The pipeline includes three 300MW projects in Cooke, Galveston, and Brazoria, the ‘Nomadic’ portfolio acquired in March this year, and another 150MW/300MWh project, Revolution, acquired late last year. Revolution is set to come online in 2023 while the Nomadic portfolio has commercial operation dates (COD) in 2025.

Javelin Capital and Paul Hastings LLP provided financial advisory and legal counsel services respectively to Spearmint while Holland and Knight served as legal counsel for Aiga.

Andrew Waranch, CEO of Spearmint who has previously guest blogged for Energy-Storage.news, said: “This facility will enable Spearmint to accelerate the construction of our projects currently under development, capitalise on our strong pipeline of development opportunities, and reliably deliver renewable energy to the grid for years to come.”

On.Energy raises US$20 million in Series B

Meanwhile, pan-American battery storage system integrator and IPP On.Energy today announced a US$20 million Series B led by Ultra Capital and participated in by Phalanx Investment Partners.

A significant allocation of the funds will go towards the development, construction and operation of its 300MWh ERCOT pipeline comprising 10MW/20MWh projects. CEO Alan Cooper recently talked to Energy-Storage.news about the firm’s pivot to focusing on the US market.

A spokesperson said the ERCOT projects would be in the Houston/Dallas Corridor, use LFP battery cells and the first 100MWh would come online in mid-2024.

Two other US developers announced smaller financing deals for their respective battery storage pipelines on Monday too, one of which also involved Aiga.

Nexus Renewables closes US$40 million financing deals

Nexux Renewables has closed a total of US$40 million in financing through four separate deals for a 10MW/40MWh battery storage in California and to advance the development of the rest of its pipeline, including a 300MW/600MWh system in Texas.

The financing is comprised of a US$13.3 million senior secured loan led by Aiga Capital Partners, a US$14.5 million project-level financing led by Synovus Bank, and a US$3.7 million commitment for privately-placed preferred shares and US$10.8 million tax equity commitment, both led by Greenprint Capital.

The tax equity commitment from Greenprint will take advantage of the new standalone investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage. While the long-awaited guidance on the domestic content 10% adder to the ITC was recently released, the industry is still awaiting more details on how the ITC can be transferred between investors in a secondary market (so-called ‘transferability).

It is part of Nexus’ pivot from a pure-play renewables developer to an independent power producer (IPP). Nexus secured a US$100 million partnership with vertically-integrated distributed energy platform company Scale Microgrid Solutions (SMS) last year, covered by Energy-Storage.news at the time.

Granite Source Power bags US$40 million equity capital

The third of the three US developers to secure capital for battery storage projects on Monday was Granite Source Power (GSP). The New Hampshire-based developer announced an equity partnership with New Energy Capital (NEC), totalling US$40 million in capital, to fund further renewable and battery storage developments by GSP.

Few details were given on what projects the growth capital would go towards in the short-term. The announcement said GSP has a 3GW greenfield development pipeline and is currently marketing a 2GW standalone battery storage portfolio.

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They will be co-located with solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 20.4MWp in Weichenried (in the state of Bavaria), Euskirchen Wüschheim (North Rhine-Westphalia) and Wald-Michelbach (Hesse). All three have secured contracts under Germany’s innovation tenders, which pay a premium per kWh of energy from the energy storage for being hybridised with renewables.

The announcement came one week after ABO Wind commissioned another innovation tender project, this time a 2.9MW/5.8MWh BESS supplied by Rolls Royce co-located with a wind farm in Bavaria.

The press release announcing the second life projects did not reveal which OEM or car maker the modules come from, but Tricera COO Lars Fallant last year explained to Energy-Storage.news how the company gets its modules. They come from a range of automotive sectors but also one of its shareholders, which manufactures electric forklifts, and so has its own battery platform.

Kyon Energy and Obton announce 600MW pipeline partnership

In related German market news, developers Kyon Energy and Obton have announced a 600MW pipeline of BESS projects in Germany for the next three years.

Kyon Energy will focus on the early stage development, including project planning, site development, grid connection planning, building lease development and layout design while the two will jointly handle business model development and general contracting through to turnkey commissioning. Obton will then finance the projects and operate them once completed.

The first project in the co-operation framework has reached ready-to-build status, a 15.8MW/32MWh system in Tangermünde, Saxony-Anhalt.

The pair have previously enlisted system integrator Eco Stor for projects totalling 32.4MWh commissioned last year though did not reveal the technology providers that will deliver the 600MW pipeline of projects.

Osborne Clarke provided legal advisory services for Obton, which is headquartered in Denmark, for the negotiation of the framework agreement.

Kyon Energy’s head of business development and regulatory affairs Benedikt Deuchert discussed the German market in an interview with Energy-Storage.news last year.

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The majority of the funding – US$125 million – will go towards reprocessing, recycling and battery collection initiatives in the consumer electronics industry. That includes support for promoting consumer awareness of recycling programmes, lowering the cost of recycling through technological improvements and assisting stakeholders like states, local governments and retailers to understand and implement collection to recycling.

It will be administered by the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office and Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains and supports the National Blueprint for Lithium batteries published by the multi-government agency Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries (FCAB).  

Alongside that, the DOE is creating the Advanced Battery R&D Consortium, with up to US$60 million of the funding pool. It will be largely focused on EV batteries in supporting the scaleup of cleaner transportation to advance decarbonisation and reduce reliance on imported fossil fuel.

Finally, the DOE is adding a further US$7.4 million to the prize fund in its Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Prize. The prize, launched in 2019, has already distributed US$5.5 million for innovations in collecting, sorting, storing and transporting spent batteries and battery materials.

The new commitment sees a new Breakthrough Contest category added, and a Demonstration Impact stream through which participants must prove the effectiveness of their solutions in a commercial context. The Battery Recycling Prize’s goal is to enable US companies to develop and demonstrate technologies that could capture 90% of all discarded or spent lithium-based batteries in the country profitably.

Public funding alongside private industry advances in recycling ecosystem

The public funding support pledge comes amid a wave of other news from private actors in the recycling sector.

At the end of May, Princeton NuEnergy, an end-to-end battery recycling startup founded out of the university of the same name, said its recycled cathode materials achieved results comparable to new materials in tests.

Conducted by Argonne National Laboratory, pouch cells made with directly recycled cathode material using Princeton NuEnergy’s low-temperature plasma technology, were found to have high discharge capacity retention in both lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) sub-chemistries.

The recycling technology, called Cathode-to-Cathode, resulted in LCO pouch cells with 83.66% discharge capacity retention and NMC cells with 88.9% discharge capacity retention after going through 1,000 deep cycles.

“Argonne National Laboratory has long been an advocate for direct recycling and it pleases us to see these test results,” the lab’s senior chemical engineer Dr Andrew Jansen said.

“PNE’s rejuvenated cathode material shows very comparable cyclability to pristine commercial material and demonstrates that PNE’s direct recycling process can recover the electrochemical performance.”

Further along in its road to commercialisation is Ascend Elements, formerly known as Battery Resourcers, which announced this month a deal to supply high-nickel NMC cathode precursor (pCAM) made using recycled materials.

The company is currently building what is claimed will be the US’ largest single site battery recycling facility in Georgia, as well as a commercial scale NMC pCAM manufacturing facility in Kentucky. Ascend Elements already has in place an agreement to recycle lithium-ion battery cell and module manufacturing scrap from manufacturer SK Innovation’s factories in Georgia. The company has said that while EVs will be its initial focus, being able to recycle products from and for the stationary BESS industry will become increasingly important, too.

Ascend Elements CEO Mike O’Kronley said that there was “no reason we can’t manufacture critical battery materials like this in the United States,” noting that nearly all of the world’s pCAM is currently produced in Asia.

“In fact, we need to manufacture our own battery materials to secure the supply chain in North America, reduce carbon emissions and ensure our energy independence,” O’Kronley said.

Ascend Elements said its supply deal, with an undisclosed “major US” battery manufacturer beginning in Q4 2024, will have an initial value of around US$1 billion but the contract could be expanded to be worth as much as US$5 billion.

The company last year received two matching DOE grants worth US$480 million to advance construction of the Kentucky facility.

In February, another North American battery recycler, Li-Cycle, got a US$375 million conditional loan commitment from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). The loaned money will support the construction of a Li-Cycle recycling plant in Rochester, New York, one of several around the US, Canada and in Europe the company is building or already has in operation.

In related news, Redwood Materials, the battery and resource recycling company led by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel said recently that it had successfully recycled an entire 2MWh BESS facility from utility Georgia Power and its parent, Southern Company, in collaboration with the US Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

The company hasn’t responded to Energy-Storage.news requests for more details about the project, but you can see a short video about the recycling project below. Redwood also got a loan commitment from the LPO, worth US$2 billion.

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In a recent interview with this site, the battery manager for Sweden’s Stena Recycling Group discussed many of the opportunities (Premium access required), as well as challenges, for collecting and recycling batteries, including comments on the European Union’s Battery Directive, which mandates the growing use of recycled materials in batteries over the next few years.

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The iron-air battery is designed to be made with abundant and recyclable raw materials. While it is lower round trip efficiency (RTE) than technologies like lithium-ion, it can also be made much more cheaply, according to the company. Form Energy recently just broke ground on its first factory, in West Virginia.

The deal with Georgia Power, announced yesterday, puts the proverbial seal on a 15MW output, 1,500MWh energy storage capacity iron-air battery storage project that the two are known to have been in discussions over since February last year.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time, Form Energy and Georgia Power, a subsidiary of utility holding group Southern Company, were in negotiations to find an optimal application for the iron-air battery technology in Georgia Power’s service area.

The utility’s chair, president and CEO noted that more and more of its customers are asking about long-duration energy storage (LDES), specifically multi-day technologies.

“As we continue to build Georgia’s clean energy future, battery storage systems play a vital role in how we will continue to serve our customers with clean, reliable energy for decades to come. That’s why partnerships with innovators like Form Energy are so important to our long-term strategy,” Kim Greene said.

“Our customers, including many business and commercial accounts, are increasingly interested in the use of new technologies such as multi-day energy storage to help grow renewable energy and enhance reliability, especially as they relocate or grow their operations in Georgia.”

Renewables as baseload energy

Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo has told this site previously that the company’s rechargeable battery technology could be what takes high capacity factor thermal assets, such as open cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) and coal, off the grid.

A combination of renewable energy and iron-air batteries, plus other complementary storage tech like lithium-ion, could see renewables becoming considered as reliable, dispatchable sources of baseload energy, Jaramillo said in a an interview with Energy-Storage.news in 2021.

While further details of the project with Georgia Power were not yet disclosed, Form Energy said it could come online “as early as 2026”, and that the two parties are continuing to work together on evaluating and demonstrating the value of the 100-hour battery technology in strengthening the grid during daily, weekly and seasonal weather variations, as well as offering backup to electricity supply in the event of extreme weather-caused disruptions.

It’s one of three known deals or advanced discussions with US utility companies Form Energy has entered into in the three years or so since exiting stealth mode.

The first announced was with Minnesota utility Great River Power, revealed in 2020 even before Form had disclosed the chemistry of its battery. That pilot will be a 1MW/150MWh system, scheduled to get underway later this year.

Also in the works are two potential projects with Xcel Energy, also headquartered in Minnesota. Bill Gates-founded VC firm Breakthrough Energy recently pledged a US$20 million grant for the Form-Xcel projects. Each of those would be 10MW/1,000MWh systems.

Those two are expected to come online in 2025 and Xcel Energy has said it expects to be able to leverage Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credit incentives to lower the projects’ costs further. Form Energy has said that one of the advantages of its low bill of materials costs is that production can be fairly easily sited locally to demand.

With the IRA boosting financial support for clean energy projects with domestic, US-made components and equipment, this looks like another selling point for the iron-air battery company.

What the utilities Georgia Power, Xcel and Great River Energy have in common are a dependency on thermal generation today that they need to move away from.

Georgia Power plans to retire and decertify all of its coal power plants but one by 2028. Although the utility has approved around 2,000MW of contracts for natural gas as part of the answer, it is also pursuing the buildout of energy storage and renewable energy.

In its 2022 integrated resource plan (IRP), Georgia Power said it wanted the right to own and operate 1,000MW of energy storage by 2030. This follows its previous IRP in 2019, through which it got 80MW of own and operate battery energy storage system (BESS) projects approved by regulators.  

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Changing times are calling for stronger policies as governments around the world continue to increase their renewable energy ambitions, including at the G7 Summit in Japan, where member countries pledged to increase capacity of offshore wind by 150GW and elevate solar capacity to 1TW by 2030. As the world accelerates the transition to more sustainable energy sources, the need for flexible energy storage solutions is critical.

At present, short duration energy storage technologies are added to many electric grids and infrastructure across the globe, but have limitations on safety, how long energy can be stored, and expected lifetime value. 

Long duration energy storage (LDES) can help solve these challenges while providing an array of benefits to diverse industries and communities. LDES technologies can store power for extended periods of time – from multiple hours, days, weeks, months to seasonal – storing energy from wind, solar and other clean sources in an affordable, flexible, reliable, and sustainable way. Many LDES technologies are already commercially available today, but to scale to the level needed to reach the world’s decarbonisation goals, the potential for LDES needs to be fully realised with supportive policies that support an accelerated clean energy transition.

LDES provides multiple benefits across the energy and heat sector, making it a critically important component of any sustainability initiative. For one, LDES makes wind and solar dispatchable every hour and seasonally as it balances the variability of renewable energy sources to match load and demand. LDES enables the provision of reliable and continuous power, even during periods of high demand by providing energy shifting services reducing the need for fossil fuel power plants, further contributing to a low carbon energy system.

Working to decarbonise global communities is why LDES is an essential technology that will underpin the transition towards a cleaner and more sustainable future, while being a strong economical investment.

Enabling Europe’s renewable future

The European Commission’s REPowerEU plan aims to safeguard Europe’s energy security by increasing the rollout of renewables, diversifying energy supplies and speeding up the deployment of clean technologies.

Under the current plan, 1.2TW of renewables capacity will need to be installed by 2030, however this must be combined with significant increases to energy storage to ensure European energy systems can perform effectively. To meet that significant increase in renewables, the LDES Council has estimated Europe will require over 200GW of energy storage by 2030.

Whilst REPowerEU specifically includes a focus on the use of photovoltaic, hydrogen, and heat pumps, and set targets for their deployment, it fails to do the same for LDES.

EU policies must incentivise a diverse range of LDES technologies that address the range of intra-day, multi-day, and seasonal storage needs that will provide the flexibility the EU needs to meet its diverse system needs. Only through these important changes for clean energy will there be successful transition towards a net zero future.

LDES: The power of diverse technologies

Since 2019, over US$58 billion in commitments have been made by governments and companies to LDES, which shows the significant progress of the market in recent years.

However, this only represents a small slice of the true potential of this technology. Research conducted by the LDES Council shows that the market has a potential to reach US$4 trillion through deploying 8TW of LDES by 2040, resulting in delivering US$540 billion in cost savings. 

There is a tremendous amount of innovation and diversity in LDES, represented by four main LDES technology types (mechanical, electrochemical, chemical, and thermal), and a myriad of sub-types. This makes LDES suitable for many different applications, and regions, whether urban, rural, or remote systems, as well as industrial and island energy grids and various types of infrastructure.

The future of LDES: Challenges, barriers, and market opportunities to scale LDES globally

While there are many positives to LDES, there are still barriers to overcome to create a new economy and ecoystem based on climate dependent generation.

As there is a rise of renewable energy integrated in power and heat systems around the world, LDES will need to be deployed faster to provide system flexibility, reliability and stability. Three key challenges are: rising power supply and demand imbalances, an increase in transmission congestion, and a decrease of system inertia.

These can all be solved by introducing LDES diverse technologies to provide flexibility into the power and heat sector across through different time spans, allowing renewables to meet constant demand. The ups and downs of variable generation are flattened out to a continual source, allowing clean energy to be stored via LDES at times when supply exceeds demand and released at times when demand exceeds supply.

Current transmission and distribution planning do not incorporate the multiple value add of LDES including an array of ancillary services (blackstart, load following, synchronous inertia, frequency response) that provide additional reliability and flexibility, and models must be updated to reflect the multiple benefits to the system and markets.

A crucial barrier to LDES adoption is the need for new policy and regulation. For LDES to be available to support the decarbonisation of energy systems in 2026 and beyond, signals need to be created today to spur scale-up, investment, and adoption.

Most climate targets and current policies aim at 2030, which is less than seven years away. To truly decarbonise economies and reduce emissions, policies must change today to address tomorrow’s needs. Scaling up the LDES value and supply chain must start now to provide the savings tomorrow.

There are three types of policy support which can drive action towards net zero: long-term market signals, revenue mechanisms and direct technology support.

Long-term market signals critically provide a more secure investment case for LDES as they provide certainty and transparency, while more strategic planning for storage capacity targets, and clearer procurement targets will aid the incorporation of LDES into inclusive grid planning, ensuring climate needs are meet with LDES flexible solutions. Carbon pricing and the removal of fossil fuel subsidies also helps to level the playing field in the coming decades.

Revenue mechanisms will be necessary for improving project financial viability for both customers and investors, and Contracts for Difference, Caps & Floors and 24/7 Purchase Power Agreements (PPAs) can all also be leveraged to achieve this. These tools provide mechanisms for ensuring the multiple value streams LDES provides are compensated and provide financial certainty.

Another tool gaining global attraction is hourly accounting for renewables, and LDES can provide this flexibility, security and reliability.  Today’s pay-as-produced renewable PPAs, which account for supply and demand on an annual basis, only achieve 40-70% decarbonisation of the off-taker’s actual electricity consumption, while exposing off-takers to market price risks stemming from the variability of renewables. Instead, 24/7 clean PPAs offer a more precise means of matching supply and demand as renewables contribute an increasing share of global generation capacity.

Finally, direct technology support is needed to fast-track significant growth in public-private partnerships, provide investments from governments, and to amplify the need and targeted tenders to accelerate innovation and delivery. This is critical to validate need and ensure innovations and existing technologies can scale to meet the growing demand and need to decarbonise all economies.

LDES can lead the energy transition

Regulators and policymakers can take immediate action to support the clean energy transition. By building on existing policies and targets and adding specific LDES goals, strong policies can be developed that support the procurement and scale up of long duration energy storage technologies.

By reaching these goals and with proper investment, policy support and incentivisation, LDES is a commercially available solution available today that has tremendous environmental and economic benefits, creating a cost-optimal net-zero energy system that benefits communities around the world.

This is an extract of a feature which appeared in Vol.35 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news. Access to PV Tech Power, including more than five years of back issues, is part of the Energy-Storage.news Premium subscription package.

About the Author

Julia Souder is a strategic executive with over 20 years of expertise in the energy and environmental sectors as a coalition builder and advocate. Prior roles include senior positions at Clean Line Energy Partners, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the US Department of Energy (DOE) and as Executive Director of the Long Duration Energy Storage Association of California (LDESAC). Julia leads the LDES Council’s strategy and vision. Its mission is to replace the use of fossil fuels to meet peak demand by accelerating the market for long duration energy storage.

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Orsted, a Danish developer, builder and operator of offshore wind farms, has pledged to reuse or recycle all solar panels from its global portfolio of solar farms effective immediately. It is the world’s first energy developer to do so.

The deployment of solar energy technology requires vast amounts of virgin materials, the mining of which has environmental and social impacts. Competition to secure access to these materials is also increasing.

Reusing or recycling end-of-life solar panels and bringing the materials back into manufacturing is a key solution is to lower dependency on virgin materials. Such practices are currently limited, and it is still common to bury worn-out panels in landfills. This means that resources with a high value to the green energy transition are simply discarded. 

“We want to create a world that runs entirely on green energy, and we want to do it in a sustainable way,” says Ingrid Reumert, senior vice president and head of global stakeholder relations at Orsted. “Addressing the most critical waste problem of the solar industry, while mitigating social and environmental impacts in the supply chain, is essential to doing so. This is an industry-first commitment and complements our already existing ambition to reuse or recycle all wind turbine blades.”

Orsted will collaborate with Solarcycle, a technology-based solar recycling company located in Odessa, Texas, to process and recycle Orsted’s end-of-life solar panels from its projects across the U.S., one of its main markets.

Solarcycle’s recycling facility will extract the valuable resources from panels, including metals like silver, copper and aluminum, and materials such as glass and silicon. The substances will then be refined to make the next generation of newer, higher-efficiency solar panels.

Orsted has been growing its onshore portfolio in the past few years with the goal of reaching 17.5 GW of wind and solar PV capacity for its global onshore portfolio by 2030.

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With the cost of solar decreasing significantly over the last decade, in addition to new tax incentives introduced in the U.S. and Canada driving the popularity of solar, a training tool for installers and crash course for sales professionals became necessary.

S-5!, the inventor of innovative solar attachment solutions for metal roofs has launched its new online educational training program, S-5-University, designed to educate industry professionals on all things metal roofing. Husband-and-wife team Shawn and Jessica Haddock, both employed by S-5!, a family-owned business, developed the new curriculum. Through their interactions with customers and industry professionals, they identified a need for a single trusted source of reliable information. They worked with the company’s team of technical experts to create a series of step-by-step courses to train individuals and teams from the ground up.

The first series is focused on solar mounting and metal roofing. Participants can login to S-5-University via the company website, select a variety of courses, take brief quizzes at the end of each unit, and earn certificates upon completion.

S-5!’s team fine-tuned lessons to provide the necessary education for individuals to become experts in choosing solar, snow or utility mounting solutions that are right for their projects, while providing best practices for installation. 

Who Should Attend:

Contractors

Architects

Specifiers

Engineers

Installers

EPCs Homeowners & DIY’ers

“Our goal is to provide our customers and the greater solar industry with all the necessary information and tools to make their jobs easier,” says Jessica Haddock, S-5! marketing manager. “We want to provide industry leading knowledge on our products so our customers are fully aware of the value of each solution.”

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Abigail Ross Hopper

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) has approved the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) as an Accredited Standards Development Organization. SEIA can now convene industry stakeholders to develop national standards for materials, products, processes and services in the U.S. solar and storage industry.  

“Through strong leadership and SEIA’s new ANSI accreditation, we will help the industry proactively and responsibly manage its growth, building confidence among solar customers, businesses, and key stakeholders alike,” says SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper.  

Regarding national standards development, SEIA will create more open and efficient markets, reduce costs and minimize industry risk. Adherence to best practices throughout the supply chain will be stressed, making it safer and easier to develop and deploy solar while building trust among customers, businesses, regulators, investors and other stakeholders.

SEIA will pursue a variety of new measures for the solar and storage industry, including standards that enhance supply chain traceability, consumer protection and end-of-life or performance period management.

New standards will be established by means of a multi-step, consensus process through SEIA’s Standards Technical Committees – a diverse collection of SEIA members and non-members who represent producer, user and general interest categories. 

SEIA will ensure all voices are heard during the development process and welcomes participation in the Standard Technical Committees from a broad range of stakeholders interested in or affected by SEIA’s standards.  

SEIA’s first Standards Technical Committee will focus on supply chain traceability and is planning to release its first American National Standard in early 2024.  

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Expectations for Renewable Energy Finance in 2023-2026, an analysis recently released by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), has assessed how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is impacting the near- and mid-term outlooks of some of the most prominent investors and developers in the renewable energy sector.

The analysis also details survey results about the difficulties currently hindering the rate of clean energy development and the potential impacts of new and different financing structures, such as transferable tax credits, on the market over the next three years.

“America has never been a more attractive venue for renewable energy investment than it is today, thanks largely to the policy certainty provided by the IRA,” says ACORE President and CEO Gregory Wetstone. “Even as tremendous opportunity awaits, there are still serious market challenges that must be resolved to realize the potential of the IRA and achieve the Biden administration’s goal of power sector decarbonization by 2035.”

Many of the concerns that existed before the IRA’s enactment (grid-related issues, supply chain challenges, trade restrictions, tax equity constraints) continue to impact renewable investors and developers. However, the new analysis finds the IRA has already increased companies’ participation in the renewable energy market in 2023. All surveyed developers and most investors plan to increase their activity in the U.S. renewable energy sector compared to last year, with 84% planning to increase their U.S. investment by 5% or more.

Additional survey findings:

For the first time in the six years ACORE has conducted investor surveys, investors unanimously expect the U.S. to increase in attractiveness for renewable energy investment in 2023-2026 compared to other countries.

One-third of developers have reduced their risk profiles in 2023. However, most large developers and many investors are willing to take on increased risks.

Over 80% of surveyed investors plan to utilize tax credit transferability or direct pay.

Participants agree that the tax equity market must nearly triple in size (from $18-20 billion annually to over $50 billion) to meet heightened post-IRA demand.

Over 90% of investors and developers prioritize low-to-moderate income or energy communities (as defined by the IRA) to some extent in their renewable investment or development decisions.

Utility-scale solar, energy storage and commercial solar were selected as the top three most attractive clean energy sectors for investment over 2023-2026.

PJM, MISO, ERCOT and CAISO were chosen top power markets for renewable energy investment and development in 2023-2026.

More than one-third of investors (38%) plan to invest in domestic clean energy manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

Twenty-eight percent of developers plan to open a new manufacturing plant, and 33% plan to incentivize their suppliers to open domestic facilities.

ACORE is pursuing policy reforms and market drivers this year to accelerate renewable energy growth, maximize the impact of the IRA, and reduce the effect of sector headwinds.

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The IESO is seeking up to 2,500MW of energy storage capacity as well as some natural gas to help meet projected shortfalls in electricity supply and last month announced 739MW of winning bids, comprising seven standalone energy storage projects.

The systems will provide resource adequacy to the Ontario grid when they go online by the end of 2025, and they will be sized for four-hour duration at full output.

Shown in the table below, the biggest of the projects is the 300MW/1,200MWh Hagersville project from French power company Boralex, which also won with the 80MW Tilbury project.

The other winners include Wahgoshig Solar FIT5 LP, a partnership between the Wahgoshig First Nation with private investors, which has three projects of just under 5MW each, and Capital Power’s 120MW project (contracted for 114MW with the IESO).  

ProponentQualified applicantTechnologyNameplate capacitySummer contract capacity Winter contract capacityZone – LocationHagersville Battery StorageBoralex Electricity storage300MW285MW285MWSouthwest – HaldimandNapanee BESSPortlands Energy Center (Atura Power)Electricity storage265MW250MW250MWEast – Greater NapaneeTilbury Battery StorageBoralexElectricity storage80MW76MW76MWWest – LakeshoreWalker BESS 4 Ltd PartnershipWahgoshig Solar FIT5 LPElectricity storage4.99MW4.749MW4.749MWWest – WindsorWalker BESS 4 Ltd PartnershipWahgoshig Solar FIT5 LPElectricity storage4.99MW4.749MW4.749MWWest – WindsorWalker BESS 4 Ltd PartnershipWahgoshig Solar FIT5 LPElectricity storage4.99MW4.749MW4.749MWWest – WindsorYork (Battery) Capital PowerElectricity storage120MW114MW114MWEssa – King TownshipData from IESO release, 2023.

Napanee BESS Inc, the Ameresco JV with power producer Atura Power, is delivering a BESS with 250MW output and 1,000MWh energy capacity. Ameresco has a 10.1% stake in the development JV, plus the company will separately contract with its JV to provide engineering and construction services, as well as unspecified “expertise” for the installation of the BESS.

Atura Power is a subsidiary of the provincial government-owned Ontario Power Generation. The Napanee project would equal in size the Oneida battery storage project, another 250MW/1,000MWh asset in development in Ontario, with backing from the province’s government.

In a recent Editor’s Blog on this site (Premium access required), we looked at both the IESO’s procurement and the achievement of financial close for Oneida. It explains that in both cases, the promise of a 20-year contract with the system operator was powerful in securing private sector interest.

The contracts offer enough stable revenue to de-risk the investment, but the BESS assets will also participate in merchant market opportunities to make profits.

Ameresco is perhaps best known for deploying battery storage as part of full-wrap energy solutions for corporate and government facilities, but the company has also worked on front-of-meter utility-scale renewables or storage like its Ontario project.

Most notably, it is thought to be in the final stages of delivering one of the biggest single buildouts for a California investor-owned utility (IOU). Ameresco’s 2.1GWh, three-project portfolio for Southern California Edison (SCE) has been struck with bad fortune, partly due to its mid-pandemic timeframe, but looks set to reach “substantial completion” by summer 2023, according to Ameresco executives.

Ameresco said the JV would continue to pursue further BESS opportunities in Ontario. The company recently also launched a JV to bid for renewable energy and storage EPC contracts in Europe.

Justin Rangooni, executive director of Energy Storage Canada, recently blogged for this site that while a raft of positive market developments are occuring across the country, Canada is still well behind the pace of deployment of storage it needs to achieve its net zero policy goals.

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