From macro-level policy, supply chain and finance talks down to co-location, fire safety and microgrids, it was exciting to see stakeholders from across Asia and beyond come together to tackle them all.

It was interesting to see that many of the questions facing nascent or emerging markets in Asia are the same as those we saw a few years ago in the earlier days of the maturing US and European markets.

Those same questions include: how to make banks comfortable with financing storage assets, how to alert policymakers to put similar efforts into promoting storage as they have done with renewable energy, and how to secure the sufficient volumes of batteries and other equipment needed to ‘deploy, deploy, deploy!’

Other questions are more specific to the region, and of course, Asia is a very big region with extremely varied geographic – and perhaps more importantly – market and regulatory profiles, meaning many country-specific questions still need to be tackled.

We look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s edition, and hope to see many more new faces there, but for now, here are some of the big takeaways from Energy Storage Summit Asia 2023.

Solving the energy trilemma

Energy storage has the unique capability to help solve the energy trilemma that faces Asia, balancing out reliability, sustainability and affordability of energy supply, as panellist Nicolas Leong of Wärtsilä pointed out.

In a discussion on the role of energy storage systems (ESS) in strengthening Asia’s electricity grids, Leong, north and southeast Asia director for Wärtsilä’s energy business, said that the energy transition is a “marathon, not a sprint”. Nonetheless, faced with worsening climate crises and soaring or volatile energy costs, the pace of running needs to accelerate.

In the past, everyone talked about grids in terms of how much energy generation capacity is on them, whereas today, with the rise of variable renewable energy (VRE), the key question is “how flexible is your grid?”, Leong said.

“Storage is here to stay, it will continue to improve, and I really think it will help solve the trilemma we are facing,” Leong said.

Storage can bring sustainability to the grid by integrating variable or intermittent renewable generation, and it can enable reliability too, particularly with technology providers and system integrators offering longer and longer term guarantees for project owners.

It’s in the area of affordability where challenges remain, particularly for some of the less wealthy nations in Asia, Leong said, while noting that the industry is committed to solving that aspect of procurement and deployment.

Replicating models from other countries

One theme that came up time and time again, is that financing energy storage projects requires bankability not just of technology, but of business models. That means being able to show a degree of certainty over revenues. Many countries in Asia are not quite there yet.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, after China and perhaps South Korea, the most mature market for standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) technologies is Australia.

That market has grown quickly because big power generators and retailers like AGL have offered long-term contracts for capacity or grid services to developers in some cases. In other cases, the level of merchant opportunity through the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) for frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) and arbitrage are enough to entice investors.

And, as we’ve seen in many other markets around the world, financing battery storage is more complex than solar PV and wind, for which fixed revenue models have been around for years. Financiers from Standard Chartered Bank and debt financing platform Pentagreen Capital both said that cash flow certainties are desirable, but still being figured out.

Meanwhile simply porting over business models from other countries, however successful they may have been, won’t be easy if going from Australia, to Southeast Asia, for example.

The good news is that some countries like India and Japan are at various stages of rolling out supportive frameworks to incorporate energy storage into the power sector. It’s a trickier question in the ASEAN markets, where regulations are largely yet to change, with the exception of the Philippines, although renewable energy and net zero targets across the region will drive an inevitable need for storage.

ASEAN regulators have embraced renewable energy but not yet energy storage

We heard on the opening day’s first panel that countries in the ASEAN region have come a long way in their adoption of renewable energy, but are yet to extend that embrace to energy storage.

Beni Suryadi of the ASEAN Centre for Energy intergovernmental association said a “lack of involvement” by regulators in discussions about energy storage is the biggest challenge facing the technology in the region’s 10 countries.

Suryadi offered the example of Vietnam, where solar PV has been deployed at a rapid pace. Yet it is difficult to find any serious discussion of energy storage in the country, he said.

Nonetheless, where “pain points” on the grid can be found, the need for energy storage will be most critical, Georg Garabandic, DNV’s energy storage lead for the APAC region said in a later panel session. Contracting for services from storage systems to solve these pain points would be a powerful way to stimulate investment, Garabandic said.

Supply chain challenges require sharing of risks to mitigate

The energy storage industry has become a “victim of its own success”, as well as of the success of the electric vehicle (EV) industry, making supply chain management ever more difficult.

Solar Media conference producer Moses Makin announces the results of an audience poll. Image: Andy Colthorpe/Solar Media

Speaking on a panel about supply chain challenges, Mahdi Behrengrad, head of energy storage at Japanese renewables developer Pacifico Energy, said that for achieving the “net zero dream,” investing in battery storage requires a new sort of risk appetite.

That means all stakeholders must “do their homework” to mitigate risks as far as possible, for example, developers should have multiple vendors they can turn to, Behrangrad said. At the same time, investors and lenders should not be looking at BESS as a “typical investment”.

Fellow panellist Le Xu, commercial manager at Aquila Clean Energy Asia-Pacific (ACES APAC), noted that batteries represent around 40% to 50% of the equipment cost of a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) asset. That means the squeeze on supply is felt far more acutely than it would be when talking about solar modules for a PV plant, Xu said.

Co-location enables blending of finance

Banks typically want to take on less than 30% merchant risk when lending to a clean energy project, according to Kiran Jethwa, managing partner at asset management group Fumase.

Speaking on a panel about co-location of energy storage with generation assets, Jethwa said Fumase often mitigates merchant risk by allocating a certain amount of capacity to power purchase agreements (PPAs), offering lenders a blended finance option.

What was interesting to hear was that while batteries can offer high returns from merchant opportunities, but also carry a risk in that there is no long-term certainty over revenues, solar PV and wind offer stable, long-term, but often lower returns.

Lenders like long-term certainty in cash flows, MUFG’s deputy head of project finance Shilei Huang said. In Asia, it is very typical to see fixed tariff long-term PPAs for standalone solar PV projects. Adding a battery system brings in multiple revenue streams, some of which could be contracted for and others merchant.

Even if revenues from long-term contracts turn out to be lower than those earned from merchant market participation, having as much contracted revenue in the mix as possible helps ensure the viability of projects on a long-term basis, MUFG’s Huang said.

Other themes, topics and talking points

There were plenty of other subjects of discussion at the event, some of which were as follows:

Industrial decarbonisation

Industry could become a significant source of customer demand for energy storage in Asia. Two key examples cited were the growth of round-the-clock (RTC) 24/7 renewable energy deals signed by industrial entities in India, and the potential for energy storage-integrated microgrids at off-grid or remote mining sites in Indonesia.

ASEAN grid

The prospects for an interconnected electrical grid serving the ASEAN region were mentioned several times, with energy storage likely to play a key role in enabling renewable energy generated in places with abundant land and solar resources able to feed power to more heavily urbanised and land constrained places such as Singapore, the host country for Energy Storage Summit Asia 2023. An ASEAN grid could unlock about 70GW of cross-border connections.

Where will the biggest markets be in Asia?

A poll of the audience taken by organisers found that Australia was expected by attendees to be the country with the most interesting energy storage market in the near future. Also prominent were India, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, China and Malaysia.

‘Need and will for greater storage deployment and investment’

“The summit demonstrated there is the need and will for greater energy storage deployment and investment throughout the Asia-Pacific region,” summit producer Moses Makin at Solar Media said after the event.

“The networking room felt alive, full of meetings – developers, technology providers and financiers were there creating meaningful business relationships. This is no small feat for one of the world’s most important regions to the energy transition,” Makin said.

Next year’s Energy Storage Summit Asia is scheduled to take place in Singapore once again, in July 2024. Visit the event website for more details.

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A prototype has been developed through a collaborative research project called Intelligent Battery Integrated System (IBIS), battery and energy storage company Saft, together with automotive manufacturer Stellantis and researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).

The battery integrates charger and inverter functions into one device. In other words, electric conversion boards performing inverter and charger functions are mounted as close to lithium-ion battery cells as possible.

For EVs, that could mean a reduction in vehicle weight and space taken up by battery equipment, with a control system that enables the alternating current needed to drive electric motors to come directly from the battery.

For stationary energy storage system (ESS) applications, the technology could enable Saft to offer customers turnkey installations with improved availability of batteries, optimisation of stored energy use and a smaller footprint.

One source close to the company commented that the single battery enclosure design could provide DC-coupling to PV systems and also function as the PV inverter, although acknowledging that it could be some years before the technology reaches commercialisation.

A Stellantis corporate video explaining the design and its advantages for electric vehicle (EV) production can be seen below:

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Thermal storage startup Azelio files for bankruptcy

Thermal energy storage startup Azelio is filing for bankruptcy at Gothenburg District Court in Sweden.

The company has a proprietary technology that stores energy as 600°C heat in a recycled aluminium alloy phase change material (PCM). The heat is then discharged through a Stirling engine, converting it to electricity.

Azelio was one of the founding members of the global Long Duration Energy Storage Council (LDES Council), and won its first commercial order in 2020 for its TES.POD stackable 13kW units, but after winning several deals between then and the end of 2022, has had a quiet 2023.

The company said on 18 July that it had not been able to secure sufficient financing to remain in business long enough to enter an agreement with an undisclosed strategic partner announced in May.

At that time, Azelio said it had entered a conditional loan agreement worth SK30 million (US$2.84 million) with a major shareholder, but also noted that it was undergoing restructuring, while its CEO departed at the beginning of this month.

Gothenburg District Court approved the bankruptcy application a day after filing, with lawyer Lars Wiking at Advokatfirma DLA Piper Sweden appointed as bankruptcy trustee.

“Despite a great interest in our technology, we have not been able to secure the company’s financing,” Bo Dankis, chairman of Azelio’s board said, adding that the company had been working hard for a long time to secure the strategic partnership that could have changed its fortunes.

VRFBs for remote Australian microgrids

Australian utility company Horizon Power will pilot the use of a flow battery to provide long-duration energy storage (LDES) on its energy network.

Owned by the government of Western Australia, Horizon Power provides electricity to the state as a retailer as well as procuring and owning generation assets. The company has ordered a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) from manufacturer Invinity Energy Systems which while fairly small nonetheless marks the first procurement of the technology by an Australian energy utility. Invinity is also supplying its technology to the country’s first grid-scale VRFB installation, in South Australia.

Horizon Power will try out Invinity’s 78kW/220kWh VS3 model VRFB in the town of Kununurra in the far north of West Australia. It will be used to evaluate the role VRFB tech could play in reducing fossil fuel use in Horizon’s distributed energy networks.

Microgrids are a growing part of Horizon Power’s business, with the supplier owning 34 microgrids already that serve about 100,000 customers and 10,000 businesses in the state. Invinity sold the VRFB to VSUN Energy, a subsidiary of vertically integrated vanadium company Australian Vanadium, which works to promote flow batteries to the market in anticipation of opening its own vanadium extraction, processing and electrolyte production facilities.

“Long-duration energy storage provides backup power during times of peak demand or when the power supply is interrupted, storing high volumes of excess energy when demand is low and the ability to shift energy storage into the night. It can also minimise the need for costly fossil fuel generation and grid infrastructure upgrades,” Horizon Power CEO Stephanie Unwin said.

Unwin added that the VRFB’s resilience to warm temperatures and ability to store and discharge energy over a long period of time meet some of the most critical needs of the company’s networks.

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It will be connected to the Victorian Shared Transmission System grid via the existing Cranbourne Terminal Station. The substation has been there since 2005, and according to a report by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) in 2020, has seen summer peak demand grow by around 3.5% annually for the past few years “and is forecast to continue growing strongly”.

Representing one of the areas of Victoria with fastest-growing electricity demand, the station had already reached capacity by the time the report was published three years ago. The BESS will increase the local area’s capacity to host renewable energy generation while provide grid services to keep the system in balance.

Rangebank BESS is being co-developed by Eku Energy and Shell Energy Australia, the energy solutions and renewables arm of the Dutch fossil fuel major.

Eku Energy has similarly powerful backing – the developer was launched in late 2022 by Macquarie Asset Management’s Green Investment Group (GIG), taking on GIG’s two BESS development projects and attracting further investment from the likes of Canadian pension fund BCI.

The pair announced the Rangebank project in March this year, with it having already reached financial close, and targeting going into commercial operation in late 2024. Perfection Private, owner of the business park, is also a minority equity investor.

Shell Energy signed up for 100% of dispatch rights to the BESS over a 20-year term, marking the company’s first direct equity investment into a stationary energy storage project anywhere in the world.

Global energy storage solutions and services provider Fluence has been signed up as BESS supplier and system integrator to the project, and will also service and maintain the asset.

Victoria’s target

In September last year, the state’s Labor Party government of d’Ambrosio and premier Daniel Andrews set an energy storage deployment target of 6.3GW by 2035 for Victoria. One of the highest targets set anywhere in the world to date, it came off the back of Labor’s Climate Change Strategy which set the state a 50% renewable energy target by the end of the decade for Victoria’s electricity sector.

“Grid-scale big batteries like this one are crucial in helping Victoria achieve our energy storage targets of at least 2.6GW of capacity by 2030 and at least 6.3GW by 2035 to ensure we can deliver the benefits of cheaper, renewable energy across the state,” energy and resources minister Lily d’Ambrosio said yesterday.

In fact, just over a month ago, d’Ambrosio was onsite at another significant large-scale BESS project in the state, again with Eku Energy and Fluence also involved.

The commissioning of the 150MW/150MWh Hazelwood BESS, co-developed by Eku Energy with European utility major ENGIE, completed Australia’s first “coal-to-clean energy” transformation: the project is built on the site of Hazelwood Power Station, a retired coal power plant.

Meanwhile, Eku Energy continues its prolific run of battery storage project development, having been selected to deliver a 500MWh flagship BESS project in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in April, signing an agreement to develop 1GW of projects in Italy with fellow developer Renera Energy earlier this month, and most recently announcing construction will begin later this year on two projects in the UK totalling 130MWh with system integrator NHOA.

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DTE Energy has received approval from the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) on the its landmark CleanVision Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). This approval comes just 14 days after a historic settlement agreement was reached between DTE and nearly two dozen organizations on the company’s 20-year plan that dramatically transforms how DTE generates electricity in Michigan.

Developed over the past two years with the input of DTE’s customers and other key stakeholders from across Michigan, this proposal accelerates DTE’s clean energy transition increasing investments in Michigan-made solar and wind energy, speeding up the retirement of coal plants, and developing new energy storage.

Says Jerry Norcia, chairman and CEO, DTE Energy: “We are transforming how we generate electricity – with the goal of getting as clean as we can as fast as we can – while ensuring we continue to produce energy that is reliable and affordable.” 

DTE Electric will surpass its previously announced carbon emission reduction goals – targeting 65% in five years (2028), 85% in nine years (2032), 90% by 2040 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Key details of the CleanVision Integrated Resource Plan include:

Investing in clean and reliable energy by:

Developing more than 15,000 MW of Michigan-made renewable energy by 2042, equivalent to powering approximately 4 million homes.  

Accelerating the development of energy storage, targeting 780 megawatts through 2030 with a goal of more than 1,800 megawatts of storage by 2042 – more than doubling current storage capacity.   

Ending DTE’s use of coal in 2032 with a responsible, phased retirement schedule of the Belle River and Monroe coal power plants – dramatically reducing the company’s use of coal from 77% in 2005 to 0% in less than three decades. 

Targeting 2% energy savings level from energy efficiency through 2027. Supporting increased distributed generation on the company’s distribution system.

Delivering long-term customer value by:

Investing over $11 billion into the clean energy transition over the next 10 years, supporting more than 32,000 jobs in Michigan, while reducing the future cost of the plan for the company’s customers. 

Directing an additional $110 million to support income-qualified home energy efficiency programs, customer affordability programs and access to clean energy resources for the most vulnerable customers.  Repurposing the Belle River coal-fired power plant to run on natural gas at a fraction of the cost of building a new power plant, while accelerating reductions in carbon emissions.

A broad range of stakeholders from across Michigan signed onto a settlement agreement that was submitted to the MPSC for approval. Signatories to the settlement agreement include DTE Electric, MPSC staff, Attorney General Dana Nessel, representatives of Michigan’s environmental community, key business and labor organizations and energy industry associations.

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Global automotive supplier Vitesco Technologies, San Antonio-based Big Sun Solar and the Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative (GVEC) are jointly developing a solar project in Central Texas, which is one of the state’s first three-party power purchase agreements.

Groundbreaking took place in late July and the project is expected to be completed and commissioned by the end of the 2023.

The solar project will be built on 12 acres adjacent to the Vitesco Technologies manufacturing facility in Seguin. Through the power purchase agreement, Big Sun Solar will build, own and operate the project, and Vitesco Technologies will purchase from GVEC the electricity generated to offset its energy consumption.

The 2.6 MW DC project will generate roughly 4,800 MWh per year through 4,800 solar panels, which use trackers to follow the sun’s changing position throughout the day. That will meet about 13% of Vitesco Technologies’ annual energy consumption at the Seguin facility. This is enough energy to power 330 Texas homes (avg. 1,800 square feet) yearly.

By 2030, Vitesco Technologies wants to achieve climate neutrality for its entire production and internal business activities. The company has also set itself the ambitious goal of making its entire value chain climate neutral by 2040 at the latest. This also includes all business activities outside the company’s own processes – from the extraction of raw materials to the use of products.

“Converting the transportation sector to climate neutral solutions is daunting but also achievable,” says Big Sun Solar CEO Robert Miggins. “We’re proud and excited to work with companies such as Vitesco Technologies who are taking the lead.”

Vitesco Technologies, which has been an important part of Seguin’s economy for more than 50 years, manufactures state-of-the-art powertrain technologies for sustainable mobility. Its 1,700 employees represent roughly 5% of the Seguin population. This project marks the global company’s largest solar project in North America, having initiated similar programs near its manufacturing locations in Mexico earlier this year.

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Georges Antoun

Matrix Renewables, the TPG Rise-backed global renewable energy platform, has entered into a framework agreement to procure approximately 2.1 GW DC of advanced thin-film modules from First Solar Inc. The modules, which will be delivered between 2024 and 2027, will power Matrix projects in the United States and Spain. This marks Matrix’s first order of First Solar’s responsibly produced ultra-low carbon photovoltaic technology.

Across the U.S., Matrix owns more than 6 GW of projects in various stages of development across four different regions (CAISO, MISO, ERCOT and WECC) and continues to expand its pipeline and team to capitalize on the nation’s high demand for renewable energy. Globally, including Matrix’s presence in Spain, Italy and Chile, its footprint already surpasses 13 GW of solar power, battery storage and green hydrogen projects.

“Matrix is the latest in a number of large IPPs, in the U.S. and internationally, that are choosing to partner with First Solar not just on the strength of our technology and competitiveness, but also because we share the same values,” says Georges Antoun, CCO, First Solar. “This latest order underscores our belief that a growing number of developers are recognizing the value of responsible solar and of working with a partner that delivers on its commitments.”

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Avangrid, a sustainable energy company based in Connecticut and member of the Iberdrola Group, has begun construction of True North, a 240 MW solar farm in Falls County, Texas, that will supply renewable energy to power operations of Meta, the social media-centered technology company, in the region.

Since 2020, Meta’s global operations have been supported by 100% renewable energy. The True North project will support Meta’s upcoming data center in neighboring Temple, the company’s second data center facility in Texas.

Avangrid will deploy $30 million in solar trackers from Array Technologies at True North, its first solar farm in Texas. Construction and operation will create more than 200 local jobs and is expected to generate over $40 million in property taxes during 25 years in the state.

The solar farm is expected to reach commercial operations by early 2025. The company already operates more than 1,250 MW of onshore wind facilities in Texas.

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Adding up to 30MWh, each system is 15MWh capacity, and are two out of four systems in Summit Ridge Energy’s first portfolio of energy storage projects in the state – as well as being the company’s first two storage projects period.

The remaining two projects, due to come online in the coming months, will bring the total capacity online to 58MWh. As revealed by Energy-Storage.news when Summit Ridge obtained US$15 million project financing for two of the projects in June last year, the systems will play into revenue opportunities including New York’s Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) scheme.

In the VDER’s tariff structure, higher rates are paid for energy inputted to the grid when it needs it most, such as times of peak demand. The developer also received funding through the state’s incentive programme for so-called ‘retail’ storage facilities, which are stationary storage systems under 5MW each.

VDER, also described as the Value Stack by the scheme’s administrator, New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), is aimed at replacing net metering. Kilowatt-hours of energy fed into the grid from solar, storage and other distributed energy resource (DER) assets are paid an hourly aggregate rate based on their ability to reduce demand, provide capacity and relieve congestion on the grid, as well as for lowering emissions.

Other developers targeting this market include NineDot Energy, which recently raised US$25 million for community-scale BESS projects in New York.

Developer diversifying by geographies and technology

Summit Ridge executive VP of business development Jason Spreyer recently told sister site PV Tech that the storage projects are a milestone for a company which has expanded its reach geographically, branching out from three states (Maine, Illinois and Maryland) where it has to date been focused.

It also represents a technological diversification from the rooftop and ground mounted PV plants it has developed to date, Spreyer said, adding that the company is “increasingly looking at our development pipeline to include solar-plus-storage, especially in markets where incentives are starting to develop to incent the development of storage with solar”.

In June this year, the developer announced a joint venture (JV) to work on 100MW of solar PV projects in Virginia and 8MW of BESS in New York with the US subsidiary of Japanese utility Osaka Gas, continuing a working relationship between the two companies that has seen two previous JV agreements.

The Arlington and Littlefield BESS projects utilise battery storage hardware and software from QCELLS, the vertically integrated solar PV and energy management solutions company. They were financed, developed and constructed in partnership between the two companies.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news last year as QCELLS signed up to work on the two projects, plus one more in Summit Ridge’s New York portfolio, they were also something of a milestone for QCELLS, which had only entered the US standalone storage market a few months previously with a 190MW/380MWh project in Texas.

For New York the projects mark another small step towards achieving its targeted 6GW of energy storage by 2030 on the way to a 100% ‘clean’ electricity system by 2040. In the shorter term, Summit Ridge highlighted that the BESS assets will benefit the state by helping it reduce reliance on its fleet of polluting peaker plants, including some that run on diesel.

Peaker plants only kick into action during peak demand events, hence the name, but can be among the dirtiest and most expensive to maintain assets in a generation fleet. Programmes like VDER/Value Stack in New York, or the Clean Peak Standard in Massachusetts, seek to address this as a first priority of decarbonisation efforts for the grid.  

Academic medical centre NYU Langone Health will purchase all of the bill credits from the two commissioned BESS projects.

Additional reporting by Jonathan Tourino Jacobo.

“As we pursue opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our facilities, it is equally as important for us to support efforts to harden and decarbonise New York City’s energy grid for the benefit and resiliency of the communities we serve,” NYU Langone Health senior VP of facilities operations Paul Schwabacher said.

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The company started construction of the project in October 2020 and then stated that the battery used for it would be provided by Fluence, the energy storage technology provider which counts AES Corporation and engineering solutions company Siemens among its main shareholders.

Moreover, AES Andes expects to complete another solar-plus-storage project, Andes Solar IV, which will also be located in the region of Antofagasta and is targeted to be completed next year as it is currently 80% completed, according to the company. Once completed, it will have a 147MW output lithium-ion battery storage system with 5-hour duration (735MWh) and 238MW of solar PV capacity.

Javier Dib, CEO of AES Andes, said about the use of batteries in the project that it “represents a great contribution and solution to alleviate congestion problems in transmission lines and the resulting discharge of renewable energy, for which we will continue to grow with new projects of this type that we already have in execution”.

Earlier this year the local subsidiary of AES submitted an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for a hybrid renewables plant in the northern Chilean region of Antofagasta, with more than 3GWh of BESS capacity.

Chile’s booming energy storage activity

The Atacama desert is known for being one of the regions with the highest irradiation levels worldwide and home to many of Chile’s solar projects, as covered by our sister site PV Tech. However, since Chile passed a major energy storage bill last October, the Chilean government seeks to add multi-gigawatt of large-scale storage for 2026-208 with an investment of up to US$2 billion.

AES Andes is among several companies in the country with storage projects either operational or under construction since the bill was passed. Among others renewables company Enel Green Power started work on a wind farm that will be co-located with a 34MW battery energy storage system (BESS), utility Colbún inaugurated the first of an 800MW energy storage projects located in Atacama and with a 32MWh capacity and developers Fotowatio Renewable Ventures and oEnergy have moved forward with EIA for two PV co-located battery storage projects located in the Atacama desert, one of which is an eight-hour lithium-ion system.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd annual Energy Storage Summit Latin America in Santiago, Chile,  17-18 October 2023. This year’s events bring together Latin America’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, network operators, EPCs and more all in one place to discuss the landscape of energy storage in the region. Visit the official site for more info.

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German bank Nord LB acted as coordinating lead arranger for the project financing, and Clearway secured a cash equity close with US climate investment firm HASI.

“Scaling up battery storage is the crucial next step for California’s clean energy transition,” said Steve Ryder, CFO of Clearway Energy Group. “With the successful financing of Rosamond Central BESS, we’re excited to play a role in helping ensure that California’s grid remains reliable and resilient for homes and businesses.”

The storage systems for the Rosamund Central BESS project will be supplied by energy technology firm Wärtsilä, which already has a presence in California; in February it completed a 125MW/250MWh BESS project for REV Renewables. At the start of this year, Clearway bought a 36MW/144MWh solar-plus-storage facility on O’ahu island, Hawaii delivered by Wärtsilä.

In August 2022, Clearway inaugurated the first ever utility-scale solar-plus-storage system on O’ahu, a 39MW/159MWh project. Wärtsilä supplied the battery storage for this site, too.

California’s BESS market has been growing in recent years, in part because of the resource adequacy programme making BESS more attractive and certain for utilities and investors. The California ISO (CAISO) began deploying the scheme in 2004 to keep power supplies reliable and avoid outages in the state.

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