Being made in the US means that the projects would qualify for higher rate tax credit incentives available through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for facilities constructed using domestically made equipment.

While the IRA extended the eligibility for investment tax credits (ITCs) to standalone energy storage projects, the ITC was already available for solar-plus-storage projects where the energy storage portion is mostly charged from the solar PV.

The ITC enables developers to use their tax bill to claim back 30% of the cost of capital equipment purchases, but the IRA also brought in adders worth an extra 10% off. That equates to US$35/kWh for battery cells and US$10/kWh for battery packs.

According to guidance released by the IRS in May, US energy storage projects need to use at least 40% US-made equipment to qualify, with the threshold rising to 55% from 2027.

Our Next Energy (ONE) is among the many players, including startups and established manufacturers, that are developing production facilities in the US. ONE raised US$300 million early this year for its plan to build a gigafactory in Michigan, while the company has also designed its own containerised battery energy storage system (BESS) solution, called Aries Grid, which it claims will be available in configurations of up to 6MWh.

For GE Vernova however, ONE looks set to supply cells and modules, rather than a complete solution. Instead, ONE’s products will be integrated into GE Vernova’s own utility-scale BESS solution, FlexReservoir.

FlexReservoir is delivered on either a turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) basis, or as an engineered equipment package (EEP), and uses GE’s own FlexIQ controls platform for asset coordination and the company’s FlexInverters.  

US government intervention fosters growth of domestic investment

ONE’s closest rivals or counterparts include KORE Power and American Battery Factory (ABF), which are currently also making their bids to be among the country’s first domestically-headquartered LFP manufacturers serving the BESS sector.

Meanwhile, the likes of LG Energy Solution from South Korea and Gotion from China are also building new US gigafactories set to supply the BESS industry and Energy-Storage.news has heard from sources at another major Chinese battery player EVE Energy and Chinese solar PV company Trina Solar that both are exploring bringing online US-based production facilities.    

Together with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, from which US$3.5 billion of funding for domestic battery production was announced a few days ago, with the Inflation Reduction Act the US government appears to have been successful in kicking off interest in local production among a wave of clean energy investments that totalled US$270 billion since the IRA was passed, according to the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

While not talking directly about cells, research group Clean Energy Associates (CEA) said a few weeks ago that it forecast the incentivisation could make US-made DC battery storage containers cost-competitive with those made in China as early as 2025.

Earlier this year CEA and battery supply chain analysts Benchmark Minerals noted that battery gigafactory investment in the US has now overtaken Europe, despite the latter holding a head start, and the CEO of Freyr Battery, a European startup, said in an interview with this site last week that it made more sense to focus on his company’s fledgling US plans while putting its much more advanced plans in Europe on hold.

“GE Vernova has deployed its FlexReservoir BESS systems globally. Now, in partnership with Our Next Energy, we’re bringing American-made batteries to power local communities, bolstering manufacturing and job growth,” GE Vernova’s head of solar & storage solutions Prakash Chandra said.

While Chandra said the agreement with ONE was testament to the US government’s “leadership”, which had fostered “job creation and energy self-sufficiency, and investments in the energy sector,” no indication was given in the announcement as to when GE Vernova expected to start taking deliveries of ONE products, nor of the potential size of a supply deal, or how long it might run.

Given the constraints over supply of batteries, which have eased since a year or two ago, many system integrators are looking to lock in multi-year, multi-gigawatt-hour supply deals with manufacturers.

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TEP’s Roadrunner Reserve battery energy storage system (BESS) project will be 200MW/800MWh and Koch Engineered Solutions subsidiary DEPCOM was announced earlier this month as the project’s partner for design, construction and maintenance.

The fact that DEPCOM is able to provide services in both EPC and long-term O&M, is a big advantage for its utility customer, as well as for the engineering company itself, DEPCOM VP of energy storage business development Greg Weyl tells Energy-Storage.news in an interview.

DEPCOM’s aim is to provide a ‘one source solution’ to the market, Weyl says. Being responsible for design, procurement and construction means that “we are usually best positioned to transition directly into the O&M long-term service agreement (LTSA) programme,” according to the DEPCOM VP.

“We know the plant, we know the customer, and we understand the utility’s goals for its new plant’s operations, all of which can lead to reduced operating costs, better performance, less downtime, and more efficient operations,” Weyl says.

Firstly, Weyl explains, DEPCOM will have “100% familiarity” with the power plant’s design and the equipment procured to create it. As its EPC partner, the company will perform functional system testing and commissioning to demonstrate the plant can be run properly, and that means it would be aware of any changes from the original design or changes made during the project build.

Meanwhile, providing both EPC workmanship warranty and O&M functions means that DEPCOM can streamline the client’s operating expenditure (OpEx) and operational contacts, as well as its plant management, Greg Weyl claims.

Utility IRPs will have massive impact on US energy transition

TEP serves close to 450,000 customers in Tucson, and Roadrunner Reserve will be built in the southeast of the Arizona city. Its main application will be in charging from the grid at times of abundant solar PV generation in the mornings and afternoons, then discharging when TEP’s utility customer demand peaks.

It will see TEP taking a big step forward from just 51MW of energy storage within its service area today, including a 30MW BESS co-located with a 100MW solar PV plant, at its Wilmot Energy Center that came online in 2021.

The company said Roadrunner Reserve is aligned with the utility’s 2020 integrated resource plan (IRP), through which it sought to deploy up to 1,400MW of energy storage by 2035.

A new IRP was published, seeking regulatory approval, at the start of this month, upping TEP’s request to regulators to add 1,500MW of storage resource. Along with recent IRPs from fellow Arizona utilities UniSource Energy Services and Arizona Public Service, it anticipates a continued ramping up of renewables capacity, mainly solar PV.

e-STORAGE, the energy storage subsidiary of solar PV manufacturer Canadian Solar, has been selected to provide the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry BESS for Roadrunner Reserve, as reported by Energy-Storage.news in late October.

e-STORAGE will deliver the system, due to go into commercial operation in 2025, to DEPCOM’s design specifications.

An existing solar-plus-storage project on which DEPCOM worked. Image: DEPCOM

Without going too much into specifics, Greg Weyl says the original request for proposal (RFP) from TEP included “very complex design criteria, which led to DEPCOM’s selection as the EPC,” describing Roadrunner Reserve and other projects of its scale as “complex projects which evolve significantly over time”.

“During the design approval process, the design matured to ensure TEP had seamless integration and protections, including additional cyber security and IT protocols, and communication-control room specifications. It has been our experience that this type of collaborative effort between the EPC and the owner is a model way to design and execute a project,” Greg Weyl tells Energy-Storage.news.

Looking ahead, utility IRPs will have a huge bearing on where the US energy market goes next, and are “driving grid transformation,” resulting in all-source RFPs that solicit competitive bids to construct replacement capacity for ageing thermal power plant fleets, according to the VP of business development.

DEPCOM has seen a “major emphasis nationwide” in the US to replace “older or obsolete generation technology” with standalone battery storage, standalone solar PV and hybrid solar-plus-storage plants, Weyl says, as part of a wider trend of renewables and storage project buildout on a scale never seen before.

“We are seeing larger standalone and hybrid projects, multiple combined use cases on the BESS, significant repower opportunities, adding additional PV, hybrid and/or BESS power plants to existing PV or wind projects to maximise their interconnection permit and land use.”

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With the broad expansion of investment tax credit and production tax credit (PTC) programmes brought in with last year’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) legislation and set to remain in place until the early 2030s, there has been great positivity around the US energy storage industry.

This was especially the case as, for the first time, an ITC was introduced for standalone energy storage system (ESS) projects. Previously, only ESS charged directly from a co-located solar PV system for at least 70% of hours in the year was eligible for the incentive.

However, the introduction of the IRA’s complex, sweeping legislative changes was also accompanied by an inevitable increase in the level of legal expertise required to understand them. That has been cited as a likely reason why there have been periods of relative quiet for the industry in this year so far, as stakeholders including project developers and would-be financiers wrestled with different interpretations.

While there have been several ‘milestone’ announcements: the first project to leverage the ITC for standalone storage in February, recent tax credit transfer transactions and so on, Texas’ ERCOT, the US’ second-biggest regional market by deployment, saw no new large-scale storage facilities come online in Q2 of this year, for example.

The IRS noted that the new regulations, which are at the proposal stage, represent the first changes to the ITC rules since 1987. They provide definitions of ‘energy property’ which are eligible for the ITC, including equipment which was already covered prior to the IRA’s passing, such as combined heat and power systems, fuel cells and microturbines.

Of more interest to the energy storage industry will be new additions to that list, including energy storage technologies and microgrid controllers. The IRA also added new provisions that allow smaller projects to include interconnection costs to their credit amount.

The guidance was also important for the offshore wind sector, proposing which components in offshore wind projects would be covered by the incentive scheme’s assistance with capital costs.

The full 127-page guidance including the new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) can be seen here.

SEIA, ACP, ACORE reactions

National trade associations American Clean Power Association (ACP), Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) all put forward statements welcoming the new guidance.

ACP chief advocacy officer JC Sandberg said the clarification of eligibility would provide a powerful boost to the blossoming energy storage sector.

“There is seven times more utility-scale energy storage capacity today compared to the end of 2020,” Sandberg said, with the US thought to be closing in on about 15GW of installed storage.

“Today’s Treasury guidance will continue that momentum, providing necessary certainty for this growing industry.”

ACP represents member organisations in the solar PV, wind, energy storage and related industries, having been formed through a merger between a wind power trade association and the Energy Storage Association (ESA) a couple of years ago.

The certainty the new guidance could bring would help put energy storage and other clean technologies onto a more level playing field of competition, ACORE president and CEO Greg Whetstone said.

“Thanks to the IRA, clean energy businesses now have access to a stable tax platform like the one enjoyed by the fossil fuel sector for more than a century, but to fully take advantage of these benefits, they need to understand how the provisions work,” Whetstone said.

“The tax guidance released today provides important clarity to developers and investors looking to further America’s energy transition.”

Finally, SEIA’s CEO and president Abigail Ross Hopper similarly applauded the guidance, especially the inclusion of definitions of how storage deployed with solar PV will be able to avail of the ITC, something the SEIA had strongly advocated for.

Noting that more than US$100 billion of clean energy investment commitments have been announced since the passing of the IRA, Hopper said that the economic growth those investments would create “can’t materialise without clear rules for each provision in the law”.

“Today’s proposal provides more clarity and will help to drive clean energy deployment in the United States.”

Nonetheless, Hopper said the SEIA would be looking closely at the proposed guidance for signs that any of its contained provisions and definitions had the potential to backfire.

“Today’s announcement is good news for America’s clean energy economy. However, given the economic headwinds that many solar and storage companies are facing, we are continuing to fully evaluate the details in this guidance to guard against any potential unintended consequences that might undermine our ability to rapidly deploy clean energy projects of all sizes.”

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Jason Ellsworth

Country Acres Clean Power, an affiliate of Enlight Renewable Energy’s Clenera Holdings subsidiary, has entered into agreements connected to a new project under development in Placer County, Calif. 

The project is expected to have an installed capacity of 392 MW DC / 344 MW AC of solar energy and 688 MWh of energy storage. The agreements include a busbar PPA with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, under which Country Acres will sell the solar energy produced by the facility for a 30-year term and energy storage for a 20-year term. 

In addition to the executed PPA, Country Acres has also entered into an interconnection agreement with the utility district. Upon permit completion, construction is expected to begin next year, with commercial operations commencing in 2026.

The project is expected to provide zero carbon electricity to approximately 80,000 homes annually and is launching an agrivoltaic pilot program on-site, to be jointly developed for both solar and agriculture and meant to benefit surrounding properties.

“We are excited to work with an excellent partner in SMUD, a leader in providing affordable, clean energy to California residents that is highly regarded for its environmental stewardship,” says Jason Ellsworth, Clenera’s CEO. “This project, which now enters our mature portfolio substantially derisked, highlights the strong demand for solar and storage across our offtaker base.”

“This project, which represents our first project in California since acquiring Clenera, further strengthens our market leadership in the Western U.S and adds to our Mature Portfolio, while demonstrating visibility through 2026 via the conversion of our high-quality pipeline,” adds Gilad Yavetz, CEO of Enlight.

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CEP Renewables and Luminace have reached commercial operation of the 10 MW DC BEMS community solar landfill project, located on the Big Hill Landfill in Southampton, N.J.

The project is the first in New Jersey to have two 5 MW solar systems atop a landfill, as well as span across two utility territories.

Part of the state’s Community Solar Energy Pilot Program, this fixed-tilt project utilizes ballasted solar racking technology from Terrasmart, as well as bifacial solar panels. 

CEP Renewables developed the project and contracted CS Energy as EPC contractor for the construction phase. Luminace, a Brookfield Renewable company, is the long-term owner and operator of the project.

“We are pleased to have converted yet another previously limited use site into a source of revenue as well as more affordable, clean energy for local communities,” says Chris Ichter, CEP Renewables’ executive vice president. 

“We’re grateful to have been selected by CEP, one of the nation’s top leaders in landfill and brownfield solar redevelopment, to provide our expertise on this impactful project,” says Erol Ozkirbas, chief operating officer at CS Energy. 

“We were able to leverage our experience designing and constructing over 200 MW of landfill solar projects to address the complexities of this project and complete it safely, on time, and on budget.”

The Big Hill Landfill project also adds to CEP’s more than 100 MW of solar projects developed in New Jersey and further supports the state in achieving its goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035.

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Enervenue’s storage technology is based on nickel and hydrogen, with design based on a technology in use by NASA and others for outer space power applications. Crucially, Enervenue believes it has struck upon a cheaper version of the tech, made with abundant materials and capable of performing around 30,000 cycles of charging and discharging before it needs replacing.

That makes it roughly between three and five times more durable than lithium-ion battery technology, and Enervenue also claims its nickel-hydrogen battery is much more fire-safe too. The company, led by CEO Jorg Heinemann, a former executive at solar company SunPower and flow battery maker Primus Power, is building a factory complex in Kentucky and has claimed it has multiple gigawatt-hours of already-booked customer orders for deliveries beginning in 2025.

To this pipeline it adds a relatively modest 1.5MW at the installation for Dominion Energy Virginia at VSU. Storage capacity numbers were not provided in a Dominion release. However, the utility did say Enervenue’s tech will provide VSU’s Multi-Purpose Center (MPC) with backup power, and emphasised the nickel-hydrogen battery’s touted capability of providing 10-hours discharge duration.

Virginia’s energy storage target and Dominion’s role

According to Dominion Energy, the metal-hydrogen pilot project was proposed to the regulatory Virginia State Corporation Commission back in September, when the utility also proposed pilots for two other novel non-lithium technologies.

Those other two are the zinc hybrid cathode batteries made by Eos Energy Enterprises and Form Energy’s iron-air batteries, as reported by Energy-Storage.news back when the proposals were filed with the regulator. For some reason, news of Enervenue’s technology being involved alongside its two long-duration energy storage (LDES) peers was not widely publicised at the time.

Eos’ technology is designed for applications requiring up to around 12 hours of storage duration, and is already available for commercial deployment, whereas Form Energy’s tech – based around the rusting and de-rusting of iron – is designed for ‘multi-day’ storage of up to 100 hours and is at an earlier stage of commercialisation, with the first pilots with utilities due to begin next year [check].

While the Eos and Form pilots are due to go into operation in late 2026, if approved, the Enervenue pilot will be commissioned and go into service the following year.

As a State, Virginia has one of the US’ more ambitious energy storage policy targets, aiming to deploy 3.1GW of storage on the grid by 2035.

Dominion Energy is the biggest investor-owned utility (IOU) operating within the state and has been tasked with procuring the lion’s share of that targeted amount, 2,700MW, while other utilities will contribute smaller portions.

The utility is beginning that journey with its series of pilot projects, designed to test out different technologies, durations and applications of energy storage.

The Enervenue technology comprises the company’s nickel-hydrogen ‘Energy Storage Vessel’ which are small units similar to battery cells, connected together to make high energy or high power configurations. Image: EnerVenue.

Dominion completed its first lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage system (BESS) pilots in August 2022. In August of this year, it broke ground on a large-scale solar-plus-storage project at Virginia’s Dulles International Airport, featuring 100MW of solar PV and 50MW of BESS technology, alongside electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the nickel-hydrogen battery system from Enervenue will also serve as a teaching tool for VSU students at its College of Engineering and Technology.

“These projects could be game changers for how we store energy and deliver it to our customers. With longer-duration batteries, we can store energy from renewables for longer periods of time so it’s available when our customers need it the most. We’re thrilled to partner with Virginia State University on this cutting-edge project,” Dominion Energy Virginia president Ed Baine said.

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A 20MW/40MWh system will be built at a substation in Tume and a 60MW/120MWh one will be built at a substation in Rezekne, meaning a total contracted deployment of 80MW/160MWh. Bids for the contract came from SIA Monum, Nidec ASI and Rolls-Royce Solutions, with financial offers ranging from €79-87 million (US$86-95 million).

SIA Monum is a local engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm, Nidec ASI is a BESS integrator, while Rolls-Royce Solutions is part of the large aerospace and engineering conglomerate which has deployed large-scale projects in Germany and the Netherlands.

It comes as the Baltic states – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – prepare to disconnect from the electricity system of Russia and synchronise with the European electricity system in 2025. The states will therefore need to be able to independently regulate their grids’ system frequency, with BESS projects set to play a huge role by providing much of that balancing service.

The BESS will provide backup at high-speed and automatically activate frequency regulation reserves, and at a much lower cost than conventional power plants are currently doing, AST said. Both projects will be co-financed from EU funds, with the Tume project benefitting from the infrastructure-focused Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) while the Rezneke system will receive funds through RePowerEu.

AST did not describe them as ‘grid booster’ or storage-as-a-transmission-asset projects, which have been seen in nearby Lithuania and Germany. Lithuania’s TSO Litgrid discussed its 200MW project, deployed by system integrator Fluence, with Energy-Storage.news at the recent Energy Storage Summit Central & Eastern Europe 2023.

Estonia

In concurrent news, developers Evecon and Corsica Sole announced they would be building two BESS projects in Estonia totalling 200MW, in a news report posted on LinkedIn by Evecon, which is based there.

The two projects will be in Kiisa in the Saku Rural municipality and Arukylä in the Raasiku Rural municipality and will be completed in Q2/Q3 2025, and will provide emergency reserve power. Kiisa is the location of an emergency power plant operated by TSO Elering.

The project can also be ‘converted into a storage facility for renewable energy’ in future, the report said, indicating it will exclusively be providing grid balancing services for some time.

Elering is building the grid connection points for the projects, with construction on Kiisa set to start in Spring 2025 while Arukylä will begin earlier, in Q4 2024.

The projects are being deployed through the Baltic Storage Platform, a vehicle which is 80% owned by Corsica Sale and 20% by Evecon.

Corsica Sole is the France-based developer and operator which commissioned continental what was then Europe’s largest project in December last year, a 50MW/100MWh system in Belgium.

The report also said that a procurement run by state-owned utility Eesti Energia for a 25MW/50MWh BESS project, launched in June 2023, has failed to secure a contract. However, Eesti Energia is still planning to go ahead with the project, the report added.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 21-22 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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At 3GWh the projects would have an average discharge duration of six hours.

Pacific Green has acquired a 51% interest in the projects and will acquire the remainder in stages as the projects hit specific development milestones, with the purchase price not disclosed. For comparison, a 2GW BESS development portfolio announced last week by early-stage developer Lemon Sistemi was said to have a value of €20 million (US$22 million).

The technology has not been revealed but most deployments in Italy (and anywhere for that matter) use lithium-ion technology.

The first project, a 100MW system in the Campania region, has been submitted to regulators for permitting and the other four will follow in the coming months. Final permitting for all five is expected in Q4 2024 with the projects expected to enter operation in 2025.

Mahael Fedele, Sphera Energy Partner and CEO, claimed the firm was one of Italy’s first fully dedicated battery storage development platforms when it launched 12 months ago.

Italy has become a hotspot of energy storage development activity this year, with transmission system operator (TSO) Terna announcing deployment targets and reformulating the capacity market to run large-scale auctions for storage, as covered in a recent edition of Solar Media’s quarterly journal PV Tech Power.

Last week also saw Matrix Renewables buy an 8-hour, 410MW/3,280MWh portfolio from developer Emeren while its peer Altea Green Power in early November revealed plans to sell a set of four projects totalling 1GW. Prior to these, gigawatt-scale BESS development agreements or plans have been announced by Redelfi and WRM, and Eku Energy and Renera, Field, Aura Power and SUSI Partners.

Pacific Green Technologies is a US-headquartered BESS developer and operator that is active in Australia, the UK and now continental Europe. November saw it secure financing for the 375MWh Sheaf project in Kent, UK, and secure land for a potentially 1GWh project in South Australia.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 21-22 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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Tata AutoComp’s vehicle customers include other Tata Group companies. Tata Power, the influential group’s integrated power company, has taken delivery of the first BESS units which will be installed at a new 120MW ‘Energy Storage Park’ in Chhattisgarh, Central India.

While an announcement made on Saturday (18 November) by Tata Power did not give any further details of the project, or what type of equipment is being provided, it did note that Tata Power Renewable Energy subsidiary Tata Power Solar Systems has entered a supply agreement with AutoComp for BESS to be used at renewable energy projects.

Tata AutoComp’s JV with Tier 1 EV and BESS battery manufacturer Gotion is called Tata AutoComp Gotion Green Energy Solutions.

The JV encompasses the design, manufacture, supply and servicing of Li-ion battery packs, including lithium iron phosphate (LFP), nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) and lithium titanium oxide (LTO) cell chemistries, in prismatic, cylindrical and pouch form factors.

The JV is also working on battery pack and system level technologies including battery management system (BMS) and power distribution units, and is targeting various EV market segments, as well as the stationary BESS market.

Tata AutoComp Gotion Green Energy Solutions has just inaugurated its BESS manufacturing facility in Pune which will have 6GWh annual production capacity when fully ramped up.

“Tata AutoComp has always been a pioneer in introducing cutting edge technology to its customers. We are leveraging our knowledge in the automotive domain to serve emerging markets which have a synergy in technology,” Tata AutoComp chairman Arvind Goel said.

“We have been pioneers in launching the Li-Ion based battery packs and BMS for the electric vehicle segment. We are now leveraging this knowledge to build battery energy storage systems.”

India’s support for its emerging BESS market

India is on a big national drive to create a market for energy storage, particularly in light of its major renewable energy deployment efforts that target 450GW of new solar PV and wind by 2030, as well as 50GW of other renewables.

Energy storage is a key part of integrating that new capacity on the country’s grid, as well as for increasing access to electricity for rural communities and enabling wider takeup of EVs. A National Electricity Plan published a couple of months ago put that need at 74GW/411GWh of storage by 2032, based on assessments by the Central Electricity Authority and expected to comprise roughly two-thirds BESS and one-third pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).

The union government in September approved a competitive tender scheme to support the construction of 4GWh of standalone BESS projects around the country by 2031, while various state entities including the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) have launched around 9GW of tenders for ‘firm renewables’ aka renewables-plus-storage so far during 2023.  

The changing market dynamics have led to the likes of General Electric (GE) to open facilities for manufacturing key energy storage equipment such as power conversion system (PCS) inverters in India through GE Renewable Energy, while BESS system integrator Fluence has opened a technology centre there. The government is also seeking to support domestic manufacturing of battery cells, through a production linked incentive (PLI) programme for advanced chemistry battery cells.

“With the rise of renewables, energy storage has become critical to address the intermittency of solar and wind energy resources. We shall integrate these BESS at our renewable sites to enable round-the-clock supply of clean power and ensure a speedier green energy transition,” Tata Power CEO and MD Praveer Sinha said last week.

Tata AutoComp’s JV partner Gotion meanwhile is reportedly looking to establish 100GWh of annual battery production capacity in international markets outside its home base in China. That includes a US$2 billion gigafactory in Illinois, US, announced in September, and a cooperation agreement to target the large-scale BESS market in Japan with an initial 1GWh annual sales target.

Late last year another Gotion JV broke ground on Vietnam’s first-ever LFP gigafactory, while the company is also planning EV and BESS battery pack and module production facilities in Thailand.  

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Wildstone Construction Group and SkyFire Energy have marked the opening of Summerland, British Columbia’s first utility-scale solar facility.

Summerland is one of five municipalities in the province to own its electrical utility, allowing the community to keep money in the local economy and increase the resiliency of the power grid, says Wildstone. 

The project utilized 80% local construction labor and Canadian-based manufacturing for the solar PV racking and the battery energy storage system. The facility was secured using a geo-ballast system that anchors the array to the ground utilizing local boulders and rocks, helping to minimize the project’s carbon intensity.

The Summerland Solar+Storage Facility features a battery energy storage system capable of grid forming, peak shaving and ancillary services, says Wildstone. This is meant to eliminate short-term demand spikes and lower peak loads, reducing overall demand costs. The project’s control strategy was tailored for integration into the microgrid control system.

“On behalf of the Wildstone/Skyfire Joint Venture team, it has been an honor to work with the District of Summerland and ATCO in the development, design, and construction of the Summerland Solar+Storage Project,” says Matt Simard, Wildstone’s director of corporate development. 

“It has been an exciting journey to be a part of this project. I first sat in on the funding announcement presentation back in 2018. So, to have the opportunity to actually build this exciting project is pretty special,” adds SkyFire Energy’s Landon Aldridge. 

“Kudos to the District of Summerland for having the vision to incorporate such a unique project into their utility. This is a great example for other municipal-owned utilities to follow. Congratulations to the Wildstone, EVLO, Westpark, and Chute Creek teams, as well as the other consultants and partners on a successful project.”

The multi-phased project was a joint venture between Wildstone Construction Group and Skyfire Energy. Battery components came from EVLO Energy Storage, a subsidiary of Hydro Quebec. Civil construction was completed by Okanagan-based contractor Chute Creek, and electrical interconnection and controls were completed by Penticton-based company Struthers Technical Solutions Ltd.

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