A DC BESS container fully manufactured in the US sits at an average price of US$256/kWh in 2023 for a 2024/25 delivery, while one manufactured in China for US delivery in 2025 sits at US$218/kWh, Clean Energy Associates (CEA) said. The latter includes a 10.89% Section 301 tariff for select Chinese goods.

The firm’s forecasts use the example of 20-foot container comprising 14 tacks of 280 Ah prismatic lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells rated at 3.2V with a 4-hour capacity and a liquid-cooled system.

CEA said that if certain subsidies for US clean energy technology production brought in under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are passed directly onto the customer, the US-made BESS price could fall by 13%.

These are the 45X tax credit for battery cell production, which pays US$35/kWh of production directly to the manufacturer, and the 30D tax credit for consumers buying an electric vehicle (EV) powered by a battery that meets minimum domestic content requirements around the cell and the critical minerals in it.

These will be possible once US manufacturing begins to come online at scale in 2025. As Energy-Storage.news has written previously, the IRA and its upstream incentives have led to a boom in manufacturing investments across clean energy including lithium-ion batteries and energy storage.

Those requirements for 30D are similar but separate from the US-made domestic content requirements for BESS projects to qualify for a 10% adder to the investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage, which can be monetised by those investing in the project.

The CEA’s report confirmed what Energy-Storage.news has been told anecdotally about BESS costs coming down in 2023 after the spikes of 2022, mainly driven by the soaring cost of lithium carbonate. Going forward, BESS costs will continue to follow the (mostly downward) trajectory of lithium.

Although the CEA didn’t reveal the exact figures in the sample of the report, its charts show that China-made BESS cost for US delivery has fallen by nearly 20% while the US-made BESS cost has fallen by around 9%.

The lithium-ion battery cells are around half of the cost of a containerised BESS solution, CEA added.

Currently, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells manufactured in the US cost 30% more than those manufactured in China, US$123.9/kWh versus US$78.7/kWh. However, the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives could make US lithium-ion batteries the ‘lowest cost option worldwide’, CEA said.

See an infographic from CEA showing the BESS cost breakdown and the long-term price outlook for the different components making up a full solution.

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The two parts of the project do not appear to share a grid connection, with SENS saying the project totals 65MW of power.

It brings the developers portfolio of projects with land leases to 330MW of BESS and 75MW of solar capacity.

SENS still needs to secure further project rights to get it to ready-to-build (RTB) status, at which it could sell it for 250,000-500,000 SEK meaning a total value of 16.3-32.5 million SEK (US$1.5-2.9 million). It can sell earlier than that too, as it did with a 25MW project to Switzerland-based Axpo.

Henrik Boman, CEO of SENS, said: “We are enthusiastic about taking further steps towards a sustainable energy future by signing a new lease agreement in Sörmland. This project, which integrates a solar farm with a battery facility, demonstrates our capacity and strategic positioning to successfully navigate the energy challenges of the future and contribute to building a robust and sustainable energy infrastructure.”

SENS is among one of the busiest developers bringing early-stage projects to light in the energy storage market in Sweden. Earlier this month it secured the land for another 50MW project in Hallsberg while in September it secured the land for a 40MW system project in Södermanland.

Sweden’s market has picked up this year and last year as its ageing fleet of hydropower assets starts to reach the limit of how much it can cover the country’s ancillary services need, creating opportunities for energy storage. Finland-based BESS optimiser Capalo AI recently talked to Energy-Storage.news about “extremely attractive revenues” for BESS in the Nordic market.

BESS in Sweden today mainly provide ancillary services, but long-term the revenue stack will move towards arbitrage, capacity markets and optimisation for grid owners and industrial processes according to another developer Ingrid Capacity (speaking to us at the Energy Storage Summit in London in February), which recently raised US$100 million for its pipeline.

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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The financing was closed following the formation of a partnership with Sosteneo, an asset manager focused on energy transition infrastructure on greenfield sites, and part of the portfolio of global asset management group Generali Investments.

Sosteneo was launched earlier this year, with hires including former Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) CEO Ivor Frischknecht, a managing partner at the firm, and the transaction marks its first Australian investment. Financial terms were not disclosed, although according to Edify Sosteneo “acquires 100% ownership on behalf of its clients” and total value of the project was given as AU$400 million (US$254.2 million).

Long-term syndicated debt facility was provided by lenders DNB, Commonwealth Bank and BNP Paribas.  

It marks Edify Energy’s third grid-scale battery storage project to date, with the company having brought online its most recent, Riverina and Darlington Point, comprising three separate co-located systems totalling 150MW/300MWh, a few months ago.

The new project will utilise Tesla’s Megapack battery storage units, as did the Riverina and Darlington Point project. A few weeks ago, Edify got federal government approval to put a 200MW/800MWh battery storage facility at a 600MW solar PV plant in Queensland.

Battery system will play ‘advanced role’

Back in September last year, Energy-Storage.news reported that the state government of Victoria would be supporting the project with AU$119 million of funding.

That was based on the KESS enabling the government’s Murray REZ to host up to 300MW of renewable energy generation, participating in energy and ancillary services markets. The REZ is one of dozens planned and in development by various state governments across Australia, with interest from developers likely to be oversubscribed in many cases.

The KESS will also provide inertia to the grid, through being equipped with advanced inverters. One of the roles played by large-scale thermal power plants like coal generators is that the large rotating mass of the machinery provides inertia to the grid, helping maintain grid frequency and stability.

With more and more conventional generators being taken offline and growing shares of inverter-based renewables, the amount of inertia on the grid decreases.

One answer to that loss of inertia is the deployment of synchronous condensers – as readers will have seen from news of a project recently completed in Ireland by Siemens – but another is using advanced inverters at battery energy storage system (BESS) plants.

The latter has been the case in Australia, with ARENA supporting the integration of advanced inverters at numerous retrofit and new-build BESS projects – including Tesla’s famous Hornsdale Power Reserve project in South Australia, which got its retrofit last year.

KESS in Murray River will supply those system-strengthening services to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) under a 20-year contract, also signed last year. Tesla’s ‘Virtual Machine Mode’ setting on its Megapacks allows the BESS to provide ‘synthetic’ or ‘virtual’ inertia, as it is sometimes called.

Meanwhile, Shell Energy has signed up as off-taker for the full 185MW and 370MWh of the battery system’s output and capacity over a 15-year deal. According to previous announcements, it is expected to come online in 2025.

The underlying drivers for battery storage in the region appear strong – the project will contribute to Victoria’s target of 2.6GW of energy storage by 2030 and 6.3GW by 2035, with the state aiming for net zero emissions by 2045.

Meanwhile, new analysis by Rystad Energy found that the National Electricity Market (NEM), which Victoria’s grid is connected to, had the highest amount of electricity price volatility of almost 40 global markets analysed. Rystad drew attention to an urgent need for energy storage across the NEM, which the likes of AEMO and Australia’s national science agency CSIRO have previously also highlighted.  

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The company said its solution leverages the proven design of the previously-commercialised sodium metal halide battery, and Inlyte CEO and founder Dr. Antonio Baclig explained how it would go one step further than that technology ultimately did.

“Conventional sodium metal halide batteries, made from nickel and salt, were developed for electric vehicles in the 1980s and ’90s but never made it down the cost curve,” he explained.

“At Stanford, I realised that by optimising that design for the grid instead of for vehicles, and by using iron instead of nickel, we could drive the cost incredibly low. Inexpensive storage is what will truly make wind and solar a competitive total solution versus fossil fuels, not just in California but everywhere in the world.”

The company said that iron and salt batteries can also operate in extreme heat or cold, unlike lithium-ion ones, making them well suited for locations with increasingly high temperatures.

The firm is targeting the diurnal (daily) energy storage market with a storage duration of 4-10 hours, which it claimed its batteries will provide excellent round-trip efficiency (RTE). Lithium-ion is over 90% for comparison.

This time last year Inlyte acquired Beta Research Ltd, which is composed of the core team of scientists in the UK who originally developed the sodium metal halide battery technology 40 years ago and brought it to commercial readiness. Beta has an existing production line with 30,000 square feet of manufacturing and testing space, quickening Inlyte’s route to market once design is complete.

“The experience of the Beta Research team and their facilities give Inlyte a significant advantage compared to other battery startups in this space. They don’t need to find a pilot factory, get the tooling, or figure out how to manufacture,” said Laurie Menoud, founding partner at At One Ventures. “Inlyte’s ability to compete with lithium-ion on lifetime, round-trip efficiency, and of course upfront cost also gives them a significant opportunity in a market that’s exploding right now.”

The announcement also said that iron and salt batteries have no risk of fire.

Inlyte Energy plans to set up a US manufacturing plant to leverage the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives, including a US$35/kWh direct payment for battery production and a 10% domestic content adder to the investment tax credit for downstream projects.

Another notable company that has a stationary energy storage solution using iron and salt-based battery technology is flow battery firm ESS Inc.

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TEP will own and operate the project which is set to come online in the summer of 2025.

SolBank is a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cell-based system which Canadian Solar recently launched having previously used a white-labelled BESS product for its projects. The switch to a proprietary solution was blamed for anticipated flat growth in BESS shipments this year.

The firm is targeting 10GWh of annual BESS production capacity by the end of this year.

Canadian Solar’s announcement described the project for TEP as a “1GWh DC” order, alluding to the need to oversize a project to account for losses during conversion from DC power to AC at the inverter.

It is the firm’s second large order in Arizona after it secured a 1,200MWh (AC) order for the Papago project, which is being developed by its developer and independent power producer (IPP) arm Recurrent Energy for another utility, Arizona Public Service Company (APC), also set for a 2025 operation date.

Arizona has fast become one of the most active energy storage markets in the US after the leading states California and Texas, with utilities signing long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) or ‘tolling agreements’ for large-scale projects making them more bankable.

Just this week a 940MWh project was launched by electric co-operative AEPCO while developer and IPP Plus Power completed the largest single-ever financing for a standalone project, in Arizona, as part of a US$1.8 billion financing round.

See more coverage of the Arizona market here.

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Brookfield’s acquisition of Duke Energy’s unregulated commercial renewables business wrapped up this week, and with it the Deriva Energy brand has been established.“Today is a significant milestone for our business and opens an exciting new chapter in our history,” says Chris Fallon, president of Deriva Energy. “We are now an independent developer, owner and operator of clean energy projects, with the backing of Brookfield, one of the world’s largest owners and operators of renewable power.”Fallon had served as president of Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions since 2021.“As part of Brookfield, we have access to capital for growth and a wealth of operating expertise,” he adds.Brookfield has approximately 90 GW of combined operating and pipeline renewable energy capacity across all major U.S. power grids.

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Trina Solar has produced the first Vertex N 610W module and n-type i-TOPCon cell at its plant in Huai’an, China, marking the start of mass production of the products.

The Huai’an plant, in Jiangsu province, has achieved full-scale phase II production as Trina Solar continues to ramp up mass production of n-type modules. In reaching this milestone, Trina Solar says it needed less than six months from startup to production of the first n-type modules and cells.

Based on 210 mm rectangular silicon wafer technology and n-type i-TOPCon Advanced technology, with highest average efficiency of mass-produced cells at 25.8%, Vertex N 610W modules are highly compatible with trackers, with 13% more installation capacity for single-row tracker systems. The module dimensions add scope to utility-scale or commercial and industrial solar applications and improve the utilization rate of a 40HC container to 98.5%, reducing logistics and BOS costs for customers, the company notes.

Trina Solar says phase II production of n-type cells and modules in Huai’an ensures sufficient capacity for n-type integration and lays a solid foundation for the efficient delivery of Vertex N 610W modules. By the end of the year, Trina Solar’s n-type wafer capacity is forecast to reach 50 GW, module capacity 95 GW and cell production capacity 75 GW, including 40 GW of n-type cells, all of which are equipped with n-type i-TOPCon Advanced technology.

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An affiliate of solar module manufacturer JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd. has signed its largest-ever supply agreement: a deal to provide ACWA Power with 3.8 GW of N-type Tiger Neo modules for two projects in Saudi Arabia.

Produced using N-type TOPCon technology, Tiger Neo modules deliver high efficiency along with reduced degradation and temperature coefficient, enhanced bifacial factor, and high yield per watt to reduce system lifetime energy cost.

“N-type TOPCon technology will help ensure our solar projects meet performance goals to provide clean and competitively priced energy for desalination and hydrogen production as well as to our customers across the Middle East,” says Yunhe Lyu, executive vice president of ACWA Power China. “We look forward to a much broader, higher-level and strategic alliance with JinkoSolar in solar generation, energy storage and other renewable fields.”

“ACWA Power continues to be the world’s largest private water desalination company, and also a pioneer in green energy transition,” adds Robin Li, general manager of JinkoSolar Middle East and North Africa (MENA). “We are excited to be expanding our MENA footprint and engaging in a more diversified and innovative cooperation with ACWA Power.”

The projects are the 1,581 MW Al Kahfah and 2,257 MW Ar Rass 2.

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According to the subsidiary, the Bustleholme BESS aims to “supercharge the West Midland’s green transport revolution” by supporting the creation of a mass-scale power infrastructure for rapid electric vehicle (EV) charging.

A second 50MW BESS in the West Midlands region, in the nearby city of Coventry, is expected to go live in November 2023.

Connected to the electricity grid via National Grid’s Bustleholme substation, the BESS can help transfer power through a private-wire network to sites in the north west of Birmingham that can be used to support rapid charging, the installation of public charging hubs, bus depots, and commercial fleets.

A similar project EDF Renewables completed last year in Oxford, the Energy Superhub Oxford, uses a private wire to power an EV charging station which the company claimed was the most powerful in Europe.

The project is part of a pipeline of UK battery storage projects which EDF Renewables inherited from the acquisition of developer Pivot Power in 2019. The majority are 50MW systems and some, like the Energy Superhub Oxford, include a private wire to power EV charging, and are directly connected to the transmission network of National Grid, with Pivot among the first developers to do this in the UK.

To see the full version of this article go to Solar Power Portal.

TagEnergy reveals project partners for 100MW unit

Clean energy company TagEnergy has announced Tesla, Habitat Energy and RES as project partners for a two-hour 100MW/200MWh BESS in North Yorkshire.

According to a TagEnergy statement, engineering procurement and construction contractor Tesla will provide a system of Tesla Megapack 2XL lithium-ion batteries. Habitat Energy partners as a route to market and battery optimiser, while independent renewable energy company RES has been engaged as an asset manager.

Construction commenced on the Lakeside project in August 2023, with the energy park due to go live by mid-2024. TagEnergy acquired its 100% stake in the battery storage facility from RES in December 2021.

Development at the BESS project will be aided by a debt package worth up to £70 million, provided by lenders Santander, Rabobank and Triple Point. It also includes an uncommitted accordion facility with a view to incorporate further assets into the funding structure.

Franck Woitiez, CEO of TagEnergy said: “Securing a single non-recourse debt package without a revenue floor is testament to the value our innovative approach to financing offers the market. We’re excited to now move to the next stage of the project to accelerate the energy transition.

To see the full version of this article go to Solar Power Portal.

Exagen proposes solar-plus-storage project with 75MW BESS

Exagen has submitted planning applications for a 28MW solar farm coupled with a 75MW BESS in the West Midlands.

Holly Land Energy Park will be situated on two sections of land between Balsall Common and Kenilworth, Warwickshire leading to a split authority application to be submitted by Exagento Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council and Warwick District Council.

The 28MW solar farm will be connected to the network via an underground cable, whilst the battery storage system, which has an output of up to 75MW, will be connected via an adjacent 132kV overhead line which crosses the site.

The pre-application public consultation began in April 2023 with input from local authorities across three events during the Spring, which Exagen said allowed for “optimised proposals” to be delivered.

According to the renewable energy developer, this is the third large-scale project it has submitted into planning in the last 10 months as it expands its current 2.5GW pipeline of projects in development, aiming to have a rolling output of 500MW of UK sites entering construction year-on-year.

The UK battery storage market has entered a period of falling revenue expectations and subsequent falls in the valuations of both projects and the listed companies investing in and operating them, as Energy-Storage.news wrote last week.

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

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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The Apache Solar II project BESS will be a 4-hour system, and the project is undergoing siting, design and permitting over the next several months with commercial operation expected in summer 2023.

Although the press release didn’t specify, utilities in Arizona have typically signed long-term ‘tolling agreements’ or power purchase agreements (PPAs) with BESS project operators for the offtake of a system. Enlight secured such an agreement for a separate solar-plus-storage project with a 824MWh BESS in August.

Patrick Ledger, AEPCO CEO said: “As a not-for-profit cooperative, we work with our member-owners and their boards and managers to ensure that investments in new resources are prudently made. Our objective is to provide affordable and reliable power, not to make a profit.”

“The Apache Solar II project demonstrates the advantage of smaller utilities coming together on a larger project, to take advantage of economies of scale and substantially reduced costs for all participants and their electric consumers at the end of the line.”

Arizona is fast-becoming one of the most active energy storage markets in the US, with long-term PPAs for energy storage helping to drive numerous large-scale projects. See all recent Energy-Storage.news coverage of activity in the state here.

Electric co-operatives cover over half of the US’ land mass and often operate in regions with higher levels of poverty.

EDP and Silicon Ranch complete smaller projects in Arizona

In related news, two projects have come online over the last month also pairing solar and storage on a smaller scale in Arizona.

EDP Renewables North America (EDPR NA) has completed a solar-plus-storage project with a 60MWh BESS for Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC), while Silicon Ranch has deployed a similar size system for another co-operative in the state.

EDPR NA held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new 23.27MWdc ground-mount solar array yesterday (25 October), which also includes a 15MW/60MWh BESS provided by system integrator Stem Inc.

The project was built for MEC, a not-for-profit member-owned electric cooperative utility.

Stem Inc will use its AI-driven energy management system (EMS) platform Athena to optimise the project BESS activity and its PowerTrack solar management for the solar array.

Tyler Carlson, CEO of MEC said: “We are pleased to be working with EDP Renewables on Mohave Electric Cooperative’s first solar plus storage project. This project demonstrates MEC’s proactive planning to increase reliability, meet renewable energy mandates, and support the overall electrical grid.”

EDPR NA is part of the Madrid-headquartered international developer and independent power producer (IPP).

The ceremony was also attended by the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, a non-profit that supports the efforts of Native American tribes to transition to clean energy, with a representative recognising the Mohave spiritual content of the land.

IIPP Silicon Ranch meanwhile announced the completion of the 20MW, 80MWh BESS McNeal Solar Farm, pictured above, earlier this month. The project was built for Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative (SSVEC), a not-for-profit member-owned electric cooperative utility.

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