Sanborn solar-plus-storage project in Kern County, California. It will have a 3,191MWh battery storage system, one of the biggest in the world. Image: Terra-Gen / CPA.

Developer Terra-Gen has closed US$969 million in project financing for the second phase of Edwards Sanborn Solar-plus-Storage facility in California, which will bring it to 3,191MWh of energy storage capacity.

The $959 million financing comprises a US$460 million construction and term loan facility and a US$96 million construction and revolving letter of credit facility, led by BNP Paribas, CoBank, ING, and Nomura Securities, as well as a US$403 million tax equity bridge facility from U.S. Bank.

The Edwards Sanborn Solar-plus-Storage facility in Kern County will total 755MW of solar PV alongside the battery energy storage when the second phase comes online over Q3 and Q4 2022 and Q3 2023. It combines both stand-alone battery storage and batteries which charge from the PV.

The first phase came online late last year, as reported by Energy-Storage.news, meaning 345 MW of PV and 1,505 MWh are already operational. The second phase will add 410MW of nameplate solar PV (358MW at the point of interconnection) and 1,786 MWh of battery storage.

The solar PV is expected to come online in Q4 2022 and the battery storage should be fully operational in Q3 2023.

Mortenson is providing engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services on both the solar and energy storage. First Solar is supplying the solar modules and LG Chem, Samsung and BYD are supplying the batteries.

Unsurprisingly for a project of this size and scope, the eventual total size and capacity has changed several times since it was first announced and a third phase has now been announced making the combined site even larger. The energy storage component has been increased several times and appears to be growing further, while the solar may have been reduced or delayed.

From a planned total of 1,118MW of solar and 2,165MWh of energy storage when first announced in December 2020, Terra-Gen said it is now advancing development on future phases that will include over 2,000MW of incremental solar and energy storage. These future phases will be financed in 2023 and begin to come online in 2024.

Jim Pagano, Terra-Gen CEO, said: “Consistent with the first phase of the Edwards Sanborn project, the second phase deploys an innovate offtake structure that has been well received in the financing markets and allows us to raise the capital necessary to progress the construction of this transformative project.”

Offtakers for the project include cafe chain Starbucks and Clean Power Alliance (CPA), one of California’s growing ranks of Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) groups.

Investor-owned utility PG&E is also procuring a substantial chunk – 169MW/676MWh – of the project’s power through the California ISO’s (CAISO) Resource Adequacy framework, the means by which CAISO ensures utilities have enough supply to meet demand (with a reserve margin).

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BHP’s Iron Ore Port Headland in Western Australia. Image: BHP.

Australian mining group BHP will use a 45MW solar, 35MW battery energy storage system from Alinta Energy to halve emissions at its WA Iron Ore port facilities at Port Headland by end-2024.

The company has signed a renewables power purchase agreement (PPA) with utility Alinta Energy, which will see the construction of the solar and energy storage project. It has not revealed the underlying battery technology or duration of the system.

They will be built at Alinta’s Port Headland 210MW dual fuel gas and distillate power plant 14km away from the port facilities operated by BHP, which will be the foundation customer of the co-located project.

A press release didn’t say exactly when the site will be completed between now and end-2024, but said construction of the solar farm should start in December 2022 and would seek to utilise local Aboriginal group-owned businesses.

The solar array is expected to provide 100% of the forecasted average daytime energy requirements for BHP’s port facilities. The remaining power needs will be met through the battery storage and the existing gas power facilities. BHP said the expected halving of emissions is based on current forecast demand compared with its emissions for its financial year 2020.

The port connects to BHP’s mining operations in the Pilbara region, including Newman, Mining Area C, Yandi and Jimbleba, and is one of the largest in the world with around 300 million tonnes of iron ore exported a year. The transportation, unload and loading of iron ore generates substantial emissions.

But mining operations themselves have a far, far greater energy demand. A consortium founded recently said that by 2030, the mining industry in Australia alone will require 9,710GWh of energy storage, some 13x what analysts are forecasting will have been deployed by that year.

BHP and Alinta Energy have also entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the development of the Shay Gap Wind Farm, a 45MW facility currently planned for a potential first-generation date of 2027.

The deal builds on BHP’s previous PPAs to provide renewable power to provide renewable energy to its Nickel West operations in Western Australia, Olympic Dam operations in South Australia, BMA operations in Queensland and the Escondida copper mine in Chile.

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EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA), a renewable energy developer and operator in North America, has started construction on its 240 MW Cattlemen I Solar Park in Milam County, Texas, which was developed and constructed, and will be operated by EDPR NA.

“Cattlemen is EDP Renewables’ first solar park in Texas and will soon be our largest operational solar park in our North American portfolio,” says Kris Cheney, EDPR NA’s executive vice president for Central and Western regions and Mexico, environmental affairs, and energy storage analytics. “The Milam County community has been a great partner throughout Cattlemen’s development. As we move closer to operation, we look forward to continuing that partnership as a contributing member of the community and expanding upon our relationship with the landowners, local officials, and residents.”

Cattlemen has two long-term commercial agreements in-place for the project: a 156 MW power purchase agreement (PPA) with Meta and a 60 MW PPA with Bristol Myers Squibb. Cattlemen Solar Park is the second PPA that EDP Renewables and Meta have executed; the companies’ first PPA was a 139 MW contract for EDPR NA’s 200 MW Headwaters II Wind Farm in Indiana.

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A render of Energy Vault’s Energy Vault Resiliency Center. Image: Energy Vault.

Gravity-based energy storage company Energy Vault has been issued a mandate for an initial 2GWh of its proprietary solution at net-zero industrial parks in China.

The first site has been confirmed for a 2GWh Energy Resiliency Center, its long duration energy storage solution (pictured), at an industrial development in Inner Mongolia.

The industrial parks are being developed by EIPC, part of state organisation Investment Association of China, selected provincial and local governments, and Atlas Renewables. Atlas Renewables is majority-owned by environmental management services company China Tianying and signed a US$50 million licensing agreement for Energy Vault’s technology back in February this year.

The parks will use Energy Vault’s gravity energy storage technology and its Energy Management Software (EMS) platform to support the country’s ’30-60′ climate change policy: to reach Carbon Peak in 2030 and Carbon Neutrality in 2060.

Although precise use cases of the company’s energy storage system were not spelt out in a press release, Atlas Renewables’ CEO Eric Fang said it would “help with economic dispatching of power and power grid efficiency.”

Energy Vault has been expanding its activities in deploying lithium-ion based battery energy storage systems with roughly 1GWh under development or in the pipeline for Wellhead Electric and W Power and Jupiter Power in the US. That division is headed by John Jung, former CEO of battery storage and EMS pioneer Greensmith Energy until its acquisition by Wärtsilä in 2017.

The company started construction in the second quarter of this year on its first large-scale deployment of the gravity-based solution in China, a 100MWh system with the local partners, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

While announcing the 2GWh mandate, Energy Vault CEO Robert Piconi said: “Together with Atlas Renewable, CNTY and the EIPC, we are making significant progress ahead of our original plans on the deployment of the first 100MWh EVx system to support grid resiliency and delivery of renewable energy to the Chinese national grid, as well as additional development and deployment of additional EVx systems in China as this announcement demonstrates.”

The company is expecting revenue of US$75-100 million in 2022 and roughly another US$600 million in 2023, it announced in its most recent quarterly results.

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KCE NY-1, the first grid-scale energy storage project completed in New York, availed of the bulk storage incentives offered by NYSERDA through its Bridge Incentive programme. Image: Key Capture Energy.

A solicitation for large-scale energy storage could be hosted in about a year’s time as part of the push towards New York achieving its target of deploying 6GW of energy storage on the grid by 2030.

The plan was discussed at the RE+ 2022 clean energy industry conference in Anaheim, California on Monday (19 September) by David Sandbank, a VP for distributed energy resources (DERs) at New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Together with the New York Department of Public Service (DPS), which is New York’s utilities commission, NYSERDA has been tasked by the state’s government with coming up with roadmaps for encouraging the adoption of energy storage.

After Roadmap 1.0, published in 2018, included upfront incentives for both ‘retail’-scale storage systems below 5MWh capacity and larger ‘bulk’ storage. That has so far led to the procurement of some 1.3GW of energy storage that has been awarded and contracted for by utilities in the state, with more than a dozen more gigawatts in NYISO grid interconnection queues.

Roadmap 2.0 is likely to keep the upfront incentives for retail storage but bring in a new scheme for bulk projects, Sandbank said.

New York has an ambitious clean energy and climate crisis mitigation policy programme in place, to reach 70% renewable electricity by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2040. The targeted 6GW of cumulative storage deployments – the highest level set by any state in the US – would support those aims directly.

NYSERDA’s David Sandbank noted that not only does New York need to pursue those aggressive climate and renewables targets, but at the same time and in tandem, there is a “strong movement” toward electrification of buildings, which could double the load on the grid.

Meanwhile as with other regions that have been deploying significant amounts of renewable energy, New York’s peak demand periods for electricity move to later in the day or evening and become longer in duration.

To achieve the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act policy, to give it its proper name, Sandbank said New York therefore needs to deploy more renewables, invest in transmission upgrades to enable renewable power to travel across the state from rural areas to more densely populated urban areas and fossil fuel retirements need to happen en masse.

That 6GW of energy storage needs to be in place on the grid before any of those things can happen, because, as NYSERDA has realised “all of those processes become more expensive and less efficient without [energy] storage,” Sandbank said.

NYSERDA and DPS’ roadmaps have the goals of designing crucial market reforms, incentivising private market action and prioritising the elimination of the most polluting of New York’s fossil fuel plants.

New incentive scheme to support bulk energy storage in New York

Sandbank said that mechanisms to encourage bulk energy storage development need to be feasible and ensure effective deployment of resources the grid can call on for the long-term.

A proposed incentive mechanism for bulk storage NYSERDA and DPS have come up with is called the Index Storage Credit. This would see a guaranteed strike price being set by NYSERDA, with project developers taking part in competitive solicitations.

Essentially, NYSERDA and the developer would agree a strike price, based on what NYSERDA models the resource’s stored energy to be worth, and based on what the developer or owner expects its project to be able to earn, on a monthly basis from market participation.

In a monthly period where the system earns less than floor revenues based on the strike price, NYSERDA payments would top up the difference. On the flip side, in a month where revenues exceeded expectations, the project stakeholders would pay the difference back to NYSERDA.

The scheme, Sandbank said, would help developers finance projects by giving them a stable, guaranteed income stream for the lifetime of NYSERDA’s contract, while asset owners would also be allowed to earn revenues from additional participation in wholesale markets.

NYSERDA wants to file Roadmap 2.0 by the end of this year. Then, pending community feedback and public comment periods, the regulatory New York Public Service Commission (PSC) would rule on it. It’s impossible to tell how long that might take, but Sandbank estimated that it could be in about Q2 or Q3 of 2023.

That means in roughly a year from now, a “NYSERDA-driven” bulk energy storage solicitation could be held, Sandbank said.

Speaking at a workshop session hosted by the International Battery Energy Storage Alliance (IBESA) at the California show today, the NYSERDA VP also noted that a need for around 21GW of short-duration, or interday, energy storage by 2050 has been modelled.

However, at some stage as that date nears, perhaps as early as 2030, at least a third of New York’s energy storage will need to be eight-hour duration or longer. However the exact need for long-duration energy storage (LDES) still needs to be assessed based on factors like the cost reduction trajectories of LDES technologies and how the adoption of hydrogen-based emissions reduction technologies progressed, Sandbank said. 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced US$16.6 million of funding for long-duration energy storage projects in the state, with a further US$17 million of funding available for companies to compete for.

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