TotalEnergies has started commercial operations of Myrtle Solar, a 380 MW solar farm located south of Houston, co-located with 225 MWh of battery storage.

With 705,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels installed over an area equivalent to 1,800 American football fields, Myrtle produces enough green electricity to cover the equivalent consumption of 70,000 homes.

About 70% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply green electricity to the company’s industrial plants in the U.S. Gulf Coast region. It is part of the company’s “Go Green” Project, which will enable the company to cover, by 2025, the power needs and curtail the Scope 1+2 emissions of its industrial sites in Port Arthur and La Porte in Texas and Carville in Louisiana.

The remaining 30% of Myrtle’s capacity will supply green electricity to Kilroy Realty, a publicly traded real estate company, under a 15-year corporate power purchase agreement indexed on merchant prices.

In addition to the photovoltaic installations, the solar power plant also features battery energy storage equipment to meet the need for grid stabilization. The storage is made of 114 energy storage systems containers designed and assembled by TotalEnergies affiliate Saft.

“This startup is another milestone in achieving our goal to build an integrated and profitable position in Texas, where ERCOT is the main electrical grid operator,” says Vincent Stoquart, senior vice president, renewables, at TotalEnergies.

Myrtle was initially developed by SunChase Power and Eolian.

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The City of Fresno Department of Public Utilities (DPU) has conducted a ground-breaking ceremony for the development of its on-site solar energy and battery storage portfolio, which is now taking shape at three energy-intensive sites: the Fresno-Clovis Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility, the Northeast Surface Water Treatment Facility, and the Southeast Surface Water Treatment Facility.

DPU’s 27 MW DC behind-the-meter portfolio is being developed in partnership with ForeFront Power, a developer of solar energy and battery storage projects in the U.S. and Mexico, and the projects will be constructed by local union labor from the IBEW Local 100.

The projects are part of the City of Fresno’s comprehensive plan to lower its energy costs, bolster environmental resiliency and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At a time of rising electricity costs, these DPU projects will save the city an expected $100 million in taxpayer dollars by 2045. Development of the city’s solar and storage portfolio has created 192 local jobs, with the three DPU sites contributing 120 of these local jobs.

“We’re pleased to have helped the City of Fresno with this momentous expansion of its renewable energy assets,” says Rachel McLaughlin, senior vice president of sales and marketing at ForeFront Power. “It makes sense that with over 300 days of sunshine per year, the city is harnessing one of its most abundant resources to protect pocket books, the air, and the climate all at once.”

Under the terms of a PPA with the city, ForeFront Power will develop, own and maintain the solar and storage portfolio.

Each DPU site will feature ground-mounted solar energy arrays and single-axis trackers, with a combined output of 47 million kWh annually. When completed, the Fresno-Clovis Regional Wastewater Reclamation Facility site is expected to be one of the largest behind-the-meter solar energy and battery storage projects in California, with 17 MW DC of solar and 2.3 MW DC of battery storage. Moreover, the City of Fresno will host the largest multi-campus solar energy and battery storage portfolio in the world, at 34 MW DC.

The DPU projects will complement the city’s completed behind-the-meter solar energy assets at the Fresno Convention Center, the Highway City Science Center, the Police Training Facility and Fresno Yosemite International Airport.

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Danny Weidlich

Utility-scale solar and storage developer Palladium Energy has closed a $10 million corporate equity investment from Ultra Capital, a private investment firm that provides growth equity and asset capital to companies focused on the energy transition and de-carbonization.

The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of the Palladium team and development pipeline, with a continued focus on originating, acquiring and developing high-quality solar and storage projects.

In conjunction with this investment, Palladium has formed a board of directors initially comprising the co-founders (Mark Mirabito, Nobel Chang and Danny Weidlich) and Mike Reynolds, managing director at Ultra Capital. With over 15 years of experience, Reynolds brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in the power and renewables markets and will provide insights to support Palladium’s growth and execution.

The Palladium team has developed and financed projects totaling 6.9 GW and $2.8 billion.

“Since the inception of Palladium, the company has emphasized building a best-in-class team as the foundation for long-term, sustainable success in the growing yet complex industry of renewable power generation,” says Weidlich. “The investment by Ultra Capital represents validation of what Palladium has built to date, including the exceptional team, institutional-quality asset base and strategic partnerships.”

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Maureen Gannon

D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI), in partnership with Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) and SOLV Energy, has broken ground on the San Juan 1 project, a 200 MW AC solar and 400 MWh storage facility located in Farmington, N.M.

“We are thrilled to achieve this milestone on the San Juan 1 project,” says Thomas de Swardt, chief commercial officer of DESRI. “In the face of numerous headwinds facing the industry over the last two years, we deeply appreciate the hard work, creativity, and persistence of our partners to successfully bring this project into construction.”

The San Juan 1 project has 20-year power purchase agreements with PNM and is being constructed by SOLV Energy. The facility is expected to begin commercial operations toward the end of next year.

“The dedication of San Juan Solar 1 marks further progress in PNM’s clean energy transformation,” says PNM’s Maureen Gannon. “This day is a credit to New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act for promoting the placement of new clean energy resources in this region as we transition out of coal generation, in addition to providing financial support to the impacted workers and tribal communities.”

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Greenprint has used the new investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage to invest in the 150MW/300MWh Revolution battery energy storage system (BESS), one of three equally sized projects Spearmint is developing in ERCOT.

ERCOT is the grid operator for the majority of Texas, and its BESS capacity is growing fast and could even overtake the current largest market California in the next year.

Revolution has already been built and is expected to begin operations later this year, Spearmint said. Inverter and BESS supplier Sungrow provided the BESS technology while engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Mortensen built it.

Tax equity investments allow investors to provide equity capital for a project and receive tax credits in return to reduce their tax liabilities at the end of the financial year.

This year has seen two major changes to tax equity investing for renewables in the US. The first is that the ITC was made available for standalone energy storage having previously only been for renewable generation.

The second is that new transferability provisions means tax credits can be bought and sold, paving the way for investors less familiar with the investment mechanism to enter the space. Prior to transferability, investments required setting up a tax equity joint venture structure, a long and expensive process.

New tax credit transaction platform Evergrow recently claimed to be the first to use the new transferability provision to complete a transaction, for a small-scale solar PV array.

Spearmint said Greenprint’s investment in Revolution is one of the first applications of the standalone ITC. Other uses of it reported on by Energy-Storage.news in 2023 include investments into large-scale projects from Plus Power, SMT Energy and SUSI, Strata Clean Energy and Eolian, the latter of which claimed the very first use of it back in February.

Greenprint Capital provided the undisclosed tax equity investment into SMT Energy and SUSI’s projects, also in ERCOT, in August while also providing US$10.8 million in tax equity financing to Nexus Renewables for its BESS pipeline in ERCOT and California, in June.

Spearmint Energy recently contributed a guest blog to Energy-Storage.news on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled third-party BESS optimisation and the considerations for operators when deciding how to use it.

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It comes three months after Kyon announced a 600MW pipeline of BESS projects with renewable energy developer and financing firm Obton, while the pair collaborated on a 32MWh system commissioned last year, which Kyon developed and Obton financed. Kyon didn’t specify whether the new project is part of that co-operation.

Deployments in the German grid-scale energy storage market have picked up sharply since 2022 after the quiet few years which followed the saturation of available ancillary service market opportunities. Alongside increased opportunities in ancillary services and energy trading, federal grants for co-located projects are helping drive growth in projects under Germany’s Innovation Tender.

Some 400MW of solar-plus-storage projects recently won Innovation Tender contracts which will give them an additional premium per kWh of energy discharged.

Kyon said the new project will provide grid stabilising services as well as helping to integrate more renewables onto the grid, with its 2-hour duration allowing for more energy-intensive activities.

As Energy-Storage.news reported last month, 2-hour BESS projects in Germany are now deriving a majority of their revenues from energy-driven activities like wholesale energy trading and the provision of energy through ancillary service aFRR (automatic frequency restoration reserve).

One-hour systems meanwhile still make most revenues through FCR (frequency containment reserve, which requires a response time of 30 seconds versus five minutes for aFRR), and having capacity available for aFRR, which is remunerated separately to actual provision of energy.

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Combining CMBlu’s organic flow battery technology and Strabag’s construction and infrastructure expertise opens up opportunities for industrial companies, utilities and grid operators to build large-scale projects using the tech, the companies said.

CMBlu’s ‘Organic SolidFlow’ technology is a redox flow battery which uses an electrolyte sourced from organic materials, which it said are cost-effective, environmentally friendly and secure. Most flow battery companies use vanadium as an electrolyte.

The company has to-date mostly deployed projects in the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector and has received its first orders in the US this year. Last month, it won a 5MW/50MWh order from a utility in Arizona, which followed on from its first order in the market in February.

The first commercial project to use its technology at scale was commissioned in July this year, at a wind and solar park in Austria.

Dr. Peter Geigle, founder and CEO of CMBlu Energy, commented: “As developers and producers, we can now invest into the construction and expansion of our production facilities. We will especially profit from the broad experience and execution power STRABAG has in large infrastructure projects.”

Klemens Haselsteiner, CEO of Strabag, added: “With our investment in CMBlu Energy, we are breaking new ground in the construction industry. In order to reach one of the most important goals in our company history – becoming climate-neutral by 2040 – we want to become a full-range supplier for energy services for our construction projects. Together, we will deliver large energy storage projects in a standardized construction design – “warehouses for electricity” – even faster, more efficient and easier.”

Flow batteries are one of the more commercial mature alternative technologies to lithium-ion for stationary energy storage, and providers claim that the technology has a lower levelised cost of storage (LCOS) beyond the 4-8-hour duration mark.

However, lithium-ion continues to be chosen for the largest-scale projects at that duration, partially down to commercial readiness, cost-effectiveness, performance and bankability.

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EKS will gain access to Hitachi Energy’s advanced engineering and control capabilities, as well as its global market reach, and supply chain advantages, Powin said. The buyer meanwhile added that it will combine EKS’ power electronics and advanced controls with Hitachi Energy’s system integration, automation and software offerings.

Hitachi Energy was formed through the Japanese technology group’s merger with and subsequent buyout of ABB Power Grids in 2020, and traded for some time as Hitachi ABB Power Grids, before taking on the Hitachi Energy name and relaunching in late 2021.

At that time, the company said energy storage would play a key role in its product and services offerings, with it working in areas from utility solutions, renewable energy, transport and industry to data centres and smart cities.

It has its own battery energy storage system (BESS) product, PowerStore, which it revamped and relaunched, also in late 2021. PowerStore sits in Hitachi Energy’s ‘e-Mesh’ Grid Edge Solutions portfolio, alongside its energy management system SCADA, bi-directional electric vehicle (EV) charging and other products, which are all united under the theme of enabling digital control, dispatch and optimisation of distributed energy resources.

Recognising the value of PCS as BESS market scales

Therein perhaps lies a clue to why EKS was an attractive acquisition target. The Oregon-headquartered Powin acquired the Spanish company just over a year ago, in a deal that completed in September 2022.

At that time, Powin executive VP Danny Lu told Energy-Storage.news that EKS is an inverter provider with a strong track record of working on challenging grid-connected and off-grid projects; in other words, projects at the grid edge.

According to Lu, PCS equipment can represent as little as 15% of the capital expenditure required on a BESS project, but can often be responsible for a significant proportion of issues that arise during commissioning and operation of plants, making it desirable to bring as much expertise in-house as possible.

On a similar note, this site heard recently from Steve Fludder, CEO of LS Energy Solution, another BESS integrator, that his company moved into providing complete storage solutions from being an inverter manufacturer and third-party PCS provider to other integrators’ projects.

It is now able to supply integrated batteries with PCS, creating an AC battery solution, Fludder said. The BESS division director of luxury EV manufacturer Rimac was quoted a few days ago as saying that vertical integration enabled it to integrate PCS and batteries within its own new modular battery storage product.

Further evidence of the value of power electronics providers with track records can be seen in the acquisition by investors Goldman Sachs and Cleanhill Partners of another PCS maker, EPC Power, and of Dynapower by industrial sensor manufacturer Sensata, both of which also happened last year.

Powin CEO Jeff Waters said today that even in the relatively short time EKS has been in its ownership, the system integrator has been able to leverage it for one of the world’s biggest BESS projects to date: the 850MW/1680MWh Waratah Super Battery in New South Wales, Australia.

“A giant shock absorber”

Regular readers of this site will be familiar with the project, currently under construction and described as a “giant shock absorber” for the grid. Waters said EKS’ “unrivaled power conversion systems are able to meet the Australian grid operators’ high standards of performance”.

EKS has deployed more than 4GW of inverters to renewable energy projects around the world over the past decade or so, and Powin VP Danny Lu told the site last year that the power electronics specialist has “really made a name for themselves in terms of energy storage integration, especially when it comes to very difficult grid conditions”.

“The market, including leading BESS system integrators, has made it clear that it needs and wants energy solutions powered by best-in-class power electronics integrated with control and digital capabilities,” managing director for grid automation at Hitachi Energy Massimo Danieli said today.

“New applications and use cases are emerging every day, driven by the ever-increasing need for integration of renewable resources in the grid and electrification at the grid edge. EKS has an impressive product deployment footprint in North America and Europe, and under Powin has further extended their global reach.”

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Our publisher Solar Media is hosting the 10th Solar and Storage Finance USA conference, 7-8 November 2023 at the New Yorker Hotel, New York. Topics ranging from the Inflation Reduction Act to optimising asset revenues, the financing landscape in 2023 and much more will be discussed. See the official site for more details.

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The units will also be paired with onsite solar PV arrays, although generation capacity of the array at the completed site was not given.

EV charging solutions company EV Connection ordered the units, and they will be operated in partnership with Gentari, which is a renewable energy company owned by Petronas, a Malaysian state-owned business also known as National Petroleum Limited.

Minister of Works Alexander Nanta Linggi, whose department is responsible for public works, attended the inauguration event pictured above, as did other dignitaries including Norway’s ambassador to Malaysia, Morten Paulson.

Malaysia’s government is seeking to rapidly increase the number of charging stations available to EV drivers. At present there are around 1,200 in the country, far short of a national goal set in 2025 to reach 10,000 by 2025.

The country is targeting net zero emissions by 2050, and Minister of International Trade and Industry, Zafrul Tengku Aziz, earlier this year attended a launch event for a 1MW prototype of the first end-to-end BESS product created in Malaysia, by two domestically-headquartered companies, Citaglobal and Genetec Technology.

The role of battery storage within charging networks meanwhile is to serve as a buffer between the electric grid and expected demand from vehicles. When multiple EVs need to charge at the same time, it can put constraints on the local grid and as might be expected, those constraints are amplified with fast-charging.

For example, the first BESS-integrated EV charging project in New York, US, will feature a 5MW/15MWh BESS to provide buffering for 18x 350kW fast-DC EV chargers, with utility Con Edison awarding the project to Centrica Business Solutions in 2021.

Also in 2021, the UK’s government committed to investing around US$15 million in deploying 20 storage systems at roadside service stations at locations where grid supply is insufficient to support rapid charging infrastructure.   

Then, last year, a number of companies in the space raised funding, with US$125 million raised by Freewire Technologies from investors including BlackRock perhaps the single biggest raise, while the growing activity around BESS-integrated EV charging in the German market was the topic of an Energy-Storage.news blog in July 2022.

“Charging stations is an area where our systems create immense value. The usage of charging stations varies widely, and managing demand peaks directly through the grid is challenging,” Pixii CEO Kenneth Bodahl said.

“This has especially been a concern in Malaysia. Our energy storage systems provide a buffer to handle these peaks, enabling a power boost that allows for fast charging.”

Pixii said its systems are based on the company’s proprietary power electronics module called PixiiBox. The bi-directional AC/DC converter is designed to be adaptable for various market segments and applications. Other projects from Pixii reported on by Energy-Storage.news include providing battery storage to telecommunications companies and community-level ‘neighbourhood batteries’ in Australia.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd Energy Storage Summit Asia, 9-10 July 2024 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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Infratec general manager Nick Bibby said that the storage system is “the first of its scale to be built in New Zealand”. As reported by Energy-Storage.news, the two companies completed their assessment of the project in late 2021, selecting a site in Huntly, a town in the Waikato district.

They then announced the appointment of key contractors in March of last year, with French battery manufacturer and system integrator Saft supplying the BESS solution, and Power Electronics NZ providing power conversion system (PCS) equipment.

A number of local electrical contractors, civil engineers and logistics companies were also involved.

Regular readers may recall that the project was originally expected to come online before the end of 2022. WEL Networks said last week that the Huntly BESS’ construction was faced with some challenges resulting from global supply chain constraints that have widely impacted the industry. The start of construction was also pushed back from July to late August 2022.

The BESS will help integrate growing shares of renewable energy from variable wind and solar PV generation, while also providing fast reserve ancillary services to the grid. WEL Networks and Infratec said they are actively pursuing other opportunities to enhance resilience and increase access to renewable energy in the region.

New Zealand currently has a couple of 1MW battery storage systems in operation, but certainly nothing on the scale of the BESS in Huntly.

However, electricity generator and retailer Meridian Energy – owned by UK renewables utility Good Energy – is currently building another project almost three times as big in megawatt terms and of 2-hour duration, also on the North Island of New Zealand.

Meridian’s project, Ruakākā Battery Energy Storage System is about 250km north of WEL Networks-Infratec’s. It is a 100MW/200MWh BESS, and Saft is also the supplier of the storage solution to it. Meridian intends to later build a 130MW solar PV plant at the site.

Meridian committed to its construction in December 2022 and Ruakākā BESS is scheduled to go into commercial operation within the first half of 2024. It will free up hosting capacity in reserve markets and provide frequency regulation and arbitrage applications, while Meridian said it will earn roughly NZ$35 million (US$20.52 million) a year against expected annual running costs of about NZ$6 million.

The cost of WEL Networks and Infratec’s BESS was cited at an expected NZ$25 million earlier in the development cycle, while Meridian expected capital investment was given as NZ$186 million before construction began.

Meridian head of renewables development Rebecca Knott said its project was the “first of many” the company intends to build, and that Meridian foresees the need for four or five batteries of that scale across New Zealand.

The country’s government is known to be considering the development of large-scale pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) facilities to provide long-duration energy storage (LDES) that would enable bulk integration of renewables. In March NZ Battery Project, a government-led group, estimated that between 3TWh and 5TWh of PHES could help plug the deficit the country experiences during ‘dry years’ for hydroelectric generation.

According to official statistics, about 40% of New Zealand’s primary energy comes from renewable sources including geothermal and hydroelectric, which is the third highest in the OECD after Norway and Iceland. That equates to about 82% renewables for electricity generation.  

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