GameChange Solar (GCS) will be supplying their Genius Tracker for New York State’s largest solar projects located in Albany County. The total system size is 50 MW DC. The Genius Tracker will support three module manufacturers that are all approved for SpeedClamp, a GCS pre-assembled part offering.

Additionally, GCS was awarded one of the largest landfill projects located in Lancaster, N.Y. The 13 MW project will utilize GCS’s Pour-in-Place ballasted system which is designed for landfill, brownfield and superfund sites. Both system orders are in for immediate shipment with expected deliveries later this year; once completed, they will power over 10,000 New York homes.

This is a major stepping stone for New York’s Clean Energy Standard (CES), the most comprehensive and ambitious clean energy goal in the state’s history. Seventy percent generation of New York State’s electricity must come from renewable energy sources by 2030.

“This is the start of many grander New York developments and GCS is fully equipped to support them all,” states Max Johnson, director of business development at GameChange Solar. “Our headquarters are located in New York’s backyard and we look forward to remaining the preferred supplier for utility-scale projects, in New York. The Genius Tracker was chosen for compatibility with various module types, pre-assembled parts for fast installation, and our dedicated supply chain.”

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Borrego’s utility scale solar farm in Milo, Maine

FirstLight Power is partnering with Borrego, a developer, EPC and O&M provider for large-scale renewable energy projects, to bring more clean energy to New England. Borrego will lead development efforts focused on building new distributed generation (DG) solar, DG storage and utility-scale standalone storage at FirstLight’s hydropower facilities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The partnership will accelerate the creation of combined renewable energy and storage portfolios to deliver offerings to wholesale and retail customers across New England.

“I am thrilled to partner with Borrego to accelerate New England’s path to a fully decarbonized electric grid by advancing innovative new solar and energy storage offerings to customers in Massachusetts and Connecticut,” says Alicia Barton, president and CEO of FirstLight. “Borrego has a long track record of bringing best-in-class renewable energy projects to life, and this partnership will allow FirstLight to build upon our leadership position as the largest owner and operator of energy storage and renewable energy in New England.”

The new collaboration will focus on developing solar and storage at FirstLight’s existing hydropower facilities in a way that centers reliability, affordability and equity. FirstLight already operates the largest portfolio of renewable energy generation projects in New England, and with this partnership, it will advance the company’s mission of creating an electric grid that is clean, affordable, reliable and equitable.

“Borrego’s partnership with FirstLight will help create innovative hybrid renewables solutions in New England – combining solar and energy storage resources with existing generation,” states Jared Connell, VP of project development in New England for Borrego. “This kind of bold thinking around aggressive decarbonization is a big reason why we’re excited to work with FirstLight.” The new storage and solar assets are poised to bring flexibility to FirstLight’s existing hydropower portfolio in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The strategic partnership will also bring a new generation of hybrid renewable energy resources to serve New England’s grid.

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The Garland solar facility in California where one of the BESS is located. Image: Southern Power.

Southern Power has turned two four-hour battery energy storage systems (BESS) totalling 640MWh at two of its solar facilities in California online.

The Garland Solar Facility Battery Storage in Kern County (pictured) is a 88MW/352MWh BESS while the BESS at Tranquillity Solar Facility in Fresno now has a 72MW/288MWh of storage capacity. The solar parks both have a maximum output of 205MW and have been operational since 2015/16.

The resource adequacy capacity benefits of both BESS are being sold under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) to Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the California’s big three investor-owned utilities along with SDG&E and PG&E. SCE also has a PPA for the electricity and renewable energy credits (RECs) from Garland.

The Resource Adequacy programme is designed to ensure load-serving entities in California have sufficient capacity to meet their peak load with a 15% reserve margin as a buffer to prevent outages. It needs to be delivered in four-hour blocks, often during evening peaks, making four-hour systems increasingly common.

Rosendin Electric built the sites while Mitsubishi Power Americas supplied the equipment and will service the project under a 20-year service agreement. Powin Energy Corporation supplied the batteries.

The press release does not specify it but indicates that the solar parks will charge the batteries, making the projects true solar-plus-storage rather than just colocation sharing a grid connection. Southern Power has been asked for a clarification on this and this story will be updated to reflect any response.

The storage additions to the solar facilities were first announced a year ago, as reported on by Energy-storage.news. The battery and solar parks mentioned both count AIP Management and KKR as investors (KKR inherited the stake through its acquisition of Global Atlantic Financial Group last year).

At the time of the announcement in February, Southern Power president Bill Grantham said the colocated solar and storage projects would be the two of the first such projects to operate in the California market. In this week’s commissioning announcement, however, he only said it would be the first for the utility itself.

Another massive colocated project, the Edwards Sanborn Solar-plus-Storage with a 2,445MWh BESS, is due to come online in 2022 and 2023.

The California ISO grid had 2,607MW of battery storage connected as of January 31, 2022, the last figures available, around 6% of its stated resource adequacy net qualifying capacity.

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An Enel X-installed battery storage system at the University of Massachusetts, US. Image: Enel X.

Enel X will participate in a pilot project in Ontario, Canada, aggregating together a combination of behind-the-meter battery storage and demand response to create firm, reliable resources for the grid. 

The digital and smart energy services arm of Italy-headquartered multinational energy company Enel is collaborating with the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and the regulator, Ontario Energy Board for the pilot. 

Enel X already manages around 150MW of demand response capacity in the Ontario markets and over 60MW of battery storage either contracted or already operational.

That latter figure includes a 20MW/40MWh behind-the-meter (BTM) battery energy storage system (BESS) it is building and installing at a petrochemical refinery complex for Imperial Oil. As reported by Energy-Storage.news, construction began on that project in February.

As with many other BTM but often quite large BESS systems installed in Ontario, that project helps Imperial Oil significantly reduce its energy costs by reducing the site’s exposure to peak periods. Industrial entities get charged a premium for their use of power at peak times under Ontario’s Global Adjustment Charge (GAC) scheme.

The project for Imperial Oil will be the largest BTM system in North America according to Enel. It will be among the assets aggregated into the pilot announced today. 

The reasoning behind the pilot is that while Ontario’s installed base of BTM batteries and demand response enrolments are growing, distributed energy resources (DERs) such as they are, are not able to contribute directly to grid stability and energy security via IESO administered markets (IAMs).

They are prohibited from participating due to existing rules. As with the US — where the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has determined through FERC Order 841 and FERC Order 2222 that batteries and other DERs should be able to access wholesale markets — this could be about to change.

Enel X will collaborate with businesses to aggregate up to 76.6MW of energy load, from 14 different sites that host BTM battery storage and demand side response (DSR).

Over the two-year pilot, the ability of aggregated DERs to provide significant energy load reduction, serve as firm and reliable energy resources to the grid and enhance the province’s electricity system will be demonstrated. 

“Large energy users in Ontario continue to make significant commitments to reducing emissions, recognising emissions reductions not only as an opportunity to make operations more sustainable but an opportunity to manage their energy costs,” Enel X North America head Surya Panditi said. 

“It’s critical that we continue to unlock these businesses’ energy resources to reduce demand on the grid, lower energy costs, improve sustainability, and deliver economic value.”

‘Facilitating meaningful innovation’

The project is being supported by the OEB’s Innovation Sandbox, which allows innovators and entrepreneurs to test out everything from new ideas and products to services and business models for the gas and electricity sectors.

It will also get CA$3.3 million (US$2.65 million) financial support from IESO’s Grid Innovation Fund, which has since 2005 assisted innovations that could help lower the costs of electricity in Ontario through better energy management or aiding reliable operation of the grid. 

The fund is currently running 15 active projects according to the IESO’s website, including a carbon-free microgrid project by Ameresco which supplies heat, cooling and electricity to a secondary school and Canada’s first “fully-merchant grid-scale energy storage facility,” by NRStor, which uses BESS technology as a non-wires alternative to help grid reliability.   

“We need to facilitate meaningful innovation by utilities and others, and protect consumers as the energy sector transforms. Projects like these – and the kind of support that the Innovation Sandbox offers – provide insight into emerging challenges in the sector, as well as the solutions that can tackle those challenges,” OEB CEO Susanna Zagar said. 

Ontario’s electricity demand grows at a rate of about 1.7% each year, largely driven by industrial facilities, IESO president and CEO Lesley Gallinger said. The pilot will help show how those businesses can “better participate in the electricity sector, securing a new revenue stream while contributing to a reliable, sustainable and affordable electricity system in Ontario,” Gallinger said. 

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Solargis, a solar data and software service company, has launched a software platform designed specifically for visualization, quality management and analysis of solar data. Solargis Analyst, developed in-house by the Solargis data analysis team, empowers solar engineers and decision-makers to improve the efficiency of complex resource analysis, identify and fix errors in measurements, and improve their technical and financial decisions.

Solargis Analyst has been developed to work with solar measurements for over 1,000 sites worldwide. The early development process has been supported by the solar resource analysis team at pilot customer Iberdrola. Solargis Analyst provides a single user-friendly platform for effective management, visualization and analysis of solar resource and meteorological data – significantly reducing analysis time, simplifying complex data analysis procedures and facilitating teamwork.

In turn, the platform enables users to tackle all the most common quality management challenges, including unreliable, incomplete and inconsistently formatted data, while meeting demand from the industry for tools specifically based on solar physics and advanced data science.

In combination with the technical support and consultancy services already offered by Solargis, this ultimately enables solar PV stakeholders to increase confidence in financial transactions using validated data, and improve the accuracy and transparency of their performance assessments.

“As we aim to conduct best-practice solar measurement and data analysis campaigns for our growing global asset base, it’s imperative that we empower our solar resource analysis team, so that we can collectively have confidence in the quality of the data that underpins our strategic decision-making,” says Elena Rodríguez, a solar resource analyst at Iberdrola and a pilot user of Solargis Analyst. “Solargis has successfully delivered a software platform that helps us meet this objective and will no doubt contribute to improved data quality standards across the sector.”

As solar portfolios grow in size and complexity, so does the challenge of managing the consistency and quality of measured solar data streams during project development and operation. The scale of this challenge is significant, as most solar projects worldwide suffer in some way from unreliable solar resource data.

In particular, solar resource analysts face a constant struggle to reconcile ground-based measurements with satellite-model time series. Errors in solar measurements affect the accuracy of performance estimates, ultimately impacting financial returns. Furthermore, data quality issues also affect long-term operational decision-making, where inaccurate inputs hamper effective development and management of solar portfolios. Despite these concerns, it is estimated that 70% of solar resource analysts worldwide are still using spreadsheets or other non-specialist tools designed for other technologies to manage their solar data.

“Solargis Analyst is a tool that has been developed by solar resource specialists for solar analysts and decision makers,” adds Marcel Suri, CEO of Solargis. “Our team grapples daily with the challenges faced in reconciling inconsistent ground-based measurements with satellite time-series, and we have aimed to distil 20+ years of our experience in the field into software that will dramatically increase the efficiency of solar data visualization, analysis and quality management.”

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KCE NY 1, developed by Key Capture Energy, New York’s first grid-scale battery project. The state aims to have 6GW by 2030. Image: Key Capture Energy.

Renewables investment and development group Nala Renewables is developing four new battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in New York state totalling 280MW by mid-2024.

Nala is delivering the projects through a development services agreement with New York-based power and infrastructure developer Rhynland Energy. The sites in New York ISO Zone K (Long Island) have been procured and the interconnection and entitlement work has started.

“Rhynland Energy is very pleased to be working with Nala Renewables, which is owned by two world-class energy investors, on BESS projects that will help provide much needed dispatchable capacity on Long Island and will support the development of renewable resources in New York State,” said Gus Hadidi, Managing Director, Rhynland Energy.

The state recently doubled its energy storage deployment target by 2030, from 3GW to 6GW, when it aims to generate 70% of its electricity from renewable sources. Nala’s projects, if delivered at that power, will provide just under 5% of that 6GW figure.

The target will be reached by enabling market reforms and procurement mechanisms that capture the full benefits of energy storage, according to New York State of the State Address book issued when the new target was announced in January.

One scheme which is incentivising large, front-of-meter energy storage is the Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) programme, or Value Stack. It rewards projects that can deliver energy to the grid when most needed by paying them an hourly aggregate rate.

Nala is a joint venture between commodity trader Trafigura and IFM Investors and recently made headlines for delivering what will be the largest BESS in Belgium when it opens later this year.

Rhynland Energy was founded in 2019 and, according to its entry on the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST) trade association’s site, is a 50% partner in a 45MW/135MWh storage system project in Ontario, Canada.

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PVEL QE-Labs Drone EL testing

PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) and Quantified Energy Labs Pte. Ltd. (QE-Labs) have signed an exclusive agreement to provide drone inspection services in the U.S. solar market. PVEL will be the provider of QE-Labs’ autonomous drone electroluminescence (EL) imaging technology for conducting front-end field inspections. The back-end data processing will be handled by QE-Labs in Singapore.

EL imaging is an inspection method that can reveal defects and microcracks of solar cells inside a photovoltaic (PV) module. It is widely used as a tool for quality control in PV manufacturing. For years, PVEL has used a manual daytime EL tester conducting field EL inspection of more than 2 GW of underperforming or damaged PV systems. Currently, EL imaging is only conducted on a sampling basis due to the speed and cost limitations of manual inspection technologies. With this new agreement, PVEL will expand their field testing services to perform faster inspection of large-scale solar assets.

“We are impressed with QE-Labs’ technology, which completed the world’s largest EL inspection in Singapore with a much faster and more cost-effective solution than what is available in the market today,” states Jenya Meydbray, CEO of PVEL. “By leveraging this proprietary technology, PVEL looks forward to bringing this innovative autonomous drone EL solution to the downstream solar community in the U.S.”

The collaboration between QE-Labs and PVEL will provide project developers, asset owners and investors with a comprehensive testing service that will help ensure quality assurance and quality control of solar PV power plants across their 25-year lifecycle.

The drone EL imaging services can assist with identification and evaluation for insurance and/or warranty claim for damaged and/or underperforming PV modules as well as technical due diligence prior to PV asset transaction or leasing. They help with initial site-acceptance-testing (SAT) to exclude physically damaged PV modules caused by poor workmanship and detection of early failures before the defect liability period (DLP) ends, including excessive light induced degraded (LID) PV modules. In addition, annual PV module quality health checks closely monitor up to 100% of the PV system.

“With established success in our home market, we are ready to deploy our autonomous drone solution in more regional markets to support the growth of the global PV industry,” comments Dr. Wang Yan, CEO of QE-Labs. “This collaboration with PVEL is QE-Labs’ first step towards global expansion based on our drone-enabled Data-as-a-Service business model. Together with our partners, QE-Labs will establish a global service network for our clients to use the innovative autonomous drone EL inspection at anytime and anywhere. As global PV installations cross the 1 TW milestone, we hope these innovative services can help drive further investment in and expansion of solar PV projects worldwide.”

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How operations at the site could look. Image: ABB.

ABB will provide technical expertise on the development of a lithium extraction facility in Portugal, which targets zero emissions status by 2030. 

The Switzerland-headquartered automation and engineering technology company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Savannah Resources, owner of the Mina do Barroso Lithium Project in northern Portugal. 

The spodumene lithium project has the potential to offer high quality concentrates and Savannah has been granted a mine lease for 27Mt mineral resources, value until 2036 and extendable. The operation could be expanded at a later date.

It could be a useful resource for Europe’s battery industry in reducing dependence on imported materials, mostly from China. Savannah wants to implement nearly 240 measures to ensure responsible development and mitigate environmental impacts as it moves to establish the site as carbon neutral by 2030. 

Operations would be mostly powered by locally generated hydro, solar and wind energy.

Meanwhile ABB will look at how the Barroso site can be electrified, automated and digitalised, while its engineers will formulate production control and process solutions that could eliminate emissions.

It is one of a number of zero carbon emissions lithium extraction plants that have been in development around the world: another in Europe is planned for Germany’s Upper Rhine Rift region by Vulcan Energy Resources, which would take lithium from deposits in brine pumped up from the ground using renewable energy. 

As reported by Energy-Storage.news, LG Energy Solution signed an offtake agreement for battery grade lithium chemicals from Vulcan’s site, which intends to begin commercial supply in 2025. 

In the US, California’s inland Salton Sea, a landlocked body of highly saline water, is being seen as a potential site for extracting lithium from geothermal brine. Developer Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) wants to build the lithium extraction facility and a geothermal power plant to start coming online in 2023 and 2024. 

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Rendering of the 200MWh BESS at Kogan Creek, Queensland. Image: CS Energy.

A 100MW/200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) comprising Tesla Megapacks will be built by a state-owned power company in Queensland, Australia.

The state government announced today that generation company CS Energy will install the grid-scale project at a site near the town of Chinchilla, in Queensland’s Western Downs Region, about 300km inland from Brisbane.

The project will cost around AU$150 million (US$112.6 million) and will create up to 80 jobs during construction and 10 operations roles once commissioned. Queensland Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment Cameron Dick said the project should be operational by the end of 2023. 

“Queensland has the natural resources of wind, sun and water to be a renewable energy superpower. As we work towards our target of 50% renewable energy by 2030, we can also support more jobs in new industries right across regional Queensland,” Dick said. 

The BESS will be part of an energy hub CS Energy is developing at the site of Kogan Creek Power Station, a 750MW black coal power plant fed by a neighbouring coal mine, both of which the company owns. The system will be connected to the Western Downs 275kV substation of network operator Powerlink. 

CS Energy is also building a green hydrogen demonstration plant at the hub which will be charged from an onsite 2MW solar PV power plant and will have its own smaller 2MW/4MWh battery system to help feed the 700kW hydrogen electrolyser and fuel cell.

The demonstration plant will have onsite hydrogen storage capacity of about 750kg and through an offtake deal with Sojitz Corporation, hydrogen produced at the plant will be exported to the Republic of Palau. 

Queensland authorities stepping in where federal government has ‘done little’

The renewable energy hub marks the latest plan by an Australian power company to leverage an existing coal power plant site for its land and infrastructure and use it for battery storage and other clean energy technologies. Connection to the grid, as well as access to water and workforce are among the direct advantages. 

Yallourn coal plant in Victoria, which is scheduled for retirement in 2028, will be host to a 350MW/1,400MWh BESS built by the plant’s owner, EnergyAustralia. Eraring coal power plant in New South Wales is planned for closure by owner Origin Energy by 2025 and will be host to a 700MW BESS.

Australia’s biggest generation and electricity retail company AGL recently got approval for a 500MW/2,000MWh BESS to be built for a renewable energy hub at Liddell power station, a coal power plant set for retirement by the end of April 2023 in New South Wales.

 In the case of the CS Energy Kogan Creek site, CEO Andrew Bills said the BESS project would give power plant employees the chance to learn about the new technology as the energy industry adapted to the low carbon energy transition. 

Adding the new project to its portfolio would enable CS Energy to compete better in the National Electricity Market (NEM), as it evolves to favour the competitiveness of fast-responding battery storage and inverter-based renewables, Bills said.

Queensland Minister for Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen Mick de Brenni took a bit of a shot at Australia’s federal government, headed up by Scott Morrison, stating that the federal budget —announced today and slammed by the national Clean Energy Council for its continued lack of ambition on climate issues — did little for the state. 

Hence Queensland’s government was instead stepping in to fund the BESS, which he said represented “further diversification of energy and modernisation of Queensland publicly-owned power generation”.

Investment in energy storage solutions will enable the continued uptake of rooftop solar in the state, de Brenni said, allowing more Queenslanders “to enjoy the savings” that cheap renewable energy could bring. 

Australian solar and storage market research group Sunwiz recently reported that the country installed more than 1GWh of energy storage in 2021, the first time that figure has been exceeded for a year’s deployments. However, Queensland represented a fairly small wedge of that, accounting for just 8% of the entire market and for 14% of operating commercial and grid-scale storage capacity to date across Australia.

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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo

The enforcement and compliance arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce intends to investigate whether imported solar cells and modules from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia are circumventing federal antidumping and countervailing duty orders on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from China.

The decision was prompted by a request from U.S.-based solar company Auxin Solar, which in February reached out to the department and asked that regulators look into whether solar cells or modules produced or assembled in those Southeast Asia countries use parts or components from China.

If so, those cells and modules may be subject to the same or similar antidumping and countervailing duties, adding significant downstream costs to these products and, in turn, potentially increasing the cost of solar installations overall.

At the heart of the issue is Auxin’s contention that U.S.-based solar manufacturers and assemblers cannot compete with low-priced solar products coming from China: the main driver behind the antidumping and countervailing duties themselves.

Opponents such as Auxin believe those tariffs, however, have little effect if Chinese solar manufacturers – Jinko Solar, Hanwha Q CELLS, Trina Solar, Yingli, JA Solar and others – can simply export materials and products to places like Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia for final production and assembly, and thereafter exportation to the U.S., circumventing the tariffs.

The industry’s largest trade groups and advocates fall on the side of the larger supply chain, stressing that the commerce department’s decision to further investigate alleged circumvention and potentially expand solar tariffs would be profoundly adverse.

“This misstep will have a devastating impact on the U.S. solar market at a time when solar prices are climbing, and project delays and cancellations are adding up,” Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement.

“President Biden has been clear that the best way to grow domestic manufacturing is to create a policy environment that encourages private investment. This decision directly contradicts that goal – more tariffs are not the answer,” she added.

The American Clean Power Association (ACP) echoed SEIA’s reaction.

“If its commitment to a clean energy future is real, the administration will reverse this decision immediately,” remarked ACP CEO Heather Zichal, noting that the Department of Commerce “drove a stake through the heart of planned solar projects and choked off up to 80 percent of the solar panel supply to the U.S.”

“Every day this investigation hangs over the solar community is a day of lost jobs and postponed solar projects critical to the administration’s climate agenda,” she added.

The department has not issued a formal set of actions or a timeline for its circumvention inquiries.

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