Sumitomo’s 2MW/8MWh flow battery storage project in the SDG&E trial. Image: Sumitomo / SDGE.

4 February 2022: Microgrid trial anchored by vanadium flow battery concludes in California

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI) have successfully completed a zero-emissions microgrid pilot using a 2MW/8MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage system.

The battery system powered 66 homes and businesses in the California investor-owned utility’s service area for five hours in a test run.

California has been keen to improve grid reliability using zero-emission sources in light of numerous power shutoffs due to the recently increased wildfire risk. Sumimoto managing director Hideo Hato highlighted vanadium’s noteworthy non-flammable qualities in the pilot announcement.

Commencement of the year-long pilot was reported by Energy-Storage.news early last year. It involved two successful test types carried out in various weather conditions. 

The first involved the battery providing a seamless transition for customers as they were transitioned to the microgrid. The second saw microgrid operators establish and sustain service using the battery after a complete loss of power, with customers experiencing a ‘momentary’ outage.

Sumitomo supplied the battery which was installed at an SDG&E substation in Bonita in 2017 and connected to the state grid in 2018, since which it has participated in the state’s wholesale electricity markets. In that time, it has helped the grid mitigate some summer peaks in electricity demand due to air conditioning use.

7 February 2022: Acciona selects Gelion’s zinc-bromide battery for trial at solar plant

Acciona will trial UK technology group Gelion’s Endure zinc-bromide non-flow energy at its Montes del Cierzo solar plant in northern Spain. 

Gelion will provide a 25KW/100KWh system to the 1.2MW-peak solar plant, a company spokesperson told Energy-Storage.news. 

“The Gelion Endure battery will be assessed in various real-world ambient conditions completing various photovoltaic integration functions,” they added. 

“These include ‘ramp rate control’ to minimise the grid impact of PV plants, ‘frequency regulation’ to improve overall grid stability and ‘solar firming’ to produce dispatchable renewable power and reduce the need for backup fossil fuel generators.” 

The 6-12 month test and supply contract will start with an installation in Q3 2022 and, if successful, the Endure battery will form part of Acciona Energía’s supplier portfolio as a renewable energy storage provider. Its success will be measured based on pre-defined battery test performance criteria. 

Gelion’s is one of four emerging energy storage solutions which Acciona selected to proceed to trial, through the company’s programme IM’NOVATION.

Other technologies the Spanish infrastructure and energy group has tried out at the Montes del Cierzo test bed include a stationary battery storage system assembled using second-life electric vehicle batteries.

Endure’s fire resistance is such that the battery has been demonstrated suffering “no catastrophic loss of battery function with no failure hazards” after being placed on a BBQ hotplate at up to 700°C for 30 minutes.

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Sydney University spinout Gelion listed on the AIM stock exchange in London in November 2021, raising £19m (US$25m) for a market cap of £155m. The company mostly targets off-grid applications although the Montes del Cierzo plant is connected to the Spanish grid.

7 February 2022: Zeta Energy raises US$23m for lithium sulfur battery technology

Zeta Energy has raised US$23m in a series A from Moore Strategic Ventures to develop and commercialise its lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery system.

The announcement comes 18 months after the company raised an US$1.8 million seed round investment from another lithium-sulfur battery developer, Li-S Energy. 

The Texas-based technology group claims its lithium-sulfur battery system does not suffer the polysulfide shuttle effect that has long held back advances in the field, thanks to its proprietary carbon materials.

It adds that its propritery cathodes offer superior stability and higher sulfur content than current metal-based cathode materials and are inexpensive, have high capacity, and use no cobalt, nickel or manganese. The money will go towards expanding its Houston lab facility and further commercialisation activities. 

Sulfur is more abundant and inexpensive than the underlying materials of lithium-ion so the technology holds potential, but commercialisation has been found difficult. UK-based Oxis Energy completed several fundraising rounds for its lithium-sulfur technology but entered into administration in May last year. 

It is not Moore Strategic Ventures first investment in companies looking to disrupt the energy market. 

In September 2021 it led a US$26m financing round for Indian AI-based energy analytics startup Bidgely Inc, which works with utilities and energy companies to create personalised energy profiles for customers, including around decarbonisation. A year earlier, it led an undisclosed Series C investment into Canadian lithium-ion battery recycler Li-Cycle.

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Urban Grid’s project pipeline includes colocated and standalone energy storage as well as utility-scale solar PV. Image: Urban Grid.

Renewables owner and operator Brookfield Renewable has tripled its US development pipeline to 31GW through the US$650 million acquisition of clean power developer Urban Grid.

The deal sees Brookfield Renewable, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management, take on Urban Grid’s pipeline, which includes 13GW of utility-scale solar and 7GW of energy storage across 12 US states.

Virginia-headquartered Urban Grid has nearly 2GW of under construction or ready-to-build solar projects. The business will continue to operate as an independent power producer (IPP) under its current name.

Brookfield Renewable said it will leverage its commercial capabilities to optimise the value of the developer’s pipeline.

The acquisition follows Urban Grid closing US$275 million of debt refinance that was provided by asset management firm Crayhill Capital Management last October to scale up the developer’s solar and energy storage platform.

To read the full version of this story visit PV Tech.

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Gore Street’s 10MW Lower Road battery storage asset. Image: Gore Street.

Gore Street Capital, one of two stock market-listed battery storage developer-investor funds in the UK, is seeing its revenues for providing frequency response ancillary services hit record highs.

Three of Gore Street Energy Storage Fund’s battery storage assets have been ranked as some of the highest revenue generating assets on the grid in Great Britain as frequency response prices rise.

According to market data specialists Modo Energy, the three assets – Lower Road (10MW), Larport Farm (19.5MW) and Breach Farm (10MW) – were all some of the highest revenue generating assets per MWh in Q4 2021. Gore Street said they have again been listed as the best performing assets in January 2022.

Alex O’Cinneide, CEO of Gore Street Capital said that across Great Britain, the company is seeing pricing for its services reach “all-time highs from frequency revenue stream opportunities”.

Indeed, all three of the sites benefit from frequency contracts, for which prices have recently reached record levels sustained at approximately £25 (US$33.87)/MW/h. Gore Street told sister site Current± this was a rate achieved by one of its sites for firm frequency response (FFR).

This in turn has led to returns significantly above the base case across the company’s 110MW operational portfolio for the relevant months.

During Q4 2021, there were historic highs in energy prices as well as volatility, Gore Street said, with this driven by historical low wind, planned and unplanned generation plant outages, unforeseen interconnector failures and high gas prices.

The company said it has demonstrated that its assets are capable of capturing trading revenue when such revenue stream offers higher gross margins when compared to other available revenue-generating services.

Meanwhile, Gore Street is continuing to see what it said are extremely attractive acquisition opportunities, not just in Great Britain and Ireland but also internationally, particularly in European and North American markets.

Last year, Gore Street announced it would be expanding its Kilmannock battery storage asset in Co. Wexford, Ireland by 90MW. Earlier in the year, it acquired a 57MW construction-ready energy storage project in Leicester.

This story first appeared on Current±.

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Renewable energy fund CEP. Energy proposed a battery system with up to 1,200MW in the region to help ease Liddell coal plant into retirement. Image: CEP. Energy.

Cross-party backing for a new fossil fuel power plant in Australia has been criticised by experts and clean energy industry voices, who have said battery storage would be a more viable option to provide peaking capacity. 

The plan to build a 660MW peaker plant fuelled by gas and diesel in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales (NSW), had been strongly backed by the country’s federal government, headed by the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Scott Morrison. 

The project, Kurri Kurri Power Station, has been described as a “government-built white elephant” by Bruce Mountain, director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre at Victoria University, in a recent article contributed to The Conversation. 

However, in December 2021 the NSW state government granted conditional approval for the power station to receive critical State significant infrastructure (CSSI) status. A few days ago, Australia’s main national opposition party, Labor, also gave its backing to a project it had previously opposed. 

Labor had given the government plan its support, conditional on the project owner, utility company Snowy Hydro, adapting the Kurri Kurri plant to run 30% on green hydrogen from its start of operations in 2023, and 100% by 2030. 

However, Victoria University’s Bruce Mountain debunked both the need for the (mostly) fossil fuel plant in the first place, as well as strongly questioning the benefit of Labor’s green hydrogen gambit. 

Mountain argued that not only is the power station altogether an unnecessary project, the hydrogen retrofit would be “so expensive as to be unrealistic,” and called burning hydrogen for power “about the least useful thing you can do with it”. 

Professor Mountain, with colleague Dr Steven Percy and independent engineer Ted Woodley, wrote a paper analysing the project’s original plan, published in June 2021. 

Although flexible dispatchable generation has been provided historically by a combination of pumped hydro and open cycle gas turbines (OCGT), lithium-ion batteries have come down in cost and progressed so far in their technological development to become an alternative source of dispatchable generation, they wrote. 

Furthermore, the ongoing rise of renewable energy generation in Australia is already driving forwards development of various flexibility assets for the electricity network, from large-scale transmission interconnectors, to other gas projects, new large-scale pumped hydro and batteries — a lot of batteries, and mainly proposed by private developers. 

The authors disputed a government claim that the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has modelled a need for 1,000MW of new resources to come online to replace capacity from Liddell, a coal-fired power station set for retirement. AEMO had forecast no shortfall of dispatchable generation and in fact more battery and renewable generation projects announced since AEMO’s studies made that even less so.

A claim that Kurri Kurri would reduce power prices was “tenuous,” they argued, given that the peaker plant would have a slow and inflexible response time of 30 minutes, whereas the National Electricity Market (NEM) has introduced 5-minute settlement for electricity pricing since October 2021 — making  fast-responding batteries far more competitive.  

While as assumption is sometimes made that more renewables equals more gas plants to fill gaps in generation from variable wind and solar, according to AEMO’s Integrated System Plan (ISP), gas peaker plants in NSW would run and produce electricity for between just four and 13 hours in every year up to 2030.

The authors strongly questioned a AU$600 million (US$425 million) price tag quoted for the project, indicating the cost would run several hundred dollars over that, even before Labor’s hydrogen retrofit proposal was introduced. 

There is at best “a tiny market for the sort of service that KPPS can offer and so it has no prospect of earning anywhere near the revenues needed to recover its outlay,” Mountain, Percy and Woodley wrote in their study. 

Peaker plant plan ‘undermines’ Australia’s energy transition

This morning the Clean Energy Council, a national trade organisation for the industry said final approval of the peaking plant project “undermined” Australia’s efforts to build a low-cost, low-emissions and reliable energy system. 

“A utility-scale battery for this site was the smarter choice both economically and environmentally,” Kane Thornton, the Council’s chief executive said.

The Clean Energy Council published its own paper last year, “Battery storage — the new, clean peaker,” which offered techno-economic analysis of the batteries versus peaker plants debate. Thornton pointed out today that as outlined in that paper, batteries can provide peak electricity more cheaply than the OCGT plants planned for Kurri Kurri Power Station.

“The Kurri Kurri plant is only expected to run for about one week of every year. When battery storage can deliver a cost saving of 30% while delivering greater flexibility and significantly reducing emissions intensity, it makes no sense to be spending taxpayer dollars on this fossil fuel project,” Thornton said. 

Not only did the study model that a 250MW/1,000MWh battery peaker plant in New South Wales would be considerably cheaper than gas, the Clean Energy Council also pointed out that battery storage is a multiple application asset class. 

The services it can provide, coupled with the ongoing reconfiguration of energy market rules to accommodate it and other clean energy technologies, strongly implied the value of batteries will go up. 

Since the publication of the Council’s paper las year, AEMO has introduced new regulations to incentivise investment in battery storage, and is looking to create battery-friendly market structures for Fast Frequency Response, while the frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) market is already a key source of revenues for large-scale battery projects.

Conversely, new fossil fuel projects carry not only a diminishing economic impetus from a technological perspective, but also carry policy and economic risks; for instance if international carbon pricing markets are brought to bear on the cost of Australian exports. 

Lillian Patterson, an energy economy expert working for the Clean Energy Council at the time the study was published, told Energy-Storage.news in an interview that there is no economic rationale to building fossil fuel peakers in Australia anymore.

Finally, converting Kurri Kurri to run on hydrogen will be an expensive and significant undertaking, not only for the plant itself, but for its pipeline and storage infrastructure, Victoria University’s Bruce Mountain wrote. 

While utility Snowy Hydro said its turbines could extend to a 30% hydrogen maximum mix, the gas pipelines and storage are only being constructed to accommodate 10% hydrogen in the mix and will need a subsequent total rebuild. 

Green hydrogen will likely have a major role to play in decarbonising hard-to-abate emissions in industries like fertiliser production and various heavy industrial processes, or even long-distance export. 

However, burning it in Australian power plants to produce electricity represents an inefficient use when much of the energy will be vented off as heat and wasted. The fact that batteries represent a better alternative, and are already here today, means that there is “absolutely no need to bother” combusting green hydrogen at Kurri Kurri and other sites, Bruce Mountain and engineer Ted Woodley argued. 

Indeed, around this time last year Australian renewable energy fund company CEP.Energy proposed the building of a battery storage plant of up to 1,200MW output in Kurri Kurri, to help replace the Liddell coal power station. It would be the country’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) to date, if it were to go ahead. 

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El Paso Electric (EPE) has released a request for proposal (RFP) for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for a 10 MW utility-scale solar generating facility coupled with an optional 3 MW battery energy storage system.

This RFP is for the expansion of EPE’s existing, fully subscribed, Texas Community Solar Program. This project will be the second expansion of the company’s Community Solar program since its initial launch in April 2017 – EPE’s first voluntary green energy option for customers. All proposals are due by April 4, 2022.

Proposals submitted may be sited within EPE’s Texas or New Mexico service region, but preference will be given to those sited in Texas. EPE will evaluate all proposals taking into consideration overall EPC costs and bidder experience among other items detailed in the RFP. Prospective applicants must submit a Letter of Intent no later than February 22, 2022.

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President Joe Biden

The President has determined that the safeguard action on imports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic (CSPV) cells, whether or not partially or fully assembled into other products, continues to be necessary to prevent or remedy the serious injury to the domestic industry, and that there is evidence that the domestic industry is making a positive adjustment to import competition.

He extended the safeguard measure proclaimed in Proclamation 9693 with modifications, including continuation of the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) on imports of solar cells not partially or fully assembled into other products for an additional period of four years, with unchanging within-quota quantities of 5 GW for each year and annual reductions in the rates of duty applicable to goods entered in excess of those quantities of cells in the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth years, as described in Annex I to this proclamation. There is a continuation of the increase in duties on imports of modules for an additional period of 4 years, with annual reductions in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth years as well as an exclusion of bifacial panels from the extension of duties proclaimed in this paragraph.

“While we are disappointed with the decision to extend Section 201 tariffs on imported solar cells and panels, we are grateful to the Biden administration for clearly considering the range of issues affected by this decision,” states Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). “Administration officials arrived at a balanced solution in upholding the exclusion for bifacial panels and increasing the tariff rate quota for cells.

“SEIA has been fighting for more than three years to preserve the exclusion for bifacial panels, a product not available in the United States at scale,” Hopper adds. “Today’s decision recognizes the importance of this innovative technology in helping to improve power output and lower costs in the utility-scale segment. It is a massive step forward in producing clean energy in America and in tackling climate change. We also support the administration’s decision to increase the tariff rate quota for solar cell imports. This will benefit both domestic module manufacturers and their customers in the residential, and commercial and industrial segments.

“As the nation’s leading voice for clean energy project development, we applaud President Biden’s decision today on a crucial issue facing the solar industry: Section 201 tariffs,” comments American Clean Power Association CEO Heather Zichal. “The decision to extend the 201 exclusion for bifacial modules is a win for jobs and a win for the President’s climate agenda. The President’s decision to extend the tariffs, applicable to monofacial solar cells and modules, gives the domestic solar manufacturing industry four more years to adjust to import competition as intended by the statute.”  

As part of the tariff’s history, in January 2018, the President issued Proclamation 9693, imposing a safeguard measure for a period of four years that included both a TRQ on imports of certain CSPV cells, not partially or fully assembled into other products, provided for in subheading. In addition, there was an increase in duties (safeguard tariff) on imports of CSPV cells exceeding the TRQ and all imports of other CSPV product. Proclamation 9693 exempted imports from certain designated beneficiary countries under the Generalized System of Preferences from the application of the safeguard measure.

Effective June 13, 2019, the USTR excluded bifacial solar panels that absorb light and generate electricity on each side of the panel and that consist of only bifacial solar cells that absorb light and generate electricity on both sides of the cells (bifacial modules).

On October 10, 2020, the President issued Proclamation 10101, in which he determined that the domestic industry has begun to make a positive adjustment to import competition, as shown by the increases in domestic module production capacity, production, and market share.  It also revoked the exclusion of bifacial modules from application of the safeguard measure on the basis that it had impaired and was likely to continue to impair the effectiveness of the safeguard action. In addition, it adjusted the safeguard tariff for the fourth year of the safeguard measure from 15% to 18% on the basis that the exclusion of bifacial modules from application of the safeguard tariffs had impaired the remedial effectiveness of the 4-year action proclaimed in Proclamation 9693, and to achieve the full remedial effect envisaged in that action.

The United States Court of International Trade then held up on November 16, 2021 in Solar Energy Industries Association et al. v. United States (SEIA) that the President acted outside of his statutory authority in issuing Proclamation 10101, and enjoined the government from enforcing that proclamation.  This injunction had the effect of reinstating the exclusion of bifacial modules from the safeguard tariffs and lowering the fourth-year safeguard tariff to 15%.  On January 14, 2022, the Government filed a notice of appeal of SEIA to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Read the full Proclamation here.

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A DSD project in Glenville, Schenectady County, New York, Image: DSD Renewables.

DSD Renewables, a solar PV and energy storage developer owned by Blackrock Real Assets, has acquired a six-site community solar-plus-storage greenfield project portfolio with 45 MW of solar and 88 MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Massachussets, USA.

The seller is solar developer Borrego and construction is set to begin in 2023. 

The portfolio is part of the state’s Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART) Program which was launched in 2018 to incentivise solar development, with its long-term state-wide deployment target doubled in April 2020 to 3.2GW.

Under it, utilities pay their customers for solar production on a monthly basis; for 10 years for residential systems and 20 years for large commercial solar projects like DSD’s. 

A portion of the sites’ offtake will be for community solar – individual households – and low-income subscribers will be eligible to receive electricity bill credits.

The SMART program includes extra savings or ‘adders’ for customers who install battery storage systems alongside their solar no matter how small, that being the only ‘adder’ without a minimum size. 

Data centre services provider Markley Group will be one of the commercial subscriber anchor tenants of the sites.

All six are all solar-plus-storage and are in Acushnet (2), Freetown (2), Plymouth and Wareham. The smallest is 1.5MW solar/3.37MWh storage and the largest is 12.9MW/26.6MWh. 

“Partnering with such a stable and efficient capital provider like DSD has enabled this portfolio to achieve its full potential,” says Borrego Vice President of Project Finance Adam Feldman.

“We’re accelerating community solar adoption for those who can benefit most while instituting a clean energy future for more residents and businesses of Massachusetts.” 

Borrego bills itself as a developer, designer, installer and operator of commercial solar. DSD Renewables is today primarily an investor in solar projects, originally a start-up within GE but acquired by BlackRock Real Assets in 2020.

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Trevor Lauer

DTE Energy is adding new renewable energy projects totaling approximately 500 MW due to the continued growth of its MIGreenPower voluntary renewable energy program. Supported by 35 industrial, 450 small business and more than 48,000 residential customers, MIGreenPower enables DTE Electric customers to attribute even more of their electricity use to renewable energy, beyond the 15% DTE already provides to all customers as part of their energy mix.

“We want to thank all of our MIGreenPower customers for their participation in the program,” says Trevor Lauer, president and COO of DTE’s electric company. “Over the next decade, we plan to continue adding clean energy projects and investing in new technologies to move our state closer to a carbon neutral future.”

As a result of MIGreenPower customer commitments, DTE is issuing a request for proposals (RFP) for new wind and solar projects, both with and without energy storage. The projects must be ready to achieve commercial operation in 2023, located in Michigan, and interconnected to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) or distribution level transmission.

Interested bidders should register their company information on the PowerAdvocate website and, once registered, can attend a pre-RFP conference being held on February 15, 2022. Bids are due April 29, 2022, and the company anticipates executing contracts this summer.

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A large-scale flow battery demonstration and research facility in Germany. Image: Fraunhofer ICT.

Industry stakeholder organisations from across Europe have come forward to urge the European Union to support the adoption of long-duration energy storage in its European Green Deal.

A joint letter has been signed by 11 national and continental groups, including the Environmental Coalition on Standards, the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), energy storage and renewables industry associations including Spanish storage industry groups AEPIBAL and ASEALEN, Flow Batteries Europe and the European Copper Institute.

Addressed to Commissioners, as well as to the European Union Council’s French Presidency and European Parliament committee members working on the Green Deal package, the letter emphasises the vital need for long-duration energy storage technologies to enable decarbonisation of the electricity sector. 

The signees noted the US has moved towards enabling adoption and market participation of long-duration storage and “believe Europe cannot stay behind”. 

The groups outlined the fundamental role of energy storage in adding flexibility, enabling the massive integration of renewable energy onto Europe’s electricity networks, by ensuring power availability and grid stability. 

The letter argued that much more is needed than the storage systems of up to four hours’ storage duration that are typically being deployed for applications like ancillary services or replacing peaker plants. 

Long-duration energy storage can also result in cost savings for transmission infrastructure, keeping electricity pricing more stable and affordable throughout Europe. 

“This will keep electricity prices more stable and more affordable for the European end users. Large investments in energy infrastructure are needed for the energy transition, with capital flowing away from fossil fuels and toward clean power and other climate solutions,” the letter said.

“The years between now and 2030 are critical in the race to net zero, and long-term storage is still in its infancy, needing much stronger policy support and investment.”

Notably, as well as a push for long-duration energy storage at government level in the US — and also the UK — there was an indication this week that large end-users of energy with decarbonisation goals are increasingly interested in the technologies. 

Microsoft and Google were the most prominent names among new members joining the Long Duration Energy Storage Council, Energy-Storage.news reported yesterday. 

The CEO-led organisation comprises long-duration technology providers with a range of different solutions, along with end-users and energy companies — BP and mining giant Rio Tinto have already been members since it was founded last year. 

The letter sent this week around the EU Green Deal put forward some specific asks and recommendations in two key areas, legal frameworks and funding: 

Legal frameworks to support large-scale storage deployment

New revenue streams should be created that the technologies could benefit from, the letter said, suggesting for example that Emissions Trading scheme design or incentives for renewable energy plants to be self-scheduling and dispatchable would encourage investment in storage. 

Easier permitting procedures should be put in place.

Creation of a separate asset class for energy storage, rather than including it as one of — or as a subset of — generation, transmission, distribution or power consumption. Again, a topic under discussion in many parts of the world. 

Encouragement for electricity system operators to lengthen contract lengths for services provided by energy storage, to give more certainty to investors. 

Removal of barriers to energy storage delivering certain services, allowing system operators to stack revenues by providing multiple services. Allowing for multiple and maximised revenue streams would be the best way to make energy storage economically viable, the groups argued.

European Commission modelling of the electricity system does not properly value the role of system flexibility, or the role of fast-responding energy storage assets. 

Increasing funding for more technologies besides short-duration lithium-ion

Funding should be offered to all classes and durations of energy storage, including research and development support, support for more demonstration projects and the endorsement of energy storage as “an important green investment opportunity”.

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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released the free, web-based platform for automatic residential solar permit approvals. February 3, 2022 Ryan KennedyIn July 2021, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and NREL released the Solar Automated Permit Processing (SolarAPP+), a free software aimed at automating residential solar permitting. The tool was launched in a webinar by DOE Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm, and with the help of promotion from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), was adopted by several pilot cities. The results from the pilot program are now in, and it appears SolarAPP+ delivered on its promise to reduce project times. In the pilot of five jurisdictions across diverse residential solar market characteristics and needs, SolarAPP+ reduced overall project times by an average of 12 days. Though the cost for PV equipment has lowered in the last decade, costs from permitting, inspection, and interconnection remain high, said NREL. Shortened project times are viewed as an important feature of customer experience and retention, as residential solar soft costs like customer acquisition are also relatively expensive in the United States.  A smooth permitting process can help both keep a customer satisfied throughout the installation process and make them more likely to refer their friends, family, or neighbors to adopt solar. Referrals are an important part of the residential solar sales process, creating a network of customers and lowering soft costs for developers.Three Californian cities and two jurisdictions in Arizona were chosen for the pilot study. In all areas, project permit approvals were reduced to less than one day on average. The most relief came to Tucson, AZ, where the paper permitting process averaged 24 days. Image: NREL The tool also provides relief to authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) i.e., city and county employees, who no longer have to process a massive influx of paperwork due to the steep rise in residential solar demand. The software has been approved for both solar photovoltaic systems and battery energy storage. On February 17th, SEIA will host a webinar to overview the pilot study results.This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

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