Recurrent Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar for global project development and power services, has secured a $164 million multicurrency facility with Santander Corporate & Investment Banking (Santander CIB).

The facility will support Recurrent Energy’s growth and strategy to retain greater asset ownership in select markets. With 9 GW of solar and 3 GWh of battery storage power plants operating in 29 countries across five continents, Recurrent is one of the larger and more geographically diversified utility-scale solar and battery energy storage platforms.

This transaction marks the fourth corporate facility between Recurrent Energy and Santander CIB over the past three years. The new facility provides significant flexibility for the company to execute on its growth plans and accelerate its transition to a develop-to-own model in its core markets in North America and Europe, capturing the full value of the projects developed in low-risk markets.

“Recurrent Energy is significantly accelerating its deployment of solar PV and battery energy storage by expanding its leading IPP (independent power producer) revenue base and growing stable and predictable cash flows,” says Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar. “The strengthening partnership with Santander CIB allows Recurrent Energy to continue to leverage on its expertise across development, finance, construction and operations to further grow its clean energy platform.”

As of the first quarter of 2023, Recurrent Energy has a total global solar PV project pipeline of 25 GWp and 47 GWh of battery storage of which 14 GWp and 12 GWh respectively have interconnections granted, with a large majority of the pipeline being developed from greenfield.

Photo by Viacheslav Bublyk on Unsplash.

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Some commentators are drawing parallels with the Winter Storm Uri in early 2021 which saw millions without power for days and hundreds of fatalities.

Large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, of which there are many more now in ERCOT than there were two years ago, are reportedly playing a significant role in helping to balance the grid and provide that energy into the evening as solar generation tails off.

With the extreme weather comes increased market volatility which BESS projects also thrive off financially, by helping to dampen the peaks and troughs in prices. Market optimiser Gridmatic says that more than one in ten large-scale BESS projects in ERCOT made 40% or more of their annual revenue during December 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott.

However, as more capacity comes online and leaves the grid better-equipped to deal with the volatility and grid stress that comes with such weather events, those revenue opportunities reduce over time.

Ancillary service market saturation and new ERCOT rules

David Miller, VP business development for Gridmatic, discussed these market changes in a recent interview – prior to last week’s heatwave – in which he also argued why AI was needed to fully maximise BESS revenues.

At the moment the BESS revenue stack is primarily composed of frequency regulation services Reg-Up and Reg-Down, Responsive Reserve Service (RRS or spinning reserve), with a small amount from non-spinning reserve.

As reported here in March after the Energy Storage Summit USA in Austin, most industry observers expected these services to become increasingly saturated with most pegging dates in 2024 for when there are more batteries than available ancillary services.

Reg-Up and Reg-Down are frequency regulation services of around 500MW total each which help keep the grid at 60hz by balancing fluctuations within the five-minute intervals at which energy is traded in the market. RRS meanwhile is the provision of capacity which can be called upon in case something trips offline and reserves are needed in its place, but may not be used at all.

RRS is the largest of these at around 3.5GW and, while it may not saturate the fastest, its eventual saturation will have the biggest implications due to its size and how lucrative it has been for energy storage, said Gridmatic’s David Miller.

“It’s been a high value product because it’s expensive for traditional gas plants to provide that service and so it’s been something that’s been quite lucrative for battery storage. So a lot of the revenue for batteries comes from that service and as that one saturates, they’ll have a big impact on what the batteries will do,” Miller said.

Market saturation is happening due to traditional gas plants no longer setting the margin price, which for them is higher due to the higher opportunity cost of not providing energy. Batteries have a lower opportunity cost for bidding in, so bid in at lower prices.

Market intelligence group Modo Energy pegs RRS as 59% of the ERCOT BESS revenue stack, Reg-Up at 31% and Reg-Down at 9%, while Gridmatic’s figures are similar.

A separate new piece of regulation from ERCOT around minimum state-of-charge (SOC) will also affect battery storage revenues going forward, but particularly for 1-hour systems. This is because since December 2022 ERCOT now requires projects to have a minimum charge of 1-hour of full-MW-output energy to bid into these ancillary service markets.

“Before if you were a one-hour battery you would get qualified to provide these services and then it’s up to you to provide the services and there would be penalties if you failed to do so,” Miller explained.

“However after December, ERCOT said that you have to maintain one hour SOC in your battery at all times if you’re bidding in. For a 2-hour system that’s fine but for a 1-hour one it’s hugely limited because it means they can never bid their full capacity into the ancillary service markets, because they’ll never be at 100% state-of-charge.”

This most likely explains why all recent ERCOT battery storage projects have been at least two-hour duration systems.

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The developer claimed it is the first battery storage project in West Africa dedicated to frequency regulation, and will provide stability to the local grid in the face of limited spinning reserves and intermittent renewable generation. Specifically it will provide ancillary services to national utility company Senelec under a 20-year take-or-pay PPA.

Although the financing announcement didn’t spell out the size of the project, Africa REN’s project page says it combines 16MW of solar PV and a 10MW/20MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). It will use lithium-ion batteries while the remainder of the project combines monocrystalline modules, a single axis tracker system and string inverters.

Tidiane Doucoure, Director at Ninety One said: “Within six years, Senegal has successfully installednearly 25% of the country’s energy mix from renewable energy sources. This rapid deployment of renewable energy in the grid has accelerated the needs for large-scale battery storage.”

The financing will be made up of three loans and one portion of viability gap funding (VGF). FMO will provide a €11 million loan directly and another €8 million loan through the Access to Energy Fund, a sustainable energy-focused vehicle it manages on behalf of the Dutch government.

PIDG will provide €11 million loan through its Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF) as well as US$1.5 million of VGF (the latter figure was given in dollars) through PIDG Technical Assistance.

It is targeting a commissioning date in 2023 while the technology providers haven’t been revealed.

The project, in Bokhol near the border with Mauritania, will increase the current spinning reserve by 40%, Africa REN said, and will also provide services like island operation and black-start capabilities.

Although not claimed, the project could be the largest BESS in Senegal when it comes online. There have been various reports about a 160-175MWh BESS co-located with a wind farm, for which a feasibility study was announced in 2021, but no firm project announcement has come since.

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Battery Energy Storage Systems—or BESS for short—could accelerate the energy transition. They can balance out the intermittency of renewable energy, support the grid infrastructure and reduce curtailments by holding excess supply.

These hybrid energy storage projects will speed up the adoption of renewable energy. Hybrid projects can dispatch energy in a flexible manner and increase operating profit margins for investors. We already see this happening in Australia and soon possibly across the whole Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

Facing the catastrophic effects of global warming, many governments in APAC rolled out ambitious decarbonisation targets, in line with the 2016 Paris Agreement that aims to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C. While the region is making progress, it is still insufficient to achieve goals. PwC’s Net Zero Economy Index showed that decarbonisation rates have actually dropped recently.

The rise of BESS

BESS is evolving every day, and some battery technologies can now store longer durations of between 8 and 12 hours. Most notably, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has declined by more than 80% in the past decade thanks to the industrialisation of its production process.

A similar price decline had propelled solar PV in the past decade to become one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Globally, the BESS market is expected to reach a value of US$19.15 billion by 2026, according to Research and Markets, led by China’s 2025 targets and the US’s IRA scheme. Rystad Energy has forecast 33% compound annual growth rate in global BESS installations in this decade, which will result in more than 400GWh of deployments in 2030.

Mobilising investment into supporting infrastructure is of paramount importance but challenging due to policy uncertainties in some markets. Targets and regulatory frameworks are crucial to achieve progress at pace and scale, but a lack of transparency and the clear pathway to achieving such targets were often slowing down the development. Two of APAC’s green energy leaders are about to change that.

In Japan, unlimited curtailment was imposed in the Hokkaido and Kyushu regions, areas with abundant solar and wind resources. Transmission lines leading to these areas are frequently reaching capacity limits, creating bottlenecks. This was ultimately slowing the adoption of renewables in the country.

Batteries can harness the excess power generated from these solar and wind farms, smoothen out supply, reduce curtailments and further support Japan’s decarbonisation targets. Since February, the government provides subsidies to accelerate BESS adoption.

Developers in Australia, which has vast amounts of renewable energy resources, have long suffered from regulatory uncertainty. A proposed rule change intends to create clarity on the R1 registration processes, which needs to be provided by project developers and which allows generators to sell metered energy to retail customers. It is the first of several broader changes to the connection roadmap to be revealed by regulators.

Investments in Europe and UK

Beyond Asia Pacific, Europe and the UK have already set great examples. The UK has shown the way with regulations that have encouraged battery development so that the country now has an installed capacity of utility-scale batteries equal to that of the rest of Europe.

According to system operator National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios report, the UK is set to install more than 38 GW of energy storage by 2050, more than its goal of 30 GW.

Europe has set clear goals for the energy transition bolstered by its recent green plan. It continues to develop the sector at pace, and not least due to the increased focus on energy security, and forecasters continue to revise their numbers on utility-scale battery deployments to the upside. Some countries, such as Belgium, have taken big steps to follow the UK’s example, changing regulations in order to encourage investment in BESS resulting in developments like Aquila’s Project Kairos in Flanders.

Governments must either further roll out clear guidelines or incentives to invest in batteries, or reform their power markets channel capital into the sector. Harmonised policies will improve the efficiency of the regulatory framework, which is vital to attract broad investment in BESS. For BESS to grow at a large scale, it has to be deemed as essential to the grid. And a strong grid that can support variable sources of energy like solar and wind will be critical to replacing all of today’s brown sources of energy with greener ones.

Getting more renewables to the market

The Japanese government has set a target of generating 36-38% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, which is expected to create significant opportunities for the industry. The government is also investing in research and development of new technologies and materials—like zinc and sodium—to improve the performance, safety, and cost-effectiveness of BESS.

Australia is the leader in Asia-Pacific for per capita solar and wind generation, with 35.9% of the country’s total electricity generation in 2022 coming from renewable sources, according to the Clean Energy Council national trade body. This success is highly replicable across the region because it is based on reliable, cost efficient and mature technologies.

Australia’s renewables market is on the right path, and—with the right policies and mechanisms—the country will reach new heights on the journey towards its goal of 82% renewable energy share by 2030.

While there are many efforts and investments today, much more can be done to expedite the energy transition going forward. The deployment of battery storage technology will play a critical role in increasing the share of renewables and vertically integrated players that can combine development, financing and asset management expertise with the necessary technical capabilities will be able to capture the early market opportunities and drive this part of the energy transition.

If the available renewable energy can be used at the time we need it, we’ll all be in a better position to reach net zero targets.

About the Author

Hendrik Bohne heads asset management & business development at Aquila Clean Energy Asia Pacific (ACE APAC), a clean energy platform that funds, develops, builds and operates renewable energy assets across the region. ACE APAC is part of Aquila Capital, a sustainable investment and asset development company focused on generating and managing essential assets on behalf of its clients.

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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Fred. Olsen 1848, a company focused on innovative technologies related to renewable energy, has unveiled its proprietary solution to the challenges of wave and wind loads faced by floating solar: Bolette.

Bolette allows photovoltaic (PV) modules to move freely and independently within a rope mesh, distributing the forces to the mooring system. As a result, Bolette handles both wave and wind loads. 

Designed with an integrated solution for operation and maintenance, Bolette is easily scalable and can be tailored to each individual project. All components are readily sourced, and as such, Bolette leverages an existing global supply chain and supports a sustainable industry.

Bolette enters the market at an advanced technological stage, and with a final tank test successfully completed, Fred. Olsen 1848 will install a 150 kW pilot in Norway this summer. Following a plan to install a first commercial 3 MW unit in 2024, the aim is to deliver further commercial projects from 2025 and onwards.

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Assistant Professor Hou Yi (right) led the NSU team.

A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) recently designed new perovskite solar cells that have set a world record stabilized power conversion efficiency of 24.35% with an active area of 1 cm2. This achievement opens the door for cheaper, more efficient and durable solar cells.

Perovskites are a class of materials that exhibit high light absorption efficiency and ease of fabrication, making them promising for solar cell applications. In the past decade, perovskite solar cell technology has achieved several breakthroughs and it continues to evolve.

To enable consistent comparisons and benchmarking of different solar cell technologies, the photovoltaic (PV) community uses a standard size of at least 1 cm2 to report the efficiency of one-sun solar cells in the Solar Cell Efficiency Tables. Prior to the record-breaking feat by the NUS team, the best 1 cm2 perovskite solar cell recorded a power conversion efficiency of 23.7%.

The NUS team’s accomplishment in maximizing power generation from next-generation renewable energy sources was made by successfully integrating a novel interface material into perovskite solar cells.

“Building on more than 14 years of perovskite solar cell development, this work represents the first instance of an inverted-structure perovskite solar cell exceeding the normal structured perovskite solar cells with an active area of 1 cm2,” says Hou Yi, assistant professor at NUS and leader of the research team. “This is mainly attributed to the innovative charge-transporting material incorporated in our perovskite solar cells.”

This milestone achievement by the team was included in the Solar Cell Efficiency Tables (Version 62) in 2023 and published in the scientific journal Progress in Photovoltaics on June 21, 2023.

Assistant Professor Hou adds: “The insights gained from our current study will serve as a roadmap for developing stable, and eventually, commercially viable perovskite solar cell products that can serve as sustainable energy solutions to help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.”

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Duke Energy Indiana, a subsidiary of North Carolina-based Duke Energy, is adding to its Indiana solar energy resources. Currently the state’s largest electric supplier, the company has agreed to purchase up to 199 MW of solar power from renewable energy developer Ranger Power to serve the equivalent of roughly 35,000 homes.

The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission still must approve the agreement. Pending regulatory approval, the energy generated from Ranger Power’s Speedway Solar facility will be sold to the company under a 20-year power purchase agreement.

“The emission-free solar power that this new facility generates will help us continue to diversify our generation resources and make meaningful progress toward a cleaner energy future,” says Stan Pinegar, president of Duke Energy Indiana.

Construction on the 1,700-acre Ranger Power Speedway Solar facility, located south of Gwynneville, Ind., began in March 2023. It is expected to reach commercial operation by September 2025.

“We are thrilled to bring this significant investment in clean energy to Shelby County and the state of Indiana,” says Adam Cohen, CEO of Ranger Power. “Speedway Solar will deliver significant economic and environmental benefits for decades to come – powering businesses and homes in Indiana.”

Under the company’s most recent Indiana Integrated Resource Plan, Duke Energy is proposing to add 2,218 MW of solar power, 450 MW of solar with energy storage and 6,200 MW of wind energy. These new investments in renewable energy are in addition to the continuing operation of the company’s Crane solar plant in southern Indiana, the recent expansion of its Markland hydroelectric plant and additional solar and wind power the company purchases.

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Ryan Huff

Applied Value Group, an investment, management consulting and social impact group, has acquired ES Solar, Utah’s largest residential and commercial solar and battery installer.

With operations in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, ES Solar has a unique specialization in energy storage, with over 90% of installs featuring a battery. With its focus on cutting-edge technologies, premier partnerships and exceptional customer service, ES Solar continues to contribute to the advancement of clean energy deployment.

“The residential storage industry is projected to grow by over 30% per year, and ES Solar has proven they are uniquely positioned to capture a significant part of that growth,” says Ryan Huff, Applied Value’s Consulting CEO.

The existing ES Solar team, led by CEO Chris Loock and COO Jeff Dimond, will remain in place, leveraging their expertise to collaborate closely with Applied Value Group’s resources. Through this partnership, ES Solar aims to expand into new markets, launch new products and strengthen its leading position in its existing locations.

Expressing enthusiasm about the acquisition, Chris Loock, CEO of ES Solar, states: “We are thrilled to join forces with Applied Value Group. This strategic partnership not only strengthens our position in our core markets but also enables our ability to rapidly expand into other geographies.

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The US-headquartered company this week announced Honeywell Ionic, which combines compact battery energy storage system (BESS) technology with the company’s own energy management system (EMS), Experion Energy Control System.

The solution can be scaled up to very large sizes, starting from 700kWh to 300MWh capacity within its standard configuration, while being designed for its units to be handled with just a standard forklift.

The lithium-ion BESS product also comes with an integrated chemistry agnostic battery management system (BMS), with Honeywell claiming the BMS offers three layers of protection to ensure battery health and safe operation. It can also be combined with Li-ion Tamer, the safety solution produced by Honeywell subsidiary Xtralis.

It uses liquid cooling and comes with 1500Vdc battery stack, while it also offers augmentation support for DC-coupling applications, and its modular design allows for more battery capacity to be added after initial installation. Its main intended applications include peak shaving, onsite energy use optimisation, while it can also be integrated into virtual power plant (VPP) applications.

Wärtsilä BESS meets NFPA 69 fire safety standard

Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum lithium-ion BESS solution for large-scale applications has been tested and certified to NFPA 69, the ‘Standard on Explosion Prevention Systems’.

The standard is from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), which is based in the US, but many of the organisation’s standards become used as reference or adopted in other regions, most notably NFPA 855 (‘Standard for the Installation of Stationary Energy Storage Systems’).

Within the US, the standards are among those commonly looked at by authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) and other stakeholders.

The energy storage arm of the Finnish power and marine sector energy tech company first carried out computational fluid dynamics modelling of various gas dispersion models and then put those to real-world tests.

As with its recent other work in fire safety, where the company put GridSolv Quantum through large-scale fire testing to UL9540A and went beyond its requirements to what the company called “worst-case scenario” tests, Wärtsilä said the test regime it carried out, entailing 25 tests over a six month period, went beyond the requirements of the standard.

Third-party tests conducted by Fire and Risk Alliance found that all flammable gas in the BESS enclosure was exhausted, the lower explosive limit was kept below 25%. Explosion and deflagration were also prevented, with the solution’s venting system working effectively.

Additionally, the company has just released a new customisable Addressable Fire Alarm system for battery storage.

Iberdrola invests in thermal energy storage startup

Iberdrola has invested €3 million (US$3.26 million) in a stake in Kyoto Group, a Norway-headquartered thermal energy storage startup.

Kyoto produces a modular thermal storage unit called Heatcube. Inside, salt is heated up to 415°C, then used to produce steam for industrial processes, although it can be configured to go up to 525°C. Heat accounts for more than 50% of industrial energy demand.

Iberdrola’s investment and coming on board as a business partner to the startup through the Spanish energy company’s startup investment programme gives it 12.8% control of capital. Iberdrola will also nominate a Kyoto director.

Iberdrola’s head of industrial decarbonisation, Fernando Mateo, described energy storage as “one of the major challenges in the energy transition, … hence this collaboration with the Norwegian group will be key to our strategy,” for decarbonisation through electrification,” Mateo said.

Thermal energy management company Spirax-Sacco will also make an undisclosed investment in the company.

“Beyond the capital increase, the fact that both Iberdrola and Spirax-Sarco are vesting their plans, market access and credibility behind the commercialisation of Heatcube, opens up huge market opportunities and provides us with world-class technological support,” Kyoto Group CEO Camilla Nilsson said.

“We are already working on a number of customer-specific commercial projects with Iberdrola and expect to see positive results shortly.”

In October last year, Kyoto Group signed a letter of intent (LOI) to deploy an 88MWh Heatcube system in Spain, with an unnamed company described at the time as “one of the largest owners of cogeneration facilities in Spain”. This led to some speculation the customer could be Iberdrola, which is among the country’s owners of large cogeneration facilities.  

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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was on hand yesterday as Vecco Group, a locally headquartered company developing both primary vanadium extraction operations as well as electrolyte manufacturing facilities, heralded the opening of its AU$26 million (US$17.42 million) factory.

The Townsville Vanadium Battery Manufacturing Facility will produce liquid electrolyte made with vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), for use in vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage devices. According to prior announcements, it will have an initial 175MWh annual production capacity, capable of ramping up to 350MWh.

Progress on the site has been rapid, with the start of construction only officially announced in March, again at an event attended by Palaszczuk.

The politician’s attendance at both events signifies the importance Queensland’s government has placed on the potential of clean energy technologies – and vanadium flow batteries in particular – to both assist in the state’s own decarbonisation, and in creating economic growth and industrial opportunities for the state.

While at the event, the premier also announced that AU$1 billion in coal industry royalties will be leveraged to enable a massive upgrade to the state’s transmission network, called Copperstring 2032. Just over half of that amount (AU$594 million) will be committed to the project this year.

The Queensland government said a while ago that it had heard from noted battery industry expert Robert Galyen, who among other things was a contributor to CATL’s phenomenal rise, that access to energy for production and transportation is a key source of constraints and bottlenecks to those clean energy manufacturing ambitions. Copperstring is aimed at helping unlock that access.

In fact, the Vecco plant forms part of a wider green energy manufacturing hub for critical minerals being sited in Townsville, and Palaszczuk’s government committed to supporting it financially back in January. At that time, it was noted that Queensland is thought to hold as much as 30% of the world’s primary vanadium reserves.

While a report prepared on behalf of the government by consultancy Accenture found Queensland had the potential to capitalise on opportunities in various clean energy technologies, with an estimated AU$500 billion-worth of raw materials in total in the region, it was in vanadium flow batteries that the state could hold a competitive advantage over many other regions, the consultancy said.

On initial opening, the Vecco plant is expected to be fed by vanadium sourced from industrial waste from a local provider, but in time Vecco plans to use its own mine in Queensland’s Julia Creek for feedstock.

VRFBs are essentially batteries that, unlike lithium-ion, do not contain power stack and electrolyte within the same cell. Instead the electrolyte is contained in tanks. This offers a number of perceived advantages, such as a longer lifetime of heavy cycling without degradation, lower fire risk and ability to scale up energy capacity to handle long-duration energy storage (LDES) applications.

To date, however, their upfront cost has been higher than lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) technologies, meaning uptake has been limited, even though the VRFB’s technical profile means a lower cost of ownership over lifetime, manufacturers claim.

Perhaps more immediate a concern is that if and when demand for the VRFB technology takes off, access to electrolyte will likely dictate how many of the systems can be deployed and where, as Samantha McGahan of another vertically integrated vanadium startup, Australian Vanadium, wrote in a recent Guest Blog for this site.

“I want to see vanadium mined in Queensland, processed in Queensland, and made into vanadium batteries here in Queensland. This is just the beginning of the manufacturing and mining jobs boom that our investment in CopperString 2032 delivers for North Queensland,” Palaszczuk said.

“Queensland has unique deposits of many of the minerals needed for the global energy transformation, along with the best mining and manufacturing workforce.”

Queensland trial deployment, grid-scale project in South Australia

Also announced yesterday was a VRFB trial project for Queensland government-owned energy company Energy Queensland’s power distribution subsidiary Energex.

Vecco Group has ordered a 250kW/750kW (3-hour duration) VRFB system from Japanese manufacturer Sumitomo Electric. Sumitomo Electric has been manufacturing flow batteries for several years, and is behind two of the world’s largest projects of their type, a 60MWh system inaugurated back in 2015 and a 51MWh system brought online in 2022, both in the northern Japanese island prefecture of Hokkaido.

Sumitomo Electric also delivered the US’ biggest VRFB project to date, a 2MW/8MWh trial deployment for a microgrid in California with utility San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).

The medium-duration energy storage trial project will assess how the technology could be used on Energex’s electricity distribution network. It will be installed in the suburb of Berrinba, in Queensland’s Logan City.

Its main application will be to help integrate generation from Queensland’s growing shares of rooftop solar PV systems into the network, particularly for use in evenings and at night. The state is targeting reaching an 80% share of renewable energy in its power sector by 2035.

Installation of the system is expected to begin in December this year.

Visitors braved heavy rain to see the Invinity VRFB installation on Wednesday. Image: Yadlamalka Energy

Already under construction and entering its commissioning phase is a 2MW/8MWh VRFB system from Anglo-American flow battery company Invinity Energy Systems in Port Pirie, in rural South Australia.  

DC-coupled to a 6MWp solar PV array it is another site set to deliver medium-duration energy storage. Called Spencer Energy Project, the plant has been supported with funding from the national government’s  Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), with AU$5.7 million pledged towards its total cost of just over AU$20 million back in late 2020 when the project was announced.

An Open Day was held this week to celebrate completion of civil works and the start of commissioning of a system that Yadlamalka Energy said will enable the dispatch of around 10GWh of stored energy into the grid each year.

The VRFB will be charged with surplus solar-generated energy, although the developer said it could also in future be used to charge directly from the grid at off-peak times when energy is cheaper and more plentiful.

Spencer Energy Project is thought to be Australia’s first grid-scale VRFB project, and its largest, which gives an interesting symmetry to the fact that the technology’s invention owes a lot to academics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) who perfected the basic design and electrolyte chemistry still used today, back in the early 1980s.

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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