VinES Energy Solutions (VinES), is a business division of major Vietnamese conglomerate VinGroup, and is currently building the nation’s first lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery ‘gigafactory’ through a joint venture (JV) with a subsidiary of Chinese manufacturer Gotion High-Tech.

It also makes and integrates battery storage systems and earlier this year, it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Japan’s Marubeni Corporation to develop battery energy storage system (BESS) projects for Vietnamese commercial and industrial (C&I) customers.

SolarBK meanwhile has deployed 650MWp of distributed scale solar PV projects for residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) customers since its founding 15 years ago. Through a group subsidiary, IREX, SolarBK owns and operates a photovoltaic cell and module factory with 350MWp annual production capacity. It also has subsidiaries focused on renewable energy-as-a-service for large commercial end-users, as well as residential PV equipment distribution and R&D.

The country has experienced recent rapid growth in solar installations, a large proportion of which is rooftop PV. Thanks largely to a national feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme for behind-the-meter C&I installations, Vietnam went from a few hundred megawatts installed solar generation capacity in 2018 to more than 16GW by the middle of 2021.  

However, accommodating further growth of solar generation could be challenging without deployment of technologies like battery energy storage systems (BESS) that could ease its integration to the grid.

Government power plan targets 50% adoption of rooftop PV

Vietnam aims to expand its share of renewable energy on the grid to at least 30.9% by 2030 as per policy targets, and achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Other renewable energy sources like wind will be important, but the government has also determined that in its push towards fossil fuel use reduction – most notably reducing the proportion of power generation from coal down to 20% from about a third today – expansion of rooftop PV generation should continue.

The national Vietnam Power Development Plan VIII, published earlier this year, calls for the overall expansion of generation capacity to 150GW across all sources by the end of this decade, again, a big jump from just under half of that sum being generated for the grid in 2020. Vietnam also wants to become a net exporter of energy to other countries in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Key to the new partnership between the two manufacturers is the Power Development Plan VIII’s goal of putting rooftop solar PV systems on at least 50% of office and residential buildings.

The pair are kicking off with the pilot installations of 300 systems this year, including discounted offers for the first 100 customers’ systems. From there VinES and SolarBK plan to make a wider rollout during 2024.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and non-profit Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) recently announced US$35 million funding to assist in accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in South and Southeast Asia. The groups identified supporting the growth of energy storage in Vietnam as a priority area of focus for that funding, as well as supporting Indonesia’s transition away from coal-fired power generation.  

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 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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Southwestern Electric Power Co. (SWEPCO), an American Electric Power company, has been granted approval by the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) to move forward with its fuel-free power plan to acquire up to 999 MW of renewable generation resources.

The LPSC today approved the terms of a settlement agreement reached on March 10, 2023, by all parties in the proceeding, subject to certain procedural conditions moving forward. This effort will help meet projected power needs while protecting customers from volatility in energy costs.

The additional generating capacity is needed to meet the energy needs of SWEPCO customers. That need has increased due to new rules from the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) that require utilities to have available additional generation capacity to support reliability. SPP is the 14-state grid-balancing authority that includes Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.

“SWEPCO’s analysis of our generation needs showed that the lowest cost, best value option for capacity was adding wind and solar resources,” says Brett Mattison, SWEPCO president and COO. “We appreciate our regulatory commissioners allowing us to bring more low-cost, renewable energy to Louisiana customers.”

One solar and two wind projects are to be constructed by Invenergy and acquired by SWEPCO. The three projects, identified through a competitive bidding process, are:

Mooringsport, a 200 MW solar facility located in Caddo Parish, La.

Diversion, a 200.6 MW wind facility in Baylor County, Texas.

Wagon Wheel, a 598.4 MW wind facility located in Garfield, Kingfisher, Logan, Payne, and Noble counties in Okla.

SWEPCO’s need for capacity is driven by the retirement of aging SWEPCO generation units. With these retirements, SWEPCO is facing a capacity deficit beginning in 2023 that grows to 1,574 MW in 2028 after the retirement of other generating units. SWEPCO intends to evaluate and/or conduct additional requests for proposals to explore more opportunities to add low-cost generation and capacity in the coming years.

SWEPCO serves more than 551,000 customers in three states, including 125,992 in Arkansas.

Image by frimufilms on Freepik.

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Matrix Renewables, the TPG Rise-backed global renewable energy platform, has acquired the Stillhouse Solar Project, a late-stage development 284 MW DC solar project in Bell County, Texas (ERCOT North), from OCI Solar Power, a developer of utility-scale solar projects.

The transaction follows up on Matrix’s Gaskell West Project (totaling 142 MW DC solar with 80 MWh of battery storage in CAISO) which achieved its commercial operation date earlier this month and shows strong continuity in Matrix’s plan to become a top clean energy platform in the United States.

Across the U.S., Matrix owns nearly 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 high demand for renewable energy. Globally, including Matrix’s presence in Spain, Italy and Chile, Matrix’s footprint already surpasses 12 GW of solar power, battery storage and green hydrogen projects.

“We have been working to develop the Stillhouse Solar Project for over two years. All land acquisition, environmental review and electrical interconnection studies are complete,” says Charles Kim, president and CEO, OCI Solar Power. “We’re excited to pass the baton to Matrix to take the project through construction and into operations, providing more clean energy to the Texas electrical grid,” Construction of the project is slated for 2024 with commercial operations commencing in 2025.

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Hawthorne Renewables, a newly established solar development company, has officially opened its Phoenix headquarters. The company is the result of a merger between Power Capital Energy Group and Portland, Ore.-based Sulus Solar.

Sulus Solar launched in 2016. Since then its founders, Colin Murphy and Conor Grogan, have rapidly scaled the company to deliver more than $150 million of solar projects across Oregon and Washington. Murphy and Grogan will lead Hawthorne Renewables with a focus on developing, building and owning large-scale solar projects across the United States.

“We’re incredibly proud of the success we’ve had, and have a huge appetite to ramp up our operations with new infrastructure from this merger,” says Grogan. “Hawthorne Renewables is well-positioned to sprint out of the gates with the experience, ambition and capital to be a significant player in the clean power generation movement.”

Financial backing for this investment is provided by Omnes Capital, a $5.2 billion green energy private equity firm headquartered in Europe, where it has successfully invested in several renewable energy development platforms. Hawthorne Renewables marks the first U.S. venture for the Paris-based company, which intends to invest $250 million over the next three to four years in the U.S. through this endeavor.

“We thoroughly analyzed a large set of potential development platform companies for our entry to the U.S., followed by extensive third-party legal and technical due diligence on the Sulus Solar platform,” notes Justin Brown, co-founder and co-CEO of Power Capital. “Conor and Colin stood above the pack as ideal partners amidst a dynamic and competitive market.”

Hawthorne Renewables will also have an office space in Portland.

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The LevelTen Asset Marketplace platform connects clean energy project developers and buyers/financiers, with the associated software, analytics and M&A transaction expertise for transactions.

Giovanni Di Pascale, CEO of Altea Green Power, said in the early June announcement: “We are delighted to have signed this agreement, which allows us to expand our business opportunities, following a model that may not yet be common in Italy, but is widely recognised and embraced overseas.”

“The process of selling our 2GW storage projects starts on LevelTen Energy’s platform. Over the next month, we will be accepting all the offers from interested parties and aim to conclude the sale by the end of 2023.”

The early-stage projects are expected to reach ready-to-build (RTB) status in the second quarter of 2025, a spokesperson for Altea Green Power told Energy-Storage.news. They were designed with the help of Milan-based consultancy Elemens.

The market in Italy is currently gearing up to launch construction on projects, with some players waiting for the rules around large-scale storage auctions by TSO Terna to be finalised, expected late this year. Energy-Storage.news did a deep dive into the Italian market for the most recent edition of PV Tech Power (Vol.35).

Enel Green Power, part of the large utility Enel, is the only player which has started construction on a significant pipeline, having won the bulk of contracts in Capacity Market auctions in February 2022 and fast reserve ancillary service auctions in late 2020.

‘Battery storage cannot be developed like solar’

While buying a large early-stage pipeline of projects is a route to market used by many, developer Innovo Group, which is moving into the Italian BESS market with something more like an independent power producer (IPP) model, sounded a note of caution when being interviewed for the PV Tech Power feature.

Speaking to Energy-Storage.news back in April this year – and speaking about the market in broad terms – the firm’s founder and CEO Rodolfo Bigolin described a problem of “too many solar developers” entering the Italian market and hastily building up big pipelines to sell.

In reference to Bigolin’s earlier comments at the time, reproduced further down, the spokesperson for Altea Green Power said:

“When in 2021 Altea Green Power began the battery opportunities development, it decided to commit an important renewables Italian advisor to study different financial and technical scenarios regarding the area of interest, because electricity prices can differ depending on whether a site is located in the northern or southern part of Italy and if the investor chooses the capacity market scheme or another financial approach available on the market.”

They then pointed to the firm’s BESS partnership with another developer, Aer Soleir, announced last year, which now comprises four projects with land and connection secured totalling 450MW, submitted into national authorisation procedures and which have already obtained the first approval. Those are expected to reach RTB in the second quarter of 2024.

“Likewise, the opportunities available on the LevelTen platform can be considered brownfield: they are next to start the permitting phase without any red flags from a technical and legal perspective,” they added.

“The (LevelTen) projects will be ready to be built in Q2 2025. Altea’s strategy is to support the customer until the ready-to-build phase to reduce their risks during the development and permitting phase.”

Bigolin meanwhile, speaking in mid-April this year, was sceptical of the available pipelines of projects he had come across at that point. Building on his point about “too many solar developers” coming in, he said:

“And the problem with that is that people are throwing around grid connection requests and they’ve secured land without the strategy, without any studies over the specific project. We believe that battery storage cannot be developed like solar. It needs much more work and analysis on every specific project,” he said.

“We’ve had half-a-gigawatt pipelines come across our desk with a point of connection of 10 or 12km, from the same people who were a year ago advising others that you can’t go beyond 2km. But they found a piece of land and are now throwing grid connections around.”

The LevelTen platform has been used numerous times in high-profile energy storage deals, including acquisitions by Cypress Creek Renewables and Canadian Solar‘s development arm Recurrent Energy in Texas and California, respectively, in mid-2022.

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Briggs & Stratton Energy Solutions, a Wisconsin-based designer, manufacturer and marketer of energy products and power solutions, acquired SimpliPhi Power, a California-based energy storage systems manufacturer in late 2021. Briggs & Stratton has now fully incorporated the company into its business, market strategy and brand.

As a result of the acquisition, Briggs & Stratton Energy Solutions now markets a full line of standby generators along with scalable, intelligent energy storage products under the Briggs & Stratton brand. With 115 years of company experience in power generation, Briggs & Stratton is positioned to meet the evolving energy needs of today’s home and business owners.

On average in 2020, electricity customers experienced a total of more than eight hours of power outages throughout the year – the most since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began collecting electricity reliability data. In addition, according to the White House, an estimated 70% of the country’s transmission lines are more than 25 years old. An aging infrastructure contributes to increased energy costs and intermittent power interruptions like rolling brown and blackouts that many areas of the country often experience.

“Today’s residential and commercial power landscape is changing rapidly. As a result, more homeowners and businesses are looking to become energy resilient by installing standby generators and adding solar panels and battery storage so they can generate their own power,” says Tom Rugg, senior vice president and president — energy solutions at Briggs & Stratton.

Briggs & Stratton Energy Solutions products include PowerProtect home standby generators and SimpliPHI Energy Storage Systems with lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) cylindrical batteries. PowerProtect home standby generators are available in four different models to meet a variety of residential and commercial needs. The SimpliPHI Energy Storage System is an integrated, scalable solution with proprietary hardware and software that enables homeowners to store, manage and control energy from multiple generation sources to achieve critical power security and daily cost savings.

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The project given Critical State Significant Infrastructure status to be fast-tracked by the NSW government and was put out to tender. State-owned corporation EnergyCo NSW awarded a 700MW/1400MWh System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) contract to developer Akaysha Power, which is owned by global asset manager Blackrock, last October. Planning approval from the state government then came in February this year.

The SIPS is intended to safeguard the electricity network from causes of unexpected outages, which can include extreme weather events. The Waratah Super Battery has been described as a “giant shock absorber” for the grid, and other large-scale battery storage systems around Australia, such as the 300MW/450MWh Victorian Big Battery, already have similar contracts in place.  

According to a release sent from Blackrock to media including Energy-Storage.news this morning, institutional and sovereign co-investors from both Australia and abroad have backed it with the AU$500 million of capital commitments.  

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), the Australian Commonwealth government’s arm for investing into clean energy technologies and projects, will back the project, shortly after the government committed to continuing to fund the corporation.

The country’s Minister for Energy and Climate Change Chris Bowen said the battery project “will help stabilise the electricity network and help deliver more of the cleanest, cheapest form of energy for Australian businesses and households”.

Bowen noted the CEFC’s support has already been committed to large-scale BESS projects in four Australian states, while its recent refinancing confirmed a near-AU$20 billion investment into Rewiring the Nation, a scheme to upgrade and expand transmission networks.

Rewiring the Nation will also directly enable the Battery of the Nation project in Tasmania, which will see the island state become an exporter of renewable energy into the National Electricity Market (NEM) using battery storage, pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) – and of course renewable energy generation.  

Also highly anticipated is the forthcoming Capacity Investment Mechanism, a countrywide scheme to tender for firm, dispatchable renewable energy capacity. Energy storage is so central to that scheme that Bowen has previously called it analogous to a national energy storage strategy of the type clean energy industry and advocates had asked the government, in power since mid-2022, to enact.

Construction on project began in May

The Waratah Super Battery will have total output and capacity of 850MW/1680MWh, according to Blackrock, potentially leaving capacity available for participation in merchant revenue opportunities, as long as 700MW/1400MWh is available to EnergyCo NSW under its Energy Service Provider contract with Akaysha Power.

EnergyCo NSW has announced that construction on the project began in May, with it scheduled to come online ahead of Eraring’s 2025 retirement date. It is actually being built on the site of another NSW coal-fired power plant, Munmorah, which is already decommissioned.

Akaysha Power appointed US system integrator and manufacturer Powin Energy to work on the project in late 2022, shortly after the pair announced a multi-year BESS supply partnership that signaled Oregon-headquartered Powin’s first entry into the Australian market. Powin has since appointed its own key contractors and partners, including South Korean contract manufacturer ACE Engineering.

Eraring site to host flow battery pilot

In related news, the Eraring coal plant site looks set to host a pilot of a novel Australian-developed flow battery technology.

Publicly-listed energy generator and retailer Origin Energy, which owns the power plant, has invested in Allegro Energy, a startup which has developed a novel redox flow battery (RFB) using a water-based electrolyte.

Origin said yesterday that it invested an undisclosed sum to take a 5% stake in the tech company, which is also developing ultracapacitors for stationary storage applications. An initial pilot deployment of a 100kW, 8-hour duration (800kWh) RFB, could be followed up with a 5MW/60MWh system if successful.

Origin is already developing its own large-scale lithium-ion BESS installation at Eraring too, having said it will invest AU$600 million into a 460MW/920MWh system at the site, on which works are expected to commence in July. Origin Energy brought the closure of Eraring forward to 2025 from 2032, citing economic pressures as coal struggles to compete with solar and energy storage in the NEM.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Asia, 11-12 July 2023 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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Glennmonth said that the project’s development would involve independent power producer (IPP) Ilmatar, which was the technical and commercial management agent for the wind farm, which reached COD in mid-2022.

Netherlands-based Alfen will provide its modular-grid scale BESS product – The Battery Elements – for the project. It is Alfen’s second BESS project in Finland co-located with wind, after it received an order from another independent power producer (IPP) EPV Energy for its Tevu wind farm around a year ago.

Francesco Cacciabue, Partner at Glennmont, commented: “Battery technology will play an increasingly vital role in both Finland and the wider world’s energy mix in the years to come, mitigating intermittency issues and ensuring we gain maximum benefit from established renewables technologies.”

Although the announcement did not specify what grid infrastructure the two resources would share, if any, Cacciabue indicated there would be some synergy between them, adding:

“Siting the project next to our existing Piiparinmäki wind farm allows us to take full advantage of the fruitful relationship between the two technologies’ benefits, ensuring maximum opportunity for our investors.”

Michelle Lesh, CCO at Alfen, said: “We’re excited to work with Glennmont and Ilmatar as they support Finland’s goal to become carbon neutral by 2035. Energy storage is a critical enabler to meeting this goal, and Alfen’s battery storage technology such as The Battery Elements continues to evolve to better stabilize electricity grids and integrate renewable projects.”

The energy storage market in Finland is being driven by growing wind generation and the limitations of its existing fleet of pumped hydro storage, according to local system integrator Merus Power speaking to Energy-Storage.news at the Energy Storage Summit EU in March.

Projects are mainly providing ancillary services for now, and the duration of the 30MW BESS was not revealed. Wind-heavy regions tend to be more ancillary service-focused markets for battery storage, compared to solar PV-heavy ones where the main revenue source is renewable load shifting.

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Estonia aims to produce 100% of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2030, and energy storage will be needed to balance the system, the country’s climate minister Kristen Michal said.

Kristjan Kalda, the EIC’s Project Coordinator for Energy added: “The ten pilot projects that have received a grant will also show other interested parties how the energy storage systems can be used.”

Utilitas Eesti received €660,000 for heat storage projects in central water heating systems in Jõgeva and Rapla while Utilitas Tallinn receive a similar amount for a system next to the Tallinn Power Plant, which will increase the use of renewable energy in Tallinn’s integrated district heating network. The electricity storage projects accounted for the remaining bulk (75%) of the funding.

Sunly Solar OÜ received a grant for four projects, totalling €1.22 million including one at a solar plant in Tartu County, while OÜ Prategli received €273,500 for its own project co-located with solar PV.

The remaining two projects received the highest individual amount and will pair battery energy storage systems (BESS) with both wind and solar.

Five Wind Energy OÜ got €720,000 for a BESS for wind and solar energy in Saaremaa while Eesti Energy received €1 million for a 4MW/8MWh BESS at the Purtse wind and solar farm in Ida-Viru County.

Ida-Viru is also where Eesti Energia recently announced it plans to develop a 25MW/50MWh BESS through a competitive procurement, which it announced two months ago. It is not clear if the grant-funded project is part of that figure or an entirely separate project.

The funding came from Estonia’s portion of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the EU-wide pot of money for helping countries to mitigate the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Other countries to have used the funding for energy storage (or other EU-wide schemes) recently include Hungary – reported on last week – Greece, Romania, Finland, Croatia and Slovenia.

As part of its push to balance growing renewable generation, Estonia is also building two-large pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) facilities. A 225MW project, also by Eesti Energia, could be completed by 2025-26 (duration not yet disclosed) while a 550MW/6GWh system from private investors could start commercial operations in 2028.

Although the PHES projects will clearly increase the country’s MWh energy storage capacity by a much greater degree than BESS, the latter is still needed. BESS can react much faster and so are better suited to providing certain ancillary services to the grid operator.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the inaugural Energy Storage Summit Central Eastern Europe on 26-27 September this year in Warsaw, Poland. This event will bring together the region’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place, as the region readies itself for storage to take off. Visit the official site for more info. 

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