The Slate solar+energy storage project while under construction (Photo: Recurrent Energy)

The Slate solar and energy storage project of Goldman Sachs Renewable Power (GSRP), an affiliate of Goldman Sachs Asset Management that owns more than 850 solar and storage projects, is now in operation. The 390 MW solar plus 561 MWh storage project was originally developed by Recurrent Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar.

“We are thrilled that Slate is now online and serving California-based organizations,” says Jon Yoder, head of GSRP. There is significant demand throughout California for solar and energy storage projects at this scale, and we look forward to continuing to invest in projects like Slate that will help facilitate the state’s transition to a carbon-free power grid. We thank our partners at Recurrent once again for delivering on this project and we look forward to operating this project for decades to come.”

The Slate project, located in Kings County, Calif., is supported by power purchase agreements with five California-based organizations – Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Central Coast Community Energy (3CE), the Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority (PWRPA), Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SVCE), and Stanford University.

“Congratulations to all the organizations and individuals across both the private sector and public sector that contributed to making this project happen, helping put Kings County at the forefront of California’s clean energy future,” states Siva Gunda, California Energy Commission’s vice chair. Meeting the state’s 100 percent clean electricity goals requires an unprecedented amount of new solar and storage resources to come online and a tremendous amount of collaboration to build the type of solutions at the scale we need.”

“Slate is a landmark project that will help California meet its leading renewable energy targets,” adds Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar. “We started developing Slate in 2015, and we’re proud that this project was contracted as one of the first utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in the state, thanks to the forward-thinking leadership among the projects’ customers. Recurrent’s energy storage business is now on an equal footing with our long-running solar business, and we’re pleased to demonstrate our execution capabilities on another project with our partners at GSRP.”

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Dominion Energy Virginia’s Gloucester Solar facility in Gloucester County, Va.

The Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) has approved a significant expansion of new solar and energy storage projects for Dominion Energy Virginia customers. Once in operation, the projects will provide nearly 1,000 MW of carbon-free electricity.

The approved expansion includes 15 Dominion Energy Virginia projects, as well as power purchase agreements (PPAs) with 24 other projects owned by third-party developers.

“This is another significant milestone in Virginia’s transition to energy independence,” says Ed Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia. “These projects will support thousands of good jobs and hundreds of millions in economic activity in communities across Virginia. This is a positive step forward for our customers, the environment and Virginia’s economy.”

Construction of the 15 Dominion Energy Virginia projects is expected to generate more than $880 million in economic benefits across Virginia and will support nearly 4,200 jobs. The projects are expected to be completed in 2022 and 2023 and will add approximately $1.13 to the typical residential customers’ monthly bill.

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Cypress Creek Renewables (CCR) has placed multi-year order for approximately 315 MW of Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd.’s high-efficiency shingled bifacial Performance line solar modules to power multiple solar projects in both Washington and Texas. This new order follows an earlier purchase by CCR of 48 MW of Maxeon’s Performance line modules.

“Cypress Creek Renewables is excited to be working with Maxeon Solar Technologies to fulfill this mission as we move forward with further development opportunities,” says Sarah Slusser, CEO at Cypress Creek. “Having a solid module partner at this time with a strong manufacturing presence provides our organization with the comfort needed to turn our focus to a seamless project execution strategy.”

CCR’s power plant projects will be supplied from Maxeon’s recently expanded Performance line module capacity designed to serve the U.S. solar power plant market with high-efficiency bifacial products that optimize customer levelized cost of energy (LCOE).

“We believe that the U.S. solar market is poised for continued strong growth,” says Jeff Waters, CEO at Maxeon Solar Technologies. “This deal validates Maxeon’s strong position as a major module supplier into the large and growing U.S. utility scale market. We are pleased to be further strengthening our relationship with key strategic partners like Cypress Creek Renewables and we look forward to continuing help power their growth in the United States.”

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Drone picture of the Slate project. Image: Goldman Sachs Renewable Power.

Goldman Sachs Renewable Power (GSRP) has cut the ribbon to signal the completion of work on Slate, a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Kings County, California. 

The project pairs 300MW of solar PV with a 140.25MW/561MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

Construction began in January 2021. The renewable energy owner-operator and affiliate of Goldman Sachs Asset Management bought the project shortly before that from its original developer, Canadian Solar subsidiary Recurrent Energy. 

When the project was first announced in October 2018, two California energy suppliers, Silicon Valley Clean Energy (SCVE) and Monterey Bay Community Power (MBCP) had already signed 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) deals for the plant’s output.

The pair are Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), energy suppliers licensed as load-serving entities with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and offering their member-customers the choice of where their power comes from, while still being able to use the distribution networks of California’s three major investor-owned utilities. 

Since then, three more off-takers have signed with GSRP for Slate: Power and Water Resources Pooling Authority, which represents the power management interests of nine California Irrigation Districts, San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit group and Stanford University. 

The plant’s combination of solar PV with four-hour duration battery storage enables each group to purchase dispatchable renewable energy into the evenings and help manage their peak loads. 

Energy-Storage.news reported on two separate financing transactions which were closed by French financial services and banking group Natixis, one for US$515.9 million in senior secured credit facilities, the other a US$150 million Equity Bridge Loan which was used to fund GSRP’s equity contribution into the project. 

California has of course become the US’ leading market for battery storage in the past couple of years, with the majority of new additions being four-hour duration projects. Grid operator CAISO recently noted that 2,359MW of storage was deployed in its service area during 2021 — more than half the amount installed in the whole US during the year.

During the Bootleg wildfire in July, CAISO said it was able to access around a gigawatt of storage resources that helped keep the lights on and has repeatedly said that battery storage of four hours duration or more will be key to progressing California’s transition to renewable energy while maintaining grid reliability. 

A closer look at the Slate project. Image: GSRP.

With more than 60% of solar projects in developer and utility queues in the US planned to be paired with storage, California is again at the heart of the industry trend. 

Developer Terra-Gen is building the world’s largest solar-plus-storage project there, the Edwards & Sanborn project at Edwards Air Force Base, pairing 1,118MW of solar PV with 2,165MWh of BESS, albeit the project is being built in phases.

An interesting aspect of that project is that a portion of it was recently included in a PPA deal Terra-Gen signed with another CCA, San Jose Clean Energy, to guarantee the delivery of 62MW of energy from the facility between 6pm and 10pm each day, in effect making it a 16-hour daily clean energy resource. 

Earlier this month, D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments announced the signing of a renewable PPA for another sizeable California solar-plus-storage plant, signing a deal with Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) for a 200MWac PV and 400MWh BESS plant to be online by 2024.  

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Renewable Power now owns nearly 900 solar and storage projects in the US. In March last year, Jacob Steubing, one of the company’s VPs, said that battery storage “is a very exciting market,” which had led it to get involved relatively early. 

Goldman Sachs Asset Management recently made a commitment to invest US$250 million into Canadian advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) company Hydrostor, which is developing long-duration storage projects at very large-scale. This includes two projects in California, one of 3,200MWh and the other 4,000MWh. 

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A render of American Battery Factory’s battery cell.

Energy-storage.news speaks with the CEO of American Battery Factory Inc (ABF), a relatively unknown company with big plans for a national network of LFP battery gigafactories in the US, targeting the energy storage market.

ABF claimed last week that it is “..developing the first-ever network of safe lithium-iron phosphate battery (LFP) cell gigafactories in the United States” with each factory creating 300-1,000 jobs. The company was incorporated 15 months ago and is a spinout of Utah-based solar and battery pack supplier Lion Energy.

ABF CEO Paul Charles says that the company will be building LFP battery cells targeting three specific market segments: military uses, larger low-speed electric vehicles (EVs), and stationary energy storage. It will sell to pack integrators rather than build whole systems itself.

“We believe that the energy storage market will be as large and potentially even larger than the EV space,” he says.

“Because the EV space needs to have energy storage for it to be successful,” he adds, citing an example of how residential storage systems can get around bottlenecks in local EV charging infrastructure capacity.

The company expects to have its first 3GWh production facility with R&D centre and substantial pilot line up and running in 18-24 months – meaning Q4 2023/Q1 2024 – with 3-6GWh expansions to it every six to twelve months. That first facility will cost a little under US$500 million while the overall build-out to 15GWh will cost US$1.5-2 billion as the unit cost falls over time.

“It will be the first factory for cell manufacturing that’s geared specifically for energy storage, military and selected EVs,” he claims.

Charles won’t say where it will be but claims typical barriers like planning and power will not be an issue and he is looking at multiple locations for additional factories. ABF also claims the cycle life for its batteries will be over 10,000 cycles, higher than the market norm for LFP batteries.

“We really believe that LFP is a mature technology. It’s safe, it’s proven, it’s low cost and it’s environmentally friendly. Plus, we have a roadmap for enhancements for those core technologies as well,” he says.

“We’re not saying other chemistries aren’t good, but for our market segments LFP is the way to go.”

The company is amongst a few others that have announced new gigafactory projects in the US. But, the other players have either already closed and announced several hundreds of millions of dollars in financing like Freyr, or are existing massive companies in the supply chain like Tesla, Panasonic, SK Innovation, Borg Warner/AKASOL and Envision AESC, which just today (16 March) announced a gigafactory plan for Mercedes in Alabama.

Energy-Storage.news asks CEO Paul Charles how a relatively unknown company that doesn’t fit the above profile can do this from a technical and financial standpoint.

“We’ve been very quiet in the marketplace but have built up our internal R&D team at ABF. They’re all US citizens and have experience in designing, developing and manufacturing prototype high-level units. We’re now a dozen-plus employees at ABF and also have access to the 130 employees of Lion Energy. We’ve spent the last 15 months identifying the supply chain here and found plenty of opportunities to source materials in the US,” he says.

The ABF team includes CTO James Mosby who joined ABF after a year at Panasonic’s operations within Tesla’s Nevada gigafactory, with stints at French battery manufacturer Saft and flow battery producer VIZn Energy Systems prior to that.

On how it is funding the gigafactory project, Charles claims it has unnamed private backers but that ABF will take advantage of public sector funding opportunities when they arise.

“We’re obviously moving forward with the Department of Energy funding but that will be for an enhancement to factory number two or three etc. Private sector capital is moving much, much faster. We have not made an announcement in terms of who our capital partners are but the response has been very, very favourable.”

He says one way that it’s managed to move quickly is by choosing high-tension membrane facility technology for its buildings. “These can literally be built in a US factory in about 10 weeks and it only takes a couple of months to stand that up. These are airtight and half the cost of construction.”

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company uses the same tension-based membrane facility tech, or ‘sprung structure’ for its headquarters in Kent, Washington. Image: Blue Origin.

“Another thing that is quite different is that we’re not building massive factories because there’s always the question of how you get the 10,000-plus employees for a 100GWh facility. Ours only need 300-1000 employees which is a sweet spot. And that also means our model is decentralised and we can put our factories next to our customers – the solution providers and pack integrators.”

Like everyone with a supply chain, ABF is also feeling the pinch. Charles says that getting equipment in for its factory is its longest lead time due to soaring demand worldwide. “We’ve literally been to five different areas around the world where the equipment is manufactured, from Germany, India, Japan through to China and Korea.”

He also claims that ABF has offtake agreements and LOIs (letter of intent) which go “far beyond our first factory” and that we can expect another announcement soon with more details, though wouldn’t say which market segment they were coming from.

The company also wants to vertically integrate the supply chain into the US for battery production over time as the US seeks to domesticate battery production to be less reliant on China.

China had a 75% share of the 767GWh lithium-ion battery cell production market in 2020 according to Clean Energy Associates. It forecasts that the US and Europe will increase their own market share to a combine 28% by 2030, reducing China’s dominance to 66%.

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David Brearley

Mayfield Renewables has expanded upon its core design and engineering services with the launch of new technical services for the clean energy industry, including market research, technical content production and professional training. Mayfield Renewables’ new services will be provided by the company’s newest hires: David Brearley, Justine Sanchez, Joe Schwartz and Kyle Bolger.

“The depth and breadth of our industry experience is unparalleled now that we have these four stellar industry experts onboard,” states Ryan Mayfield, founder and CEO of Mayfield Renewables. “With our expanded team, we’re uniquely able to leverage our design firm experience and industry network to provide top-tier technical expertise for the rapidly growing solar-plus-storage industry. The entire Mayfield team welcomes these newest additions to our all-star lineup of passionate clean energy professionals.”

The new technical content strategy and production services provided by the company’s team include short- and long-form technical content; market research and analysis; product strategy and positioning; and videography and custom graphics. Mayfield Renewables also now offers new training opportunities through NABCEP-certified solar-plus-storage code, design and product sessions led by its respective experts.

These new technical consulting, content and professional training offerings complement the company’s core system design and engineering expertise, ranging from project feasibility to complete system design and engineering.

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Another Green Lantern Solar installation, Smuggler’s Notch Solar, located in Cambridge and Westman, Vt.

Green Lantern Solar, a renewable energy development and finance company focusing on commercial solar and energy storage systems, has completed a solar array for Chroma Technology, a Vermont-based certified B Corp in the precision optics industry. The 500 KW ground-mount array will produce enough energy to offset a third of Chroma’s annual energy expenses.

“This array will reduce Chroma’s operating expenses and have a real impact on its sustainability goals,” says Weston Martin, director of sustainable partnerships at Green Lantern Solar. “We’re gratified to work with companies like Chroma who are taking real steps to demonstrate how costs savings and a clean energy future can be achieved.”

The virtual net-metered solar project was developed, constructed, and is owned and operated by Green Lantern Solar; it is the company’s most recently completed in its home state of Vermont. The energy produced by the 1,870 solar module array is approximately 958,200 kWh annually.

“As a Certified Employee-Owned B Corporation Chroma is committed to sustainable and socially responsible business practices,” says Newell Lessell, CEO of Chroma. “This new solar array will enable us to significantly reduce our carbon footprint even as our business continues to grow.”

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Indiana Michigan Power (I&M), an American Electric Power (AEP) company, has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for facilities that will generate approximately 800 MW of wind energy and approximately 500 MW of solar power.

I&M’s invitation for bids offers private sector developers the opportunity to propose the best and most cost-effective projects to add significant renewable energy resources to I&M’s diverse generation fleet. I&M currently operates five solar farms and purchases power from four Indiana wind farms. In 2021, more than 80% of the energy I&M generated was emission-free.

The resources being sought in this RFP align with I&M’s Powering the Next Tomorrow plan.  Powering the Next Tomorrow was described in I&M’s Integrated Resource Plan, which was submitted to state utility regulatory commissions in both Indiana and Michigan earlier in 2022. I&M expects some of the new renewable resources to be online by as early as the end of 2024 and the full 1,300 MW to be online as early as the end of 2025.

“This RFP is designed to provide qualified developers the opportunity to bring forward wind and solar projects that can be used to serve Indiana Michigan Power customers,” says Dave Lucas, I&M vice president for regulatory and finance. “These new resources will combine with I&M’s existing generation to provide an even more diversified and flexible generation portfolio that will stabilize energy costs over time, stimulate economic growth, reduce emissions and take advantage of new technologies.”

Indiana Michigan Power’s RFP is open and non-discriminatory, which provides bidders the opportunity to submit proposals that incorporate battery storage, emerging technologies and other resources to supplement the portfolio and provide for optimum performance and affordability.

I&M prefers projects that will provide economic benefit to the states of Indiana and/or Michigan and encourages the use of local resources where feasible. The RFP also calls for successful bidders to use reasonable efforts to utilize small and diverse suppliers as subcontractors for work.

The RFP calls for solar projects within Indiana and/or Michigan, while wind projects – which require availability of large amounts of land – can be in those states as well as Illinois or Ohio.

Bids are due April 21, 2022. I&M plans to have contracts with the successful developers by the end of 2022. The selected resources will be submitted to state regulatory commissions in Indiana and Michigan for their review and approval.

I&M has engaged Charles River Associates to serve as an independent monitor for the RFP and incorporate input from groups representing customers and other stakeholders into the competitive procurement process.

Image: Photo by 🇻🇪 Jose G. Ortega Castro 🇲🇽 on Unsplash

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Vehicle-to-home (V2H) bidirectional charging allows customers to use their vehicle to power the home. Image: MaxPixel.

14 March 2022: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and General Motors (GM) pilot vehicle-to-home (V2G) battery solution

Investor-owned utility PG&E and automative giant GM are collaborating to pilot the use of GM electric vehicles (EVs) as on-demand power sources for homes in PG&E’s service areas.

The pair will test vehicles with bidirectional charging technology that can help power the essential needs of residential homes, with the first pilot lab test completed by this summer. They will then seek to conduct larger, customer location trials by the end of 2022, with the ultimate aim to develop a user-friendly customer experience for the novel technology.

“Imagine a future where everyone is driving an electric vehicle—and where that EV serves as a backup power option at home and more broadly as a resource for the grid. Not only is this a huge advancement for electric reliability and climate resiliency, it’s yet another advantage of clean-powered EVs, which are so important in our collective battle against climate change,” said PG&E Corporation CEO Patti Poppe.

The bidirectional hardware will include software-defined communications protocols that will enable power to flow from the EV to the home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home, and PG&E’s electric supply.

GM says that by end-2025 it will have more than 1 million units of EV capacity in North America. This could be equivalent to 50-100TWh of maximum stored energy based on a typical car battery pack size.

GM’s competitor Ford announced a similar trial last month in partnership with Sunrun, a US solar company. It claimed its F-150 electric truck is the first to offer the ability to provide power to a home during an electric outage, using the Ford Intelligent Backup Power platform.

While not exactly the same, V2H uses the same underlying technological solution as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) whereby EVs act as distributed energy resources (DERs) on the grid. However, the latter is beset by issues around carmarkers’ warranties on the battery life, car owners’ reluctant to share their battery with the grid, as well as regulatory complications.

15 March 2022: Greener Power Solutions buys 8.5MWh of mobile BESS

Dutch mobile battery energy storage system (BESS) solution provider Greener Power Solutions has ordered another 20 mobile battery units from supplier Alfen, bringing its total fleet to 60 with plans to increase that to 80 by the end of the year.

The new units supply 422 kWh in capacity, 25% higher than its existing units, and up to 318 kVA in power. In total, the new order represents 8.5MWh of new energy.

Greener Power rents out mobile BESS units for use at events, infrastructure projects, EV charging stations or even grid maintenance projects where standalone power is needed. The company has developed its own energy management system (EMS) software.

It claims to have now saved a total of 1 million litres of diesel through its activity, with diesel generators the thing it will typically be replacing. It also had the added benefit of not producing the noise pollution that generators do.

14 March 2022: Intilion launches fire protection feature for storage

Intilion, the lithium-ion energy storage arm of Germany’s Hoppecke battery company, has launched what it says is the first indoor commercial energy storage with a fire protection housing solution.

It claims it is the world’s first manufacturer to offer the option of a fire protection housing for an indoor energy storage system, its scalestac commercial LFP-based energy storage system. “We are making our scalestac the safest indoor commercial storage system available on the international market,” product manager Martin Peters claimed.

It says that if a cell catches fire, its fire protection housing solution prevents the fire from propagating to the entire system. It already offers such a fire protection for its medium-size scalebloc and large grid-scale scalecube products.

In a more detailed product manual for the scalebloc product, the company says that its fire protection housing is a mechanism housing for battery modules with prismatic cells. According to the manual, when heat flows through a cell with the risk of propagating to other cells, the housing ensures that:

resulting gases do not lead to an explosion or self-ignite as a result of the flying sparks from the lithium-ion cellsflying sparks are prevented surrounding battery modules are protected from propagation

It says that this means its BESS fulfils the requirements of the German application guide VDE-AR-E 2510-50 for stationary storage systems with lithium-ion batteries.

The scalestac was launched in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in June last year and ranges from 25 kVA to 400 kVA of power with a capacity from 123 kWh to 1 MWh. The charging and discharging power can be selected from 0.3C to 2C. It says the system is for “public utilities, municipalities, industrial companies, businesses and farmers”.

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Another Standard Solar project, Denmark Community Solar, located in New York

More than 28 municipalities and school districts across Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence counties in New York are reducing their electricity costs and boosting the state’s clean energy portfolio with solar energy. Standard Solar and its partner, U.S. Light Energy, a New York-based distributed solar developer, have completed an 11.52 MW-combined solar project for members of the Tri-County Energy Consortium.

“Schools and community play a significant role in reaching students, parents, neighbors and local decision-makers to encourage clean energy action,” says Mike Streams, chief development officer at Standard Solar, the project’s owner and operator. “We’re proud to have provided the funding needed to make this project happen and applaud the Tri-County Energy Consortium for its efforts and commitment to solar.”

“Members of the Consortium will collectively save between $400-$500/k annually from the arrays,” states John Warneck, executive director of the Tri-County Energy Consortium.

The approximately $7.6 million project received more than $1 million in funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) through NY-Sun, the state’s signature $1.8 billion initiative to advance the scale-up of solar and make solar energy more accessible to homes, businesses and communities. Each participating school district and local government will receive savings on their electric bills in proportion to the percentage of electricity they use out of the total for all participants.

“With their dedication to accelerating the adoption of solar energy, Tri-County Energy Consortium is setting the standard for other communities to follow,” comments Mark Richardson, CEO of U.S. Light Energy, the project’s developer. “This project’s success is underscored by the variety of challenges the team had to overcome, including changes in New York’s solar policy and the pandemic. Kudos to the team and the consortium for persevering and pushing forward a great project helping them create a pathway to achieve their renewable energy goals.”

“Building these projects has been a challenging three-year process,” adds Warneck. “But, even when things looked bleakest, U.S. Light Energy and Standard Solar kept at it and delivered for us. They are great partners.”

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