Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd., a designer and manufacturer of solar panels, has chosen Albuquerque, N.M., as the location for its first United States manufacturing expansion. The new 3 GW facility will be designed to produce latest-generation TOPCon PV-silicon cell technology and the Maxeon’s proprietary shingled-cell Performance Line solar.

The new plant will serve both the utility-scale power plant market and distributed generation rooftop applications. The total investment in the project is expected to be more than $1 billion, and is subject to a successful financial close under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program.

Maxeon is currently in the due diligence stage of its loan application and site selection is an important milestone in completing this process with DOE’s Loan Programs Office. DOE’s invitation into the due diligence and term sheet negotiation process is not an assurance that DOE will issue a loan guarantee, nor that the terms and conditions of a loan guarantee will align with terms proposed by the applicant.

The Maxeon plant is expected to be the first large-scale PV cell and panel manufacturer in New Mexico, and its planned capacity is approximately double the size of the largest silicon solar manufacturing facility currently operating in the U.S. Maxeon expects to begin construction in the first quarter of 2024, with factory ramp-up to commence in 2025.

Maxeon has selected a 160-acre site located in the community of Mesa Del Sol, and is designing the complex to include solar cell fabrication, panel assembly, a warehouse and administrative offices. Once the new facility is complete, Maxeon estimates it will create up to 1,800 jobs, including highly skilled manufacturing and engineering positions, and produce millions of solar panels each year for the U.S. market. The New Mexico facility expands Maxeon’s global manufacturing footprint, which currently includes plants in Mexico, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Due to strong customer demand and the planned availability of sufficient infrastructure at the Mesa Del Sol site, Maxeon is currently evaluating plans to upsize the scale of its U.S. manufacturing operation by approximately 50% to a nameplate capacity of 4.5 GW. A final decision regarding plant capacity is expected later this year.

“Maxeon’s facility will be the second major clean energy manufacturing facility to open in New Mexico since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act,” says Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). “Together, we’re unleashing our clean energy potential and creating hundreds of high-quality jobs for New Mexicans. The best part: We’re only just getting started.”

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Waters joins Powin nearly a year after his last major role in the energy industry, as CEO of solar PV module manufacturer Maxeon Solar Technologies. He spent two years at the head of Maxeon from its formation in August 2020 as a spin-off from residential solar and storage provider SunPower, which Waters oversaw. He was at SunPower for two years before the spin-off too.

Maxeon took four months to replace Waters, appointing Bill Mulligan as CEO in January this year, reported by our sister site PV Tech.

Whilst at Maxeon, Waters ‘…led a substantial turnaround in profitability and revenue growth through a transformation of its global operations and the creation of new businesses, including significant expansion in the utility-scale market’, Powin said.

“On behalf of the Board, we thank Geoff Brown for his visionary leadership over the last seven years, taking us from start-up to market leader in a multi-billion-dollar global industry,” said Glenn Jacobson, Powin’s chairman. “We’re delighted to have Jeff Waters taking over as leader of the company at an important stage in the company’s development, given his deep experience bringing companies to scale in dynamic, technology-driven markets.”

“Serving as Powin’s CEO has been an honor. I couldn’t have asked for a more innovative and passionate team to be a part of,” said Brown. “I’m excited to welcome Jeff on board. With his extensive background in operations, manufacturing, and product development leading us forward, I can’t wait to see where Powin goes next.”

Powin is the third-largest BESS provider by MWh of projects contracted after Tesla and Fluence according to company president Anthony Carroll, speaking with Energy-Storage.news at the Energy Storage Summit USA in Austin in March.

Although operating in separate parts of the clean industry, some similarities can be drawn between Maxeon and Powin. Both have launched manufacturing facilities in Mexico and the US in recent years and could also been seen to be targeting the ‘higher-end’ of their respective markets with their choice of technology and/or target customers.

Energy-Storage.news last interviewed Geoff Brown about the company’s strategy in May 2022.

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However at present, it is lagging far behind its goals: while it is pursuing 2,000MW of storage by 2030, as of October last year when the draft plan was first published, it had only 497MW, of which 420MW came from an existing pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant.

Along the way, it also had a 600MW target for deployment by 2021, which obviously was also missed. Only a small handful of energy storage project developments have found their way into our coverage since then.

Most recently, a project bid proposal in New Jersey’s latest offshore wind tender included a 253MW battery storage system in its design, reported a few days ago. In December last year, the state’s last coal-fired power plant was demolished, and owner Starwood Energy said it wanted to put large-scale battery storage on the site.

Staff at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities came up with a straw proposal for the New Jersey Energy Storage Incentive Program (NJ SIP), which was published in late September last year with a view to setting the state onto the right trajectory.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news as the straw proposal came out, the programme would create separate streams to incentivise both front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter storage, the former defined as Grid Supply and the latter as Distributed/Customer Level installations. In both instances, eligibility for the scheme would be limited to facilities connected to the networks of New Jersey electric distribution companies (EDCs).

The incentives payable would include a 30% fixed annual payment component, as well as pay-for-performance. Board staff also proposed that private investors should be allowed to own and operate energy storage resources, and to stack revenues from multiple streams for the different applications their assets could perform.

The regulatory Board of Public Utilities said last week that the NJ SIP “will build a critical foundation for a long-term energy storage effort in the State”. It has opened up for public comment in the new RFI, which follows a number of stakeholder engagement sessions the Board has held since publication.

The RFI remains open for comments until 5pm Eastern Time, 12 September 2023. Comments the Board has already received from stakeholders including energy storage manufacturers, service providers, system integrators and developers such as Tesla, Stem, Convergent Energy & Power and others can be seen here, where public comments should also be filed.

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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It would also regulate the deployment of energy storage at vehicle fueling stations to help buffer the grid from spikes in demand when multiple electric vehicles (EVs) charge at once, the Ministry said in a statement last week (9 August).

While details of the master plan, TMA, appear to have not been disclosed, the strategy has been developed to support Israel in deploying sufficiency energy storage to integrate rising shares of renewable energy – mostly from solar – onto its grid.

A draft of the TMA was submitted for government approval earlier this year, around the same time the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure said it would also be promoting a programme to develop and construct four separate 200MW/800MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) assets in Israel’s northern Gilboa mountain region.

As mentioned in our coverage yesterday of Sungrow’s 127MWh BESS supply deal in Israel to EDF Renewables, Israel is targeting getting to 30% renewable energy on its grid by 2030. This is made more challenging than in some other countries due to its status as an ‘energy island’, without interconnection to neighbours that would allow cross-border renewable energy imports.

The share of renewables currently stands at about 10%, and the future buildout is expected to largely comprise new solar PV, which will account for about all but 4% of that 30% share.

The government has identified energy storage as an effective means to enable that trajectory. Studies from about three years ago from the national Electricity Authority (PUA), modelled a need for about 8GWh of storage, although more recent figures from the Israeli Green Energy Association put that at closer to a likely 10GWh of required storage.

While the government has played its part to date in stimulating demand for energy storage, most notably through a couple of rounds of tenders for solar PV capacity paired with 4-hour duration battery storage, adoption of the TMA national plan would enable a wider rollout.

TMA includes principles for planning storage facilities, the locations at which construction should be permitted, and instructions on how to assess environmental impact.

Dorit Hochner, Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure planning director, said the plan would set out the preferred locations for new energy storage, as well as recommendations on layout and construction characteristics, and would also make recommendations to remove barriers to deployment.

The responsible sub-committee recommended last week that the National Council for Planning approve the national plan.

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The report is a deep-dive into the suitability of different technologies for deploying the 71GWh of new large-scale energy storage that Terna forecasts Italy will need to decarbonise its energy system in a ‘Fit-for-55’ scenario. Fit-for-55 is the EU’s goal of reduce greenhouse emissions by 55% by 2030.

Terna added that the average power rating of the 71GWh will need to be one-eighth of the energy storage capacity, meaning a total power rating of the new energy storage capacity of 8.875GW. The 8.875GW/71GWh is in addition to distributed energy storage resources and large-scale projects already procured through past capacity market and ancillary service auctions.

However, it added the figures may change: “The actual needs for new storage capacity (GWh) to be procured by the new mechanism will have to be re-evaluated over time, taking into account the actual development and geographical location of renewable energy sources in Italy.”

The TSO said that energy storage will provide time-shifting and grid services to ensure the security and adequacy of its electricity system. Storage will make it possible to shift the production of intermittent renewables from high-production hours to those with low or no production.

Legislative Decree No. 210/2021, passed in early 2022, allows for the introduction of a new mechanism for the TSO to procure in advance new energy storage capacity, to be finalised in the coming months with the first auctions expected in late 2023/early 2024.

Terna’s report identified seven reference technologies: lithum-ion, pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), compressed air energy storage (CAES), non-lithium ion electrochemical storage (flow etc), power-to-gas-to power storage (green hydrogen etc), electrostatic or magnetic storage and electromechanical flywheel storage.

The report went on to detail the different durations, performance, availability, lifetime, lead time, round-trip efficiency (RTE), technological and commercial maturity, investment and operating costs and risks of these different technologies and their suitability for Terna’s needs.

It didn’t make any firm conclusions at the end, however towards the state it did say that lithium-ion and PHES are the two main reference technologies because of their technological and commercial maturity and both “can offer the services required for the integration of renewables and the efficient operation of the electricity system”.

Energy-Storage.news did a deep dive into Italy’s burgeoning grid-scale energy storage market for Vol.35 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar and storage industries.

Since it was published, gigawatt-sized pipelines have been announced by developers Emeren and Matrix Renewables, Altea Green Power and Eku Energy in partnership with Renera, while UK-based Aura Power got final approval for an 800MWh project, one of the largest in development.

See all Italy news here and read Terna’s report here.

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It will be located in the commune of Boulouparis and will be “the largest battery system in France”, the announcement said, technically true as France to a large extent considers its overseas territories as much a part of the country as those on the mainland.

“This is a historic project which will help us to supply green energy to this territory, primarily from photovoltaics, even at night,” said Christopher Gygès, New Caledonia government minister overseeing the energy transition.

“We already have the largest solar farm in France and we will soon have the largest battery in France, and possibly even Europe,” Gygès added.

Construction on the project should start, and it will require around 9 billion CFP francs (US$82 million) of investment. It follows state body DIMENC (direction des Mines et de l’énergie de la Nouvelle-Calédonie) launching an appeal for project proposals in August last year.

“We want to advance this project to decarbonise New Caledonia’s energy mix as well as offer a cheaper tariff to its inhabitants and to the megallurgical industry to keep their factories in business,” Gygès said.

It is not the first grid-scale battery storage project to come online in New Caledonia. Four years ago, Energy-Storage.news reported on the commissioning of a 5MWh system co-located with a solar PV plant, deployed by subsidiaries of French energy giants Total and Engie.

Akuo Energy is a Paris-based developer and IPP which has completed numerous solar PV and BESS projects on island territories, including ones in Tonga and Martinique last year, the latter also an overseas territory of France.

Christopher Gygès, New Caledonia government minister, discussing the island’s energy transition on local radio recently. Image: Gouvernement de la Nouvelle-Calédonie.

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The other main component is a battery energy storage system (BESS) combining 50MW/50MWh of lithium-ion batteries and a 1.25MW/5MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB), supplied by Wärtsilä and Invinity Energy Systems respectively, and optimised by Habitat Energy. The project was the subject of a deep-dive in Vol.30 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal.

The two parts of the BESS were energised earlier than the park but it took a while to get their participation in the UK’s ancillary service market as a hybrid asset certified, meaning it’s still too early to quantify the benefits of that hybridisation, EDF Renewables UK’s director of storage and private wire Matthew Boulton told Energy-Storage.news.

“I would say it’s too early to tell but the numbers we can see on the cycle reduction, those are encouraging,” he said.

“Our measured degradation was within 0.1% of what the tables were predicting. I won’t give exact figures but it’s around a couple of percent because of the gentle profile of the battery.”

The main benefit of the combination for ancillary services is that the VRFB can provide the smaller, more numerous responses with the lithium-ion only kicking in when a larger burst of power is needed, helping reduce the latter’s degradation. Boulton emphasised however that the hybridisation’s capability to extend the life of the lithium-ion batteries was not pivotal to the success of the project.

“It’s been an interesting exercise. The challenge is that when a battery is providing these services it has to hit that curve. So a 50MW battery has to hit the shape of that curve for 50MW service, but if you’re providing the first megawatt of that service as a one megawatt battery (the VRFB) the curve is almost 50 times as steep, and we’ve managed to show the flow can do that,” Boulton said.

“If the pumps are running the flow can respond instantaneously, but then it has to it has to neatly handover to where the lithium-ion kicks in. So it’s been a really interesting theoretical challenge and we’re pleased that we were able to prove it can work.”

Since going online the BESS has been providing the typical mix of ancillary services to grid operator National Grid ESO as well as energy trading in the day-ahead and intraday market, but this mix has changed substantially since the project went online, he added.

Last year the UK market was much more weighted towards ancillary services (82% of revenues for the largest BESS operator Gresham House, for example) while now the market is more around 50:50 between ancillary services and energy trading, Boulton said. A big part of this is due to a significant saturation as well as retirement of some ancillary service markets.

When trading energy, the lithium and VRFB systems are treated as distinct systems, Boulton added.

A big recent talking point in discussions on the UK market for BESS is the ‘skip rate’ the technology is seeing in the Balancing Mechanism (BM), which means the proportion of the time when its offers or bids are overlooked in favour of more expensive options, which happens 80-90% of the time. Boulton said this is a major concern with the BM a “an absolutely fundamental part of our revenue strategy assumption going forward”.

“The BM is one of the places BESS can add the most value and we should be getting a fair treatment in it.”

The Superhub’s BESS was the first in the UK to connect directly to the high-voltage transmission network rather than to lower-voltage distribution networks. The benefits of doing this were numerous, Boulton explained, including an earlier connection date, a more reliable connection and greater visibility in the National Grid ESO control room.

Being the first was also a major challenge for the project, but will be much easier for the company’s other Superhub projects. It has 36 grid connection points across the UK for c.50MW BESS projects, with two currently in the commissioning stage and all locations chosen because of their EV charging potential.

The Energy Superhub Oxford is powered by a transmission-connected private wire with a maximum power rating of 16MW or 12MW on average, leading EDF to call it Europe’s most powerful EV charging hub.

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Heatcube uses electricity to store thermal energy by heating molten salt to 415°C and then creating steam. Although the heat could also be used for industrial processes, and Kyoto Group is targeting the industrial market too, in the Nordjylland project the energy storage system outputs to the local district heating network.

It marks the first commercial contract for Kyoto Group, which only built its first pilot in 2020. It has signed a couple of letters of intent (LOIs) to potentially deploy others including a 88MWh project in Spain with an undisclosed owner of cogeneration facilities, and another with a corrugated cardboard manufacturer.

In June, Energy-Storage.news reported that Spanish energy company Iberdrola made a small investment worth €3 million (US$3.26 million) into the startup that gave Iberdrola the right to put a director on Kyoto Group’s board, as well as 12.8% control of capital.

The customer for the Danish project is the local municipally-owned electricity supplier to Aalborg, which owns the power plant. Kyoto Group is leasing the use of the storage system, through an agreement signed in November 2021 with the plant’s operating entity, Nordjyllandsværket A/S.

Kyoto Group said last week (11 August) that a successful Initial Operations Test (IOT) has been carried out by the technology provider with Nordjyllandsværket, which it said showed the Heatcube and its components and processes including flow heater, salt circulation, steam generator and safety functionality were working properly.

The system has been commercially handed over to the customer, meaning Nordjyllandsværket takes over operation. The lease’s terms have therefore also been activated.

Two months of fine-tuning the Heatcube’s operation now begins, with Kyoto Group training the customers’ staff to operate it and conduct a full performance test.

“This achievement not only displays the effectiveness of our technology but also paves the way for a future where industrial process heat is sourced from clean renewable electricity, enabling the industry to finally decarbonise,” Camilla Nilsson, CEO of Kyoto Group, said.

The potential for thermal energy storage to contribute significantly to the transition away from fossil fuels has been highlighted by groups including the Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council). Heating and cooling account for about half of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and industrial heat for about two-thirds of that.

The technologies and applications from different providers vary. A few days ago, Energy-Storage.news reported on funding raised by two thermal storage startups, Kraftblock in Germany and MGA Thermal in Australia to scale up their offerings.

Both of those companies make a type of composite block made of materials designed to retain very high temperature heat for several hours. Conversely, last week Energy-Storage.news also reported that Nostromo is negotiating with the US government for a possible US$176 million loan – Nostromo makes a drop-in replacement for chillers in commercial air conditioning units.

Molten silicon demonstration unit in Australia

In related news, 1414 Degrees, an Australian company with a thermal storage tech based on molten silicon – the company name refers to the melting point of silicon – said a demonstration unit has been commissioned.

The SiBox Demonstration Module (SDM) that has just been commissioned is also designed to convert electricity to heat and then to produce steam. 1414 Degrees said it can output steam at temperatures between 700°C and 850°C for 6-13 hours of continuous output.

The company now begins a 12-month period of continuous cycling and discharge testing to complete its validation phase. Natural gas producer Woodside’s energy technology arm partnered up on construction and testing, including financial support, and the latest milestone 1414 Degrees has reached now means Woodside will evaluate further potential funding into the technology.

1414 Degrees is also involved in a novel large-scale project combining concentrated solar power (CSP), solar PV and grid-scale battery storage with its molten silicon storage technology, which has been on a rocky development journey.

In April 2022, the project hit the buffers when a joint venture (JV) between China’s State Grid Corporation and Singapore Power pulled out of investing. However in June that year, CSP and solar thermal company Vast Solar stepped in to form a JV which could yet save the project, Aurora, which is in South Australia.

Aurora could include a 20MW CSP plant, 140MW battery energy storage system (BESS) and a 70MW solar PV array together with a thermal storage plant.

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The importance of engaging with first responders on topics of safety has been a major talking point in the industry for some time, particularly since the 2017 fire and explosion in Arizona which injured four firefighters.

While all of the affected fire crew were heard to have recovered and returned to active duty, confidence in the industry was shaken. In the aftermath of the incident, investigations and reports found that closer engagement with local first responders would have put fire crews and authorities in a much better position to deal with a then-unfamiliar set of risks.

Although today fires remain extremely rare at grid-scale BESS installations, the handful that do occur continue to raise concerns that the risks of this relatively still new technology require the continuing development of best practices and education for stakeholders, including working directly on training first responders.

New York’s governor Kathy Hochul has just convened a working group made up of different state-level agencies including the fire department to investigate and evaluate the safety of BESS projects, in the wake of three high-profile fires since May.

What’s in the guide

The ACP guide assumes a BESS installation to be subject to the most up to date safety standard, the 2023 revision of NFPA 855 from the US National Fire Protection Association.

It also assumes relevant projects to comprise outdoor battery enclosures with 600kWh or more capacity, which means they require hazard mitigation analysis (HMA), as well as fire and explosion testing in accordance with the UL9540A standard on thermal runaway propagation, and emergency planning with corresponding annual training.      

NFPA 855 requires project stakeholders to submit the HMA, UL9540A testing results and emergency response plan (ERP) to authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs), to be made available to the developer of a pre-incident plan.

ACP noted that access to battery management system (BMS) data is also a vital part of making informed choices regarding emergency response. The BMS can make it possible to observe current conditions of the batteries, including their temperature. During incident response, an appropriate incident command individual should have access to that BMS data, the guide recommended.

The guide then has short sections on how each risk of fire, explosion, arc flash and electric shock, and toxic chemicals should be assessed and treated.

It also includes a discussion of those hazards, including the current debate about fires. That includes the different strategies being considered by manufacturers that include BESS designs that ‘make it burn’ to allow systems to burn out when the lower flammable limit (LFL) is reached but before a lower explosive limit (LEL) is reached.

ACP noted however that ‘make it burn’ is more effective for systems using Li-ion cells based on transition metal oxides, such as nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide (NMC), which release oxygen during thermal runaway events. For other chemistries like lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which releases no oxygen during thermal runaway, it is suggested that venting of gases by automatic opening of doors or panels could help prevent explosions.

Download and read the American Clean Power Association’s ‘First responders guide to lithium-ion battery energy storage safety incidents’ here.

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Sungrow did not provide details on the type of projects or individual sizes, capacities or storage duration, but said the battery storage will be DC-coupled, meaning it will likely be used to hybridise the operation of solar PV plants.

According to the Chinese company, it holds around a 40% market share in Israel’s nascent energy storage space. The deal continues a relationship with EDF Renewables Israel that saw Sungrow sign a prior agreement to supply a 50MWh project, it said.

It also marks the continuation of Sungrow’s expansion in Israel that has seen Energy-Storage.news report on deals such as a 430MWh BESS contract with developer and independent power producer (IPP) Enlight Renewable Energy in January 2022.

Then, in March of that year it announced it would supply a 16MW/64MWh BESS for co-location at a 912MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant responsible for 8% of Israel’s entire electricity production.

That was followed up a month or so later with a 253MWh BESS deal with another developer, Doral. Other notable developments in Israel for Sungrow include another deal signed with Doral towards the beginning of this year for “several hundred megawatt-hours” more.  

Meanwhile EDF Renewables Israel – local subsidiary to French national energy company EDF’s renewables business – has put 572MW of wind and solar into operation in the country across 33 projects to date.

Energy storage key to Israel’s renewables goal

Israel’s national target of sourcing 30% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 means leaning on rich solar PV resources, compared with limited opportunities for wind or other renewables.

Israel is currently at about the 12% mark, and according to modelling from the national Electricity Authority if Israel (PUA), is expected to need about 2GW/8GWh of energy storage to help integrate an anticipated 12GW of solar deployments by the end of this decade.

PUA has been working for the past three years or so to stimulate the market’s adoption of storage, with its key initiatives including tenders for distribution grid-connected solar and storage in 2020 and 2021 – the first of which awarded contracts for 168MW of solar with 672MWh of energy storage, the second selecting winning bids from 609MW of solar PV and more than 2,400MWh of storage.

Earlier this year, PUA implemented a supplementary electricity tariff for distributed solar PV paired with energy storage to enable behind-the-meter self-consumption of onsite generated power.

Then in May, the national Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure said it will support the construction of four separate 200MW/800MWh BESS plants in the northern Gilboa mountain region of the country totalling 800MW/3,200MWh. The Ministry described it as a “programme of great importance for the energy sector”.

Watch our 2020 webinar with Clean Horizon, looking at the role of energy storage in Israel’s “electricity revolution” and the 2020-2021 tenders held by PUA, here.

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