Marking Genex Power’s first-ever battery storage project, which the developer will own and operate, CEO Craig Francis said “timing for commencement of full operations for the Project could not be better,” as a new ancillary services product, Fast Frequency Response, launched in early October, and Queensland is about to enter a summer period in which extreme heat is expected.

The so-called ‘El Nino’ summer ahead “is anticipated to place significant stress on the electricity network,” Francis said.

“The commencement of operations will mark the next step-change in revenues and cash flows for Genex, and we are also extremely pleased that Bouldercombe will be able to play its part in supporting the Queensland energy system over this period.”

The company reached financial close on BBP in the first calendar quarter of 2022, at which point it issued a Notice to Proceed to key contractors including Tesla.

Tesla is also supplying the technology platform which will enable BBP to play into the National Electricity Market (NEM), including arbitrage for energy trading in the wholesale market and its frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) markets, the latter still the biggest money spinner for BESS in the NEM, albeit with arbitrage’s share gradually increasing.

Under the terms of the Tesla deal, the California-headquartered technology provider will guarantee a minimum level of revenues to Genex from operating the BESS in those merchant opportunities using its Tesla Autobidder algorithmic bidding technology.

The fire incident took place on the evening of 26 September, and was described at the time by Genex as “minor” and a “low intensity fire”, and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services advised that it be allowed to burn out under fire department supervision. Genex said at the time that it would be working with Tesla and high voltage solutions provider Consolidated Power Projects to determine its cause.

CEO Craig Francis said last week that despite the fire, Bouldercombe was completed “with only a modest delay and within budget”.

Due to the fire, however, the project will initially be two Megapacks down, and operate on the remaining 38, until Tesla has deployed replacements, which Tesla will procure, install and commission as contingency, or punch list items.

They are due to be replaced in early December 2023, although the system is already able to function at full 50MW nameplate output.

Other projects Genex Power has underway include Australia’s first new pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in nearly 40 years, in Kidston, Queensland, with construction on the 250MW/2,000MWh project expected to be completed next year.

The company recently also signed a joint development agreement (JDA) with Japanese power generation group J-Power for projects including Bulli Creek Solar and Battery Project, which will also be in Queensland. Bulli Creek will feature 400MW/1,600MWh of BESS technology and around 500MW of solar PV initially, although the solar portion could later be scaled to 2GW, Genex has claimed of the Bulli project, which it acquired in August 2022.

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DMEGC Solar, a manufacturer of high-efficiency photovoltaic modules, has unveiled two N-type rectangular wafer module series, M10RT and G12RT, for the international market.

The modules leverage N-type silicon wafers, enabling mass production efficiencies of up to 25.5%. Incorporating Super-Multiple Busbar (SMBB) technology alongside high-density packaging and other enhancements, significant progress has been made in module power and efficiency. These improvements additionally contribute to lower attenuation, enhanced temperature coefficients and superior performance in low-light conditions for power generation.

The M10RT 54 Series, primarily aimed at the distributed generation market, features modules sized 1,762 mm x 1,134 mm. They come in a variety of options, including single-glass, double-glass, all-black and transparent versions, with power outputs ranging from 430 W to 450 W.

The G12RT 66 Series, including single-glass and double-glass designs, are specially designed for large-scale projects. They boast larger 2,382 mm x 1,134 mm modules and a higher power range from 605 W to 620 W.

The entire product line has received certification from standards-setting organizations TÜV Rheinland and TÜV SüD, and has passed extended-stress testing according to IEC TS 63209-1:2021. The products are now available for purchase worldwide.

The recently released rectangular modules are designed to provide greater compatibility than traditional models and adapt to various application scenarios as well. Designed for flexibility, they accommodate both inverters and power optimizers and adhere to industry-standard dimensions. This is aimed at resulting in increased container utilization, a reduction in transportation costs, and greater convenience during installation and maintenance.

The latest modules lineup is manufactured using 100% renewable energy, achieving PFAS-free, RoHS and REACH certifications, underscoring their commitment to environmental safety.

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EDF Renewables North America, along with NV Energy, McCarthy Building Companies and the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians, has celebrated the completion of the Arrow Canyon Solar+Storage Project.

The EDF Renewables-developed project began construction in September 2021, with the solar portion completed in December 2022 and storage portion completed this month.

Situated on the Moapa Indian Reservation in Clark County, Nev., the 275 MW solar project is coupled with a 75 MW five-hour battery energy storage system, which generates enough electricity to power 57,600 average Nevada homes. During construction, over 450 jobs were created, with 10% of them filled with Tribal members.

The energy generated is supplied to NV Energy through a 20-year power purchase agreement.

“The partnership between our Moapa community and EDF Renewables has been a mutually beneficial one,” says Kage Thompson, Moapa Tribal Council member. “The project, built entirely on Moapa River Indian Reservation lands, put over 45 tribal members to work during the construction of the project and will continue to provide good revenue streams for the Tribe into the future.”

Arrow Canyon was designed to minimize impacts to wildlife, habitat, and other environmental resources of the Moapa Indian Reservation. The project comprises 621,000 high efficiency bifacial solar photovoltaic modules in conjunction with 564 battery segments. By coupling the solar facility with an energy storage solution, electricity produced during peak solar hours can be dispatched later in the day, thereby creating a balance between electricity generation and demand. Energy storage can further smooth electricity prices, manage evening energy ramps, mitigate curtailment, and provide grid stability.

EDF Renewables’ asset optimization group will perform operations and maintenance services for the life of the project. The group will provide NERC compliance support, remote monitoring and balance-of-plant management to maximize power production.

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Huasun says it has set a new power output record for heterojunction (HJT) photovoltaic modules with the Huasun Himalaya G12-132 HJT solar module.

Huasun adds that its module showcases the immense potential of HJT technology, which has been certified by third-party testing and certification institution TÜV SÜD. The module has a power output of 750.544 W and conversion efficiency of 24.16%, setting a new benchmark for the mass production of photovoltaic modules.

The Himalaya G12-132 module is composed of double-sided microcrystalline G12-20BB HJT cells, manufactured at Huasun’s Xuancheng Phase IV HJT Cell Project. The average mass-production efficiency of these cells has now reached 25.8%, representing a 0.5% increase from three months ago at the project’s production commencement.

This achievement is attributed to notable progress in cell efficiency, coupled with the refinement of the PIB + light conversion film encapsulation process. As a result, the Himalaya G12-132 HJT module has surpassed its own record set six weeks ago, achieving a 6 W increase over the previous 744.43 W record.

Since its inception, Huasun has been dedicated to positioning heterojunction as a mainstream solar cell technology in the N-type era. The company says it remains committed to exploring and implementing HJT mass production solutions that prioritize higher efficiency, increased power generation, and enhanced returns.

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Arevon secured a deal with JP Morgan to purchase US$191 million worth of investment tax credits (ITC) and production tax credits (PTC) in one of the first examples of credit transferability in the US.

“ITC and PTC tax credit transferability is a major step forward for the energy transition, post-IRA, and we are excited to be able to leverage it on the Vikings financing structure,” said Daniel Murphy, Arevon’s director of project finance.

Indeed, industry figures have said that the IRA transferability scheme could trigger a ‘great rethink’ of the US energy market as new players enter the space, as previously covered by our sister PV Tech (Premium access).

Guidance on transferability was issued in July, where the Treasury said that it would make it possible for smaller entities with lesser tax liability to benefit from the credits by transferring them to a profitable taxpayer, like JP Morgan in this case.

Last month, financing firm Evergrow claimed the first transferability transaction for a solar PV plant in Connecticut.

The remainder of the US$529 million financing came via a US$338 million debt facility from MUFG, BNP Paribas, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and First Citizens Bank.

Arevon’s financing is the first reported example of transferability being used for a solar or storage project of that scale that Energy-Storage.news is aware of.

See the full version of this article on our sister site PV Tech Power.

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The agreement will see Hithium supply 1GWh of battery products to Perfect Power, which describes itself a developer focused on ‘distributed energy storage’ primarily in California and Texas, the US’ two largest markets for energy storage.

Distributed would include the smaller end of utility-scale projects, with Perfect Power having developed 9.9MW battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Texas. That includes a 79.2MW portfolio sold last year to UK-based energy storage investor Gore Street Capital. Projects that size and under benefit from a faster grid interconnection process in Texas.

Hithium chairman Jeff Wu commented: “Cooperating with Perfect Power is an exciting step for us in the U.S., allowing us to support projects in two of the country’s largest energy markets, California and Texas. Through this collaborative endeavor, we aim to further the penetration and deployment of advanced energy storage products into the Net Zero transition in the US.”

This year saw Hithium launch in Europe as well as raise US$620 million in capital from investors in a Series C for capacity expansion, equipment purchases and research and development. At the RE+ clean energy expo and conference in Las Vegas in September it launched a 5MWh 20-foot containerised BESS product, one of a swathe of BESS providers to do so this year.

Perfect Power is a portfolio company of private equity firm SER Capital Partners. Perfect Power lists microgrid provider MicroGrid Networks and energy efficiency and renewable energy solutions firm Brightcore Energy as affiliate companies, the former of which was named at the MOU ceremony (picture above).

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The site is “strategically located,” Pacific Green said, in the Limestone Coast region in South Australia, in the southeastern part of the state close to its border with Victoria and with the availability of an existing 275kVA substation to connect directly to.

“Our Limestone Coast Battery Energy Park can act as a load during the day, increasing the viability of even more solar and wind generation, whilst shifting energy to the times it is most valuable in the evening peak,” Pacific Green’s managing director in Australia Joel Alexander said.

Pacific Green is aiming to develop several large-scale ‘Energy Park’ sites around Australia. A few weeks ago on 6 October, the company announced its entry into the Australian market, making deals to secure sites around the city of Portland, Victoria, on which it could develop and construct 1GW/2.5GWh of Energy Park facilities.

At the time Pacific Green said it hoped to begin construction on the Victorian Energy Parks in 2024, for commercial operation of the plants to begin in 2026. The company gave the same timeline for its Energy Park in South Australia.

“Coupled with our energy parks in Portland, Victoria, this agreement cements Pacific Green’s multi-gigawatt platform that will be deployed across Australia in the coming months and years,” Pacific Green CEO Scott Poulter said.

The electricity grids in South Australia and Victoria are connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM), which has been the source of many of the merchant opportunities for energy storage that have seen the business case for batteries grow recently in Australia.

In recent analysis, Rystad Energy noted that the NEM is one of the most volatile electricity markets in the world in terms of fluctuations in prices in an average intraday spread, giving it an urgent need for energy storage resources to manage that volatility.

Meanwhile, despite Pacific Green’s incorporation in the US state of Delaware, its battery storage development activities to date prior to its Australia incursion have been in the UK where it has set itself a target of bringing 1.1GW of BESS online through a partnership with fellow developer Tupa Energy. The company just secured around US$150 million in financing a few days ago for a 249MW/373.5MWh project in southern England.

On 7 November, a day after Energy-Storage.news reported the developer’s securing of funds for the UK project, Sheaf Energy Park, Pacific Green said it had agreed to sell it to asset manager Sosteneo – with which it had worked on the 99.8MW/99.8MWh Richborough project now in operation – for £210 million (US$258 million).

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The long-duration storage company announced last week that it has been invested in by the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), the investment arm of the EIC, set up by the European Commission to support technologies at pre-commercialisation stage that offer promise within the European Union (EU).

The EIC Fund’s €5 million commitment brings the second tranche of Energy Dome’s second funding round to €60 million (US$64.26 million), building on a €40 million first tranche which it closed out in April. The EIC had previously provided €17.5 million grant and equity funding to the tech company at the beginning of this year.

Energy Dome claims its technology is safe, scalable and easy to deploy, as well as being cheaper than lithium-ion or pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) technologies. In an interview earlier this year, SVP of strategy, corporate development and investor relations Ben Potter told Energy-Storage.news the technology’s sweet spot is for long-duration energy storage (LDES) applications of between 8-24 hours.

A 200MWh project using the company’s so-called CO2 Battery proposed by US utility Alliant Energy was awarded funding from the US government at the end of September, as part of a US$325 million funding injection into LDES.

German government invests in Malta Inc

A consortium featuring US long-duration thermal energy storage startup Malta Inc has been awarded a €9 million German government grant for energy transition technologies.

The company, which calls its proprietary molten salt-based technology ‘thermal hydro’ or ‘pumped heat storage’, said earlier this week that the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK) awarded the funds towards technoeconomic analysis of the technology’s potential for decarbonising electricity and heating.

The money will also support the expansion of the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR’s) testing facility for thermal storage tech based on molten salts, at which a heat exchanger built by fellow consortium member Alfa Laval will be put through its paces.

Malta Inc’s ‘pumped heat’ tech converts electricity into heat, which is used to heat the salt. At the same time, cooling energy which is released is also stored in a special fluid. A heat engine then driven by the temperature difference can then be used to generate electricity, while heat can also be released.

The company counts Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Ventures among its investors, and was a founding member of the global Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council).

Along with Malta Inc’s German subsidiary and Alfa Laval, funding was also awarded to Siemens Energy, which has an agreement to co-develop the turbomachinery required for the pumped heat systems. Malta has various agreements with potential customers to deploy or trial the technology, but there was perhaps less good news for the company a few days ago when Canadian utility NB Power in the province of New Brunswick said it would be dropping plans for a previously announced 100MW/1000MWh molten salt storage-plus-green hydrogen project, according to local news reports.

Siemens Energy partners with multi-day compressed air storage startup

Corre Energy, an Ireland-headquartered provider of a compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology aimed at applications requiring multiple days of storage discharge, has partnered with Siemens Energy.

The Irish company said this week that it has formed a global collaboration with the German engineering company for the commercialisation of its CAES, including using Siemens equipment on a proposed 280MW project in Texas, US.

Corre Energy bought the large-scale project from developer Contour Energy in July this year. It comprises three underground salt caverns in which the air would be stored, and would play into Texas’ ERCOT electricity market. Corre is targeting getting construction started on 1.3GW of CAES by 2026, and signed an agreement with Dutch utility Eneco for a possible 320MW project with 84-hour duration in late 2022.

“We are particularly impressed with Siemens Energy’s groundbreaking progress in demonstrating the ability of its turbines to run on hydrogen which is key to our clean energy plans,” Corre Energy’s US development arm president Chet Lyons said.

In a mid-2022 Guest Blog for this site, Corre Energy chief strategy officer Patrick McClughan wrote about how the company saw LDES as a crucial enabler of energy security and decarbonisation, with specific regard to the EU in the wake of the Russian fossil fuel supply crisis as it got underway.

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Canadian Solar says it is establishing a 5 GW solar PV wafer production facility in Chonburi, Thailand.

The solar photovoltaic N-type wafer manufacturing plant is slated to begin production in March. The solar wafers produced at this facility will initially be used at the existing Thailand TOPCon cell manufacturing plant in the same location. From 2025 onwards and once the previously announced 5 GW U.S. cell factory in Jeffersonville, Ind., becomes fully operational, these wafers will be used as inputs to the Indiana cell factory.

“Establishing this solar wafer factory in Thailand is a key milestone that will enable us to better serve our U.S. customers with a more diversified and resilient supply chain, complementing our recently announced investments in the U.S. in solar cell and solar module manufacturing,” says Thomas Koerner, senior vice president of Canadian Solar.

“Importantly, it will also allow us to responsibly meet the new requirements related to the latest and adjusted AD/CVD ruling by the U.S. Department of Commerce,” he adds.

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The announcement was made in Resolution 906/2023, published on Monday 6 November.

Technical information about the electricity grid in Argentina and a procedure for receiving and evaluating the EOIs will now be prepared by the country’s wholesale electricity market operator, CAMMESA (Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico Sociedad Anónima).

CAMMESA needs to publish its procedure within 20 days of the Resolution’s publication and interested parties will have 120 days to submit their proposals, with CAMMESA then having 60 days to present the evaluations of those proposals to the Ministry.

Interested parties are being invited to propose projects encompassing the financing, construction and management of energy storage systems in the wholesale electricity market. The projects could be for optimising generation dispatch, providing power reserve services or other mechanisms proposed.

Different technologies and technical characteristics will be considered, with proposals expected to outline power and energy, charging and discharging periods, maximum storage periods (in days to years), useful life and number of cycles, degradation and other details.

With Argentina being a major source of lithium carbonate for lithium-ion batteries, EOIs which propose ways to integrate a national supply chain into project delivery will be “valued”, the Resolution added.

The news comes after our publisher Solar Media recently held the Energy Storage Summit Latin America 2023 in Santiago, Chile, where the bulk of the sub-continent’s grid-scale energy storage activity is happening.

See the full bulletin from the Ministry of the Economy in Argentina here (in Spanish).

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