Inauguration of 14MW of BESS in Mauritius late last year. Image: Stéphane Bellerose@UNDP Mauritius.

Island nations Mauritius and Barbados have both begun renewable energy procurement processes that involve energy storage.

In common with other island regions around the world, both countries rely on importing fossil fuels at great cost to meet their energy demand and have seen energy storage paired with renewables, particularly solar PV, as a solution.

The Central Electricity Board (CEB) of Mauritius in East Africa issued a request for proposal (RfP) last week for the purchase of electricity from hybrid renewable energy facilities, defined in this instance as solar PV-plus-battery storage. 

The CEB, a government-owned and operated power generation and distribution agency, has invited sealed bids from prospective bidders. The board plans to sign agreements for purchasing between 90MW to 110MW electricity. 

A model energy supply and purchase agreement (ESPA) is expected to be made available to bidders within a month after the RfP opens and bidders have until 22 June 2022 to submit bids.

Also advertising for international bidding a few days ago was another CEB RfP for purchase of electricity from small scale renewable energy hybrid facilities, this time seeking to procure 30MW to 50MW. 

CEB built the first grid-scale battery systems in Mauritius in 2018, with funding support from the multilateral Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has to date supported billions of dollars of projects in 150 countries.

In Mauritius, the GCF part-funded the battery systems as part of a raft of measures to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy in the country, which meets 84% of its primary energy requirements with imported fossil fuels.

Coal and fuel oil imports in particular have been feeding rising greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) but the country it targeting for renewable energy to provide 35% of its energy demand by 2025 and then 60% by 2030. 

After that first pair, which were each of 2MW power output and 1.12MWh capacity and built at two substations, a 14MW battery energy storage system (BESS) project split across four CEB substations was commissioned through the GCF programme late last year, also supported by the United Nations Development Programme. 

The 14MW project, split into three 4MW sites and one 2MW site, required a budget of about US$10 million to complete. Siemens France supplied the BESS, which is being used for frequency regulation ancillary services.

CEB general manager Jean Donat said at the time that project was inaugurated that the era of renewable energy optimisation “is well on the way,” in Mauritius, with the board having integrated more than 100MW of solar PV into the grid by then.  

The country’s government said in 2020 that it was committing funds to increase battery deployments to 40MW in a 2021-2022 budget announcement. 

Imported fossil fuels harm island economy while polluting

Meanwhile the Caribbean island of Barbados is targeting 100% renewable energy use and carbon neutrality by 2030 and — as was the case with the UNDP’s assessment of Mauritius — the government has described renewables with storage as a powerful way of democratising energy. 

In seeking to create a framework for the procurement of renewable energy and/or energy storage, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is hosting a competitive solicitation for consultancy services to help develop it. 

Issued a few days ago, interested parties have until 4 April 2022 to respond. The project is called “Support for the Design of Carbon Neutral Strategies in the Context of Energy Transition in Barbados”.

It is offering a seven month contract for consultancy services with an estimated budget of US$200,000.

According to the IDB’s summary, the island, with 280,000 inhabitants, imports fossil fuels for over 90% of its energy needs and in 2018 its fuel import bill stood at US$253 million. Only 5.5% of electricity sold in the country came from renewable sources, abut 3.5% from rooftop solar PV and 2% from its sole 10MW utility-owned solar farm. 

As well as the high cost of fuel, the impact can be felt in damage to Barbados’ natural habitat, which as an economy dependent on tourism also has a knock-on economic effect.

In transitioning the energy sector, the government Ministry of Energy and Business Development will need to procure large capacities of renewable energy, hence the need for a framework to be in place. 

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The Energypark Haringvliet in the Netherlands. Image: Vattenfall.

Swedish public utility Vattenfall has opened its Energypark Haringvliet in the Netherlands, which combines wind, solar and a 12MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

The project, located 20km south of Rotterdam, features six wind turbines, 115,000 solar panels and a BESS with 12MWh of energy capacity. The 150m wind turbines have a max power output of 22MW while the solar farm can generate 38MW.

Energypark Haringvliet is a true hybrid renewable generation-plus-storage project with the BESS connected to the generating units allowing it to smooth out intermittency. The batteries will also be used for grid balancing.

Vattenfall’s announcement focused a lot on the fact that the three technologies all share the same substation, cables and most importantly grid connection. Grid congestion is a major problem in the Netherlands, according to a panellist speaking at Energy Storage Summit 2022 last month (produced by Energy-Storage.news’ parent company Solar Media).

A total of €61 million (US$67 million) has been invested into Energypark Haringvliet.

BELECTRIC built the solar park while energy solutions integrator Alfen supplied the BESS, which uses 288 of the same batteries that go into BMW’s i3 electric car. Alfen has previously worked with Vattenfall using BMW batteries for a similar projects in Wales using wind.

“The opening of Haringvliet is a great step for Vattenfall’s wind and solar business, a proof point for our competence to develop and build cross technology projects in Europe,” said Claus Wattendrup, head of Solar at Vattenfall.

Pairing solar with storage is now fairly commonplace and often accounts for the majority of new storage deployment. Pairing with wind, however, is less common.

As Energy-storage.news wrote in a feature on the topic, one issue is that markets often do not have a regulatory classification for storage, let alone storage-plus-solar or storage-plus-solar-plus-wind. This, and the general complexity that comes with combining three technologies, makes it more difficult for grid operators and project developers to do the required modelling about how a project’s output will affect the grid.

Another issue for solar and wind hybrids is fairly different geographical features required for a site meaning a rare overlap. Wind turbine parks also have much longer construction times than solar and energy storage portions, making project delivery a delicate balancing act.

The Netherlands is a bit behind some other Western European countries on deploying storage but this could soon start to change according to a national sector body. One big positive has been the removal of double taxation for storing and later selling energy, removed at the start of 2022.

However, energy storage is still classified as an energy consumer and so is charged transportation costs for drawing from the grid, even though it will later re-inject that energy back in with little-to-no-loss.

Vattenfall is a Swedish multinational power company owned by the state but it also operates in Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

The project specifications in this article are from earlier press releases about Haringvliet – we’ve asked Vattenfall to confirm their accuracy but have yet to receive a response at the time of writing.

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Slate, a solar-plus-storage project developed in California by Canadian Solar’s Recurrent Energy subsidiary and sold to Goldman Sachs Renewable Power, went online a few weeks ago. Image: GSRP.

Canadian Solar shipped just under 900MWh of battery storage in 2021, the first full year of its involvement in the segment, but expects to double that figure this year. 

The vertically-integrated solar PV company’s CSI Solar manufacturing subsidiary shipped 896MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) technology during last year, while the parent company made total annual PV module shipments of 14.5GW.

As reported by our sister site PV Tech last week from Canadian Solar’s Q4 and full-year 2021 financial results, the company’s gross margin came in above issued guidance at 19.7% for the year, but CSI Solar saw margins come under pressure from spiralling material and logistics costs that have impacted solar manufacturers across the board. 

However, as chairman and CEO Dr Shawn Qu remarked, the battery business is growing fast. The battery storage solutions business contributed to “significant growth” in Q4 revenues year-on-year, at US$1.53 billion a 47% increase from Q4 2020.

Battery storage shipments for 2022 are guided to be in the range of 1.8GWh to 1.9GWh, which is an increase on previously offered guidance of 1.4GWh to 1.5GWh. 

“We will continue to invest in technology and upstream capacity and expect to continue growing our solar module market share. We are also excited by the significant progress and accelerating growth of our battery storage business, which is a large greenfield opportunity for us,” CEO Shawn Qu said.

“As with our other markets, we plan to succeed by introducing innovative products, including our own battery storage product, which we expect to launch in the coming quarters.”

US$150 million raised by Canadian Solar via a share offering late last year was said at the time to be largely earmarked for developing its battery storage solutions capabilities.

CSI Solar’s system integration business wraps up full turnkey integrated BESS solutions complete with performance guarantees. Long-term O&M agreements offered alongside the solutions create a further stable revenue stream, as well as opportunities to augment battery capacity at existing sites. 

As of the end of January, CSI Solar had 300MWh of operational battery storage delivered under long-term service agreement (LTSA) models which generate recurring earnings. It had 2,043MWh of equipment deals for projects contracted or already in construction and expected to be delivered within a year-and-a-half.

A further 390MWh of deals forecasted with a 75% or higher probability of being contracted for within a year and rounding out the CSI Solar pipeline is a further 3,619MWh of project opportunities the company considered to have a less than 75% chance of converting into business but could pursue.  

A late-year 2021 highlight for CSI Solar was the signing in November of a strategic cooperation framework agreement on holistic battery storage system tech innovation with CATL, a world leader in lithium battery manufacturing. 

CSI Solar’s revenues for battery storage solution sales were just over US$222 million for 2021, up from US$7.9 million in 2020.

Rendering of the 561MWh BESS project Slate during development. Image: Canadian Solar.

27GWh battery storage development pipeline of opportunities

Canadian Solar actively develops utility-scale solar PV and energy storage projects through its Global Energy business segment, including standalone battery storage as well as solar-plus-storage. 

That said, nearly all projects developed during 2021 co-locate solar and battery storage, allowing the assets to share a grid interconnection point — often the most valuable piece of project development real estate for either technology. 

The company has signed various tolling agreements for the use of its battery storage projects as well as development services contracts to retrofit existing solar PV plants with batteries. 

All of the developed projects so far are in North America, with an emphasis on the California market. As of the end of January 2022, Canadian Solar had 2,681MWh of battery projects in construction in the North America region. However, 465MWh of its 841MWh backlog was in Latin America, 56MWh in the EMEA region, 20MWh in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan and China and 300MWh in China. 

During 2021 Canadian Solar sold on a 1.4GWh battery storage project and a pipeline of 27GWh of development opportunities for storage along with a 24GWp solar PV opportunity pipeline gave the Global Energy business division a “strong platform for growth,” its president Ismael Guerrero said. 

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Liquid air energy storage (LAES) technology company and project developer Highview Power is among the new group’s members. Image: Highview Power.

A meeting between energy storage industry representatives and the UK’s energy minister Greg Hands took place last week, with discussions centring on unlocking investment in energy storage technologies.

Organised by the Long-Duration Electricity Storage Alliance, the meeting saw representatives from energy companies Drax and SSE Renewables and technology providers Highview Power and Invinity Energy Systems meet with Hands, the Minister of State at the government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

According to the Alliance, representatives spoke on how decarbonising the UK’s electricity system by 2035 will require a range of flexible home-grown, long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies in order to strengthen the contribution of renewables and deliver system stability.

A recent report from Aurora Energy Research highlighted the need for LDES, suggesting that up to 24GW of LDES could be needed to effectively manage the intermittency of renewable generation in line with a net zero electricity system by 2035.

Aurora said that a cap and floor mechanism would be best positioned to support the deployment of LDES, echoing similar findings from KPMG.

Finlay McCutcheon, SSE Renewables, director of onshore Europe said: “The swift introduction of an adapted cap and floor mechanism by government this year could unlock billions of pounds of investment in these vital technologies and create thousands of skilled jobs.”

In a cap and floor mechanism, revenues or margins are subject to minimum and maximum levels. Below the ‘floor’ customers would top-up revenues, and earnings above the ‘cap’ would be returned in whole or in part to customers. It is a model currently used for interconnectors.

The Alliance said LDES will “not only play a major role in significantly reducing the UK’s reliance on imported gas” – a key focus of the UK government in light of rising gas prices – but it will also deliver significant efficiency gains to the UK grid, helping to lower consumer energy bills. 

Energy bills are set to rise next month as a new price cap comes into effect- 54% higher than the current price cap.

“The Long-Duration Electricity Storage Alliance is a key part of our plan to get the full benefit from our world-class renewables sector,” Hands said, adding that the government has already committed £68 million (US$90.38 million) of funding towards the development of LDES technologies.

In July 2021, the government also announced a call for evidence on how to enable long-duration energy storage.

The Long-Duration Electricity Storage Alliance is a new association of companies aiming to progress plans across a range of technologies to be first of their kind to be developed in the UK for decades. 

It intends to work with the government to unlock potential developments in new pumped storage hydro capacity, as well as to accelerate the commercial deployment of emerging technologies such as liquid air energy storage and flow batteries.

The group could be considered a UK-based counterpart to the international Long Duration Energy Storage Council, a CEO-led organisation which launched last year at COP26 talks. The Council’s members include large renewable energy off-taker companies like Microsoft and Google, alongside various energy storage and wider energy sector stakeholders.

The US government has taken a similar approach to the UK in launching competitive funding opportunities to support the commercialisation of long-duration energy storage tech, as well as making other commitments such as the construction of a long-duration R&D centre at PNNL, one of the country’s national laboratories.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has set a target to lower the cost of long-duration storage 90% by 2030 to make it competitive.

Meanwhile, in continental Europe, industry groups have urged European Union lawmakers to recognise the importance of energy storage, especially long-duration, to enable the low-carbon energy transition while maintaining reliability and suppressing the costs of modernising the electricity network.

Additional reporting for Energy-Storage.news by Andy Colthorpe.

This story first appeared on Current±.

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Nexamp and Borrego have completed and co-located two energy storage projects with existing Nexamp community solar farms in Massachusetts. The battery storage projects will provide critical frequency regulation services for the ISO New England market in addition to other grid functions.

The projects are located in the grid-congested area of central Massachusetts, in the National Grid service area. Brockelman Road is a solar+storage project capable of generating 1.7 MW of solar energy alongside 1 MW/2 MWh of battery storage, while Clark Road is a solar+storage project with 7.1 MW of solar capacity and 3 MW/6.1 MWh of storage. Both participate in the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) Program, which provides incentives for co-located solar and storage projects.

“Energy storage is critical for our ability to deploy renewable energy to broadly resolve issues of energy security and climate change,” says Mark Frigo, vice president of energy storage at Nexamp. “Our dozens of storage projects under development fulfill a variety of functions and use cases for a diverse group of customers. With each project that goes live we not only create value for our customers, but also contribute to a cleaner grid that is more stable and resilient.”

The storage projects participate in the Massachusetts Clean Peak Energy Standard program as well as ISO New England’s capacity and frequency regulation markets. The Clean Peak Energy Standard program provides incentives to clean energy technologies that supply electricity or reduce demand during times of peak power usage. The capacity and frequency regulation markets fulfill reliability functions for the regional power market, deploying resources to avoid outages and ensure that sufficient supply is online to support the power grid.

“Nexamp and Borrego share a long history of helping Massachusetts advance on the promise of a cleaner, more resilient energy future for its residents and businesses,” notes John Murphy, Nexamp’s senior vice president of corporate development. “Our shared commitment to quality development and vision for a decarbonized future is once again bringing reliable savings and meaningful grid improvements to the Commonwealth.”

“We value our longstanding relationship with Nexamp and have partnered with them on many projects in Massachusetts and elsewhere,” mentions Brendan Neagle, Borrego’s EVP of project finance. “Our companies leveraged our experiences as early adopters of storage and solar-plus-storage systems in the Commonwealth to bring these projects to fruition, working in close cooperation with all project stakeholders.”

In addition to the energy storage solutions Nexamp is developing alongside its own solar generation facilities, the company offers a variety of on-site battery storage solutions, with and without solar, to help companies, utilities and other organizations reduce electricity costs and realize a variety of reliability benefits.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul has revealed that New York has become the top community solar market in the United States, with more than 1 GW of community solar installed and operational – enough to serve 209,000 homes across the state.

New York also has the largest project pipeline in the nation, with enough community solar under construction to serve an additional 401,000 homes.

“Reaching this nation-leading milestone – with more than 1 GW of community solar installed – is a testament to New York’s aggressive pursuit of clean-energy alternatives that will supercharge our economy and bring us one step closer to a carbon-neutral future,” Hochul states. “New York is once again making clean energy history, and with many families facing the burden of rising energy costs, my administration remains committed to expanding access to solar energy, which will deliver savings and stabilize electricity bills while meeting our aggressive climate goals.”

“Over 1 GW of progress was made today, enough to power over 200,000 homes across New York State,” says Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin. “When we think about the future of our state, we must think about both the economic prosperity we aim for in addition to the welfare of our children. Now, when those future generations of New Yorkers look toward today, they’ll know progress was made with them in mind. I’m proud to announce today that New York is the capital of solar power in the United States.”

The announcement was made in Schenectady County at a 7.5 MW community solar project that is paired with 10 MWh of energy storage on the site of a former landfill. Located in the town of Glenville, the project was developed by DSD Renewables, which is also the owner and operator of the project. The site is part of a seven-project, 25 MW portfolio made possible through a collaboration with the Schenectady County Solar Energy Consortium.

Community solar made up 70% of total solar installations across the state in 2021. In addition, New York’s distributed solar pipeline is now comprised of more than 708 of these projects totaling 2,300 MW. This pipeline is complemented by 73 New York State-supported utility-scale solar projects under development throughout the state.

The achievement of this milestone has been underpinned by robust support from NYSERDA‘s NY-Sun program, the state’s signature $1.8 billion initiative to advance the scale-up of solar while driving costs down and making solar energy more accessible to homes, businesses, and communities. Currently, installed distributed solar projects, combined with the projects that are under development, bring the State to 95% of the current Climate Act goal to install six gigawatts of distributed solar by 2025.

Read the full release and more statements here.

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Image: Trajectory Energy Partners of Illinois

ComEd has launched a community solar project in Kankakee County that offers qualified ComEd customers throughout northern Illinois access to solar energy and savings of up to $1,000 annually on their electricity bills for a three-year subscription term.

The Gar Creek solar project will serve up to 600 customers. The project is owned by Fosler Solar, a Babcock & Wilcox company in Freeport, Ill., and was developed by Trajectory Energy Partners of Illinois.

“At ComEd, we are committed to making the transition to clean energy as inclusive as possible, and the Gar Creek project will help us achieve that goal,” says Scott Vogt, vice president of energy acquisition at ComEd. “Our partners at Fosler Solar and Trajectory Energy share our vision, and we are excited to work with them to provide qualified customers anywhere in our region with access to solar energy regardless of their income level.”

The program is enabled by Illinois Solar for All, which helps make solar installations more affordable through state incentives, and through ComEd’s partnerships with community solar developers. The first program of its kind in Illinois, Give-A-Ray was launched last year with a community solar project that serves qualified customers in the Rockford area.

“The Gar Creek community solar project provides a unique opportunity for qualified customers to access clean, solar energy and realize meaningful savings on their energy bill,” states Nathaniel Dick, director of energy at Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc., which supports enrollment in the project. “ComEd’s Give-A-Ray community solar program helps reduce the energy burden at our sites for low-to-moderate income families.”

By the end of this year, ComEd expects to have more than 80 community solar projects interconnected to its grid, enabling residential customers to participate in the benefits of solar energy without needing to install solar panels on their own homes. Last year ComEd also received – for the third year in a row – more than 10,000 applications from residential, commercial and industrial customers to connect distributed energy resources like solar energy to the ComEd system.

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Nextracker has launched NX Horizon-XTR, a terrain-following, single-axis tracker designed to expand the addressable market of solar power on sites with sloped, uneven and challenging terrain.

Nextracker began deployment and empirical testing of NX Horizon-XTR at utility scale three years ago, working closely with customers that faced capital expense and construction challenges on project sites with hilly terrain. Savings in the millions attributable to reduced grading and shorter piles has been validated on select utility-scale projects, the company says.

Over 15 NX Horizon-XTR sites are operational, and dozens of additional projects are under design and construction in the U.S. and abroad.

Project developers are increasingly including sites with sloping and undulating terrain to meet the demand for utility-scale solar plants. Land with these characteristics has historically introduced more risk and cost to projects, requiring significant earthwork and longer foundation pile lengths. NX Horizon-XTR’s terrain-following capabilities can reduce grading, minimize steel costs, and decrease project risks.

“NX Horizon-XTR’s ability to follow terrain can significantly reduce earthwork, allowing these otherwise-infeasible sites to become economically and environmentally viable solar projects. Less earthwork means lower upfront costs and improved scheduling. XTR has allowed us to win more projects by making us more competitive in our project bids, while also lowering our impact on the environment,” says Donny Gallagher, VP of engineering of SOLV Energy, one of Nextracker’s engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partners that has deployed and field-tested NX Horizon-XTR.

“This is a smarter, more streamlined way to build solar on challenging terrain,” states Nick de Vries, SVP of technology and asset management at Silicon Ranch. “There are some things you cannot out-engineer, and in my experience well-established topsoil is one of them. Deploying traditional trackers on sites with varied terrain has required extra earthwork and longer foundation piles, which increases project costs and adds risk.”

“Earthwork is especially painful as it affects a solar project three times: first performing grading, next reseeding the exposed dirt, and later fixing the inevitable erosion and hydrology issues that come from the lack of well-vegetated topsoil,” adds de Vries. “For Silicon Ranch, high-quality solar projects and being good stewards of the land go together, so conforming to the native ground contours with Horizon-XTR just makes sense.”

“A big factor in Nextracker’s DNA is listening to our customers, evaluating their requests, and where feasible, integrating their suggestions into our product development,” comments Dan Shugar, Nextracker’s CEO and founder.

The NX Tracker Technology breaks the paradigm of the “straight-line row” design constraint by conforming to the existing ups and downs of north-south ground slope undulations, so that trackers no longer require installation along a single plane but can follow natural site contours. NX Horizon-XTR builds on the over 50 GW of NX Horizon tracker deployments.

“Over 3 years ago, SOLV (formerly Swinerton Renewable Energy) pushed us to develop a terrain-following solution and the result is our XTR product line. We worked closely with them and project owners to integrate their requirements and complete lab and field-tests of a terrain-following tracker. We offered a few years of exclusivity for SOLV that we executed together, and then rolled out the technology to the global market.”

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Vanadium flow battery energy storage units at Pivot Power’s Energy Superhub site in Oxford, England. Image: Invinity Energy Systems.

EDF-owned battery storage developer-investor Pivot Power has secured planning permission for two 50MW/100MWh lithium-ion battery storage sites in the UK.

Located in Sundon, Luton in Southeast England, and Indian Queens, Cornwall in Southwest England, both sites form part of the company’s wider ‘Energy Superhub’ rollout.

Construction at Sundon will start in early 2023, with the aim of connecting it to the existing local substation later in the year. Once complete, a private wire will allow the site to contribute to electric vehicle (EV) charging.

The Indian Queens site will share a grid connection with two other developers, including Renewable Connections. The two companies submitted a joint planning application for the site, and both received permission for the construction of 50MW/100MWh batteries, which are expected to go live in 2024.

Like at Sundon, Pivot Power is planning to develop a private wire once the battery is live, boosting EV charging in Cornwall.

Both follow the rollout of other ‘superhubs’ in the West Midlands and Oxford by Pivot Power, which is targeting 2GW of transmission-connected battery storage and high-volume power connections.

The two new sites will largely mirror the two West Midlands sites, where Pivot is working with Wärtsilä to develop two 50MW/100MWh battery storage assets along with EV charging infrastructure. Work kicked off on the first of these sites in Sandwell in December.

The Oxford Energy Superhub is a broader project, including hybrid battery storage combining vanadium redox flow battery tech with lithium-ion batteries, low carbon heating, smart energy management technology and EV charging. As part of this, it fully energised the UK’s largest flow battery, in December 2021.

To read the full version of this story visit Solar Power Portal.

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Melilla, where the storage system will be located, sits in a Spanish enclave on Morocco’s northeast coast. Image: JJ Merelo.

Energy group Enel has started operating a 4MW/1.7MWh backup power storage system at a plant in Spain’s North African territory using 78 repurposed Nissan electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

The ‘Second Life’ project is located at a conventional power plant in Melilla operator by the company’s Spanish arm Endesa.

The battery energy storage system (BESS) uses 48 disused EV batteries and another 30 new batteries included for performance comparison and was assembled by system integrator Loccioni.

The company says that each battery pack removed from the vehicle is placed directly into the overall storage system exactly as it was in the vehicle, without the need for disassembly.

Melilla is located in a Spanish enclave on Moroccan coast and its 90,000 residents’ electricity needs are served by a local microgrid powered by Endesa’s power plant. In the event of the power plant disconnecting, the BESS will be able to inject power into Melilla’s microgrid for 15 minutes allowing the plant to reset and restart the grid power supply.

This will help Melilla’s electricity grid operator avoid load shedding events, improve the reliability of the grid and secure the continuity of network service to the local population, Enel said.

The company says its advanced energy solutions segment Enel X Global Retail is also working on a project to build a 10MWh BESS using disused EV batteries, from multiple vehicle brands, into a 30MW solar park at Rome Fiumicino airport.

Second life projects using EV batteries for various use cases are springing up across the sector. One expert recently wrote a guest blog on Energy-storage.news saying that up to 30% of EV batteries can be re-used and US national lab UL is looking at the technology in partnership with Hyundai.

Just last week, Jaguar Land Rover launched a mobile 125kWh BESS solution for EV charging which used batteries from its Jaguar I-PACE SUV. That production required disassembly with 85% of materials re-used though as a mobile solution will need to take up less space than a stationary one.

And at the start of the year, second life Audi EV batteries from its e-tron line were used to deliver a 4.5MWh BESS at a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in North-Rhine Westphalia run by energy group RWE. The firm said the batteries still had 80% of their residual capacity when taken out of car use.

Energy-storage.news has asked Enel for an equivalent figure from Nissan’s EV batteries and will update this story when a substantive response is received.

Enel claims its renewable arm Enel Green Power is the largest privately-held renewable company with 54GW of renewable generating assets, as well as 300MW of storage and 80MW of behind-the-meter storage installations to-date.

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