Construction is underway on the Fresno Disadvantaged Community (DAC) Solar Farm. The largest shared solar project for disadvantaged communities in California is also the first utility-scale solar farm within Fresno.

The 10 MW system will provide energy-cost savings directly to qualifying low-income residents under Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) Disadvantaged Communities Green Tariff (DAC-GT) Program. A close collaboration between White Pine Renewables and the City of Fresno made the project possible.

“The Fresno DAC Community Solar Farm is the perfect case study of ensuring equity in the new green economy through public-private partnerships that benefit all Fresno residents. In short, it’s the type of solar development where everyone wins,” says Member Miguel Arias, the city council member representing for District 3 where the project is located.

Qualified low-income residents of Fresno will save 20% on their energy bills when subscribed to the Fresno DAC Community Solar Farm. PG&E automatically subscribes qualifying customers.

The solar power plant is located on an underutilized 76-acre parcel owned by the City of Fresno. Operations are expected to begin by the end of this year. Once complete, the system will contain more than 25,000 solar panels, which will produce enough energy to power approximately 2,700 homes.

Former city council member Larry Westerlund initiated the project. In tandem with the  groundbreaking, the project’s owner, AB CarVal, and its developer, White Pine Renewables, partnered with GRID Alternatives Central Valley, a solar non-profit, to provide a free solar installation training course and job fair to local low-income jobseekers, some of whom live in Southwest Fresno.

Nearly 70% of the participants in GRID’s program have already secured jobs with AB CarVal and White Pine’s regional installation subcontractors and other local solar companies. Several graduates are now employed at the Fresno DAC Community Solar Farm, where all workers receive a local prevailing wage.

“We are tremendously grateful to our many partners for their support and creativity in this deeply collaborative, multi-faceted initiative,” says Evan Riley, co-founder of White Pine Renewables. “The Fresno DAC Community Solar Farm is the first project of its kind in California, but it will not be the last. Our collective success has yielded a blueprint for White Pine to develop equitable utility-scale community solar projects across the state.”

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According to the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q2 2023 report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, the U.S. solar industry just experienced its best first quarter ever, with 6.1 GW of solar capacity installed. Supply chain challenges abating and delayed solar projects resuming largely drove the record quarter.

Due in part to the strong first quarter numbers and a surge in demand resulting from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Wood Mackenzie expects the solar market to triple in size over the next five years, bringing total installed solar capacity to 378 GW by 2028.  

The IRA has also prompted a surge of new manufacturing announcements, with domestic module capacity expected to rise from fewer than 9 GW currently to more than 60 GW by 2026. At least 16 GW of module manufacturing facilities are under construction as of the end of the first quarter of 2023.

This quarter, the Biden administration provided some clarity on how the IRA’s adder credits will be applied. The landmark law contains new credits that can be used in conjunction with the solar Investment Tax Credit, like the domestic content, energy communities, and low-income adder credits. In particular, the energy communities and low-income adder guidance will help drive solar and storage investment in underserved communities. 

Despite rising interest rates and economic headwinds causing customer hesitancy, the residential segment installed 1.6 GW of solar capacity in the first quarter of 2023, a 30% increase from the first quarter of 2022. The residential market segment is on track to add 36 GW of solar over the next five years, growing at an average annual rate of 6%. 

The commercial market also had a record first quarter, with 391 MW installed, putting the segment on track for 12% growth in 2023. Meanwhile, the community solar segment installed 212 MW, a 13% decrease from the first quarter of 2022 due in large part to ongoing interconnection challenges. 

The utility-scale market rebounded from a difficult 2022 with a strong first quarter and a record 3.8 GW of installed solar capacity.

By far, Florida was the top solar state in the first quarter of 2023 thanks to 1.46 GW of utility-scale solar installations. Florida installed over 70% more solar capacity in the first quarter than the next highest state, California. 

Due in part to those installations, the solar industry accounted for 54% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the grid in the first quarter.

Image by Oregon Department of Transportation on Flickr.

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Its VP of Business Development, David Miller, responded to recent comments by US developer Spearmint Energy’s head of trading Nick Dazzo about the limitations of AI-based optimisation, which Dazzo called “something of a black box” which the firm was “a little bit distrustful of”.

Miller said: “Our view is the best explanation is profitability over an extended time; that the results will ultimately will speak for themselves to the fact that these models can outperform what humans are doing.”

Asked if explainability of its AI-based algorithms – a lack thereof which Dazzo was critical of – was important, Miller added:

“It’s important to have oversight on it. We don’t want to have a situation where there is no human who understands the market who is monitoring things. It’s like self-driving cars today. We need safety drivers available watching but fundamentally the performance will be based on the data rather than what’s going on under the hood.”

Miller spent five years from 2014-2019 at Greensmith Energy, the software-focused battery energy storage system integrator acquired by Wartsila during Miller’s tenure.

Gridmatic’s AI algorithms forecast prices and play battery storage into whichever revenue streams make the most sense based on those forecasts. Miller was speaking to Energy-Storage.news shortly after the firm published a report on the ERCOT, Texas market, which claimed that AI-based forecasting models could have boosted some BESS projects revenues by as much as 46% in 2022 through optimisation.

Within ERCOT, Miller – and many others, it should be said – posited that such forecasting will increasingly be needed as the market shifts towards energy trading and other revenue sources as its main ancillary service market RRS gets saturated.

The company offers its solution either on a tolling agreement – long-term management of a BESS project with Gridmatic taking on all the market risk – or under a revenue-sharing model where the project owner bears some of the market risk.

It has 50MW under management in its tolling business but none currently under its revenue-share model. Energy-Storage.news pointed out that some might interpret this as a sign that the industry does not yet believe enough in the platform enough to share risk with it.

In response, a spokesperson said: “The storage industry is pretty early in its evolution in general. Fixed price tolling contracts are a more familiar arrangement for storage owners, hence our earliest contracts were for fixed-price arrangements simply because they require less due diligence and are quicker to execute. Gridmatic is in advanced discussions with multiple storage owners for revenue-share arrangements.”

Miller reckoned that the market penetration of AI-based optimisers in the ERCOT market is still quite low.

“Looking at the results out there, there are lots of systems that are being dispatched on a schedule, having the same awards each day. There are others doing more sophisticated dispatch awards. The ones making the most money are the ones that are bidding across multiple services, and those indicate to us they are managed by AI platforms.”

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The new market rules will allow grid operator Terna to run large-scale energy storage auctions. Terna will now run a consultation with the industry on the proposed new auction system and the first auctions should take place in late 2023/early 2024, two developers interviewed for a special feature in PV Tech Power (Vol.35) (Premium access) recently told Energy-Storage.news.

The deliberation decision document has not been released but ARERA confirmed the regulation’s approval in this update roundup (in Italian).

In related news, a 200MW project from Italy Grid Storage One s.r.l., controlled by UK developer Aura Power, was also approved by regulators this week.

In a decree the same day as ARERA’s announcement, The Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MASE) approved the system which will be built in the municipality of Maddaloni, in Campania (where Naples is).

A local source told Energy-Storage.news that the project was effectively approved in January making this announcement from MASE something of a pro-forma green lighting.

Aura Power is a UK-based solar and storage developer that is also active across Europe and North America (its UK activity has been covered extensively by our sister site Solar Power Portal).

The company lists four battery storage projects under development in Italy: the 200MW system in Maddaloni, and another 200MW one in nearby Troia, a 100MW unit in Partanna, Sicily, and a smaller 24MW project in Pegognaga in the North.

This week also saw oil and gas major Eni, through its Eni Plenitude business, announce the inauguration of a 15MW BESS in Cagliari which will provide Fast Reserve services to Terna. It was one of the winning projects of a 2020 auction which, along with last year’s surprise capacity market wins, have kickstarted the market in Italy.

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Considering three different future scenarios, the roadmap highlights specific use cases for energy storage that could be effective and beneficial for the Bangladeshi power sector.

For example, the study found a single 300MW/400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in the region of Mymensingh, a city in north-central Bangladesh could reduce load management costs by US$200,000 per day or US$71.3 million a year. The region’s average load shed is increasing, with 60MW of load shedding over three hours in April 2021 becoming 175MW over five hours by April 2022.

It also suggests various policy and regulatory actions and interventions that could help unlock investment, enabling the deployment of energy storage. In addition, a roundtable discussion hosted at the event brought various stakeholders together to talk about possible courses of action, the EU delegation said in a release sent to media including Energy-Storage.news.

What’s in the roadmap

The study was funded through the EU’s Global Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) for Sustainable Energy. The TAF’s overall aim is to increase the share of energy generated within Bangladesh from renewable energy, and integrating that energy into its electricity networks, while at the same time helping to establish security of electricity supply and stability of the grid.

Along with the use case above around load management, the study also looked at energy storage co-located or in hybridised combination with renewable energy facilities, as well as stationary batteries paired with electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure.

It found that standalone BESS for load management and in combination with variable renewable energy generation (VRE) would have an economic internal rate of return (EIRR) of around 30% each i.e., the amount of investment back into the economy they would drive, while for EV charging infrastructure it would be around 23%.

Load management would have the highest payback in terms of financial internal rate of returns (FIRR), at 12%, on a US$350 million investment into the 300MW system. For co-location with VRE, the FIRR was 3.24%, and slightly higher at 4.63% for the EV use case.

The reason for the much greater economic case for load management is the cost of about US$88 million a year’s worth of heavy fuel oil (HFO) for peaking plants which would be displaced.

The EU study identified the short-term potential and economic value of energy storage, with a total estimated potential for 7.3GWh of deployments in Bangladesh: about 250MW/500MWh of which could be paired directly with VRE, 1GW/2GWh for grid applications including load management, peak shaving and replacement of thermal peaker plants, and anywhere between 1.2GW/4.8GWh and 3GW/12GWh of stationary energy storage for EV infrastructure.

While deploying that 7.3GWh would require more than US$1 billion investment, the multiplier of economic benefit back to the country would be fivefold, the study claimed.

“This event has not only highlighted the strategic importance of energy storage in Bangladesh’s sustainable energy goals but has also laid the foundation for collaboration and investments in this crucial sector,” EU ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley said at the event last week.

A study on potential for energy storage deployment across South Asia published in 2021 by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), found that while India was the standout leader, other countries in the region including Bangladesh held “significant opportunities” for storage.

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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Phase one has a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) in place with one of AES’ corporate customers, the company said. Some of the backing for the purchase was provided by Alberta Investment Management Corporation, an investor in AES with a 25% stake in its growth projects. It invests on behalf of various funds from the province of Alberta, with over US$150 billion of assets under management.

To read the full version of this story visit PV Tech.

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The corporation announced yesterday the launch of its new business Senri Chikuden (Senri Power Storage). The three partners will establish a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) project with 11MW output and 23MWh energy capacity in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, western Japan.

Itochu will procure battery storage equipment and power conversion system (PCS) components from its own network of contacts, and will construct the system as well as carrying out maintenance.

As well as providing the land for the project, Osaka Gas will trade the battery system’s stored energy in power markets, leveraging its experience of energy trading with more conventional assets. Tokyo Century Leasing meanwhile will manage the business’ operations.

Construction of the lithium-ion battery storage system is expected to begin in the first half of the 2023 fiscal year, to go into commercial operation in the 2025 fiscal year.

It marks the latest move by a big player in the Japanese energy market to target participation in the country’s battery storage space, which despite Japan’s history of having played a role in the creation of lithium-ion batteries and its rapid uptake of residential batteries – mostly for self-consumption of solar and as backup power in case of natural disasters – has been slow to gain traction.

Itochu pointed out that it is creating products to meet expected demand for storage at commercial and industrial (C&I) facilities as well as at utility-scale. The company in its release about the project highlighted that energy storage needs to play a major role in enabling Japan to reach its 2050 policy goal of carbon neutrality.

Net zero Japan needs energy storage

Solar PV will be a big component of a net zero Japan, but it will be challenging to achieve the required capacity of solar and other renewables to be integrated into the country’s network of grid, solar market analyst Chris Wilkinson at Rystad Energy wrote in an article published earlier this year in our quarterly journal, PV Tech Power (Vol.34).

To fulfil Japan’s solar potential and reduce its heavy reliance on imported fossil fuels, “a fully developed BESS industry will be necessary to provide developers the flexibility they require to avoid curtailment, earn revenue and further promote development of not only solar but all renewables,” Wilkinson wrote.

The analyst said that while the BESS industry is “still nascent” in Japan, the government has understood its necessity and in recent years made some policy changes to encourage the technology’s adoption.

These include adjusting legislation to allow standalone battery storage to connect to the power grid and issued one round of subsidies worth about US$100 million to support projects with up to half construction costs for projects larger than 10MW.

Meanwhile, regulatory changes to allow for more transparent trading of energy and supply of services to the grid such as frequency regulation are gradually being made – Itochu said its Senri project will trade in Japan’s newly opening capacity market as well as trading wholesale power and “supply/demand balance power” – and although it still appears to be early days in terms of creating a bigger opportunity for BESS, other major players are entering or ramping up efforts in the sector.

That includes a 48MW/113MWh BESS under construction by financial services group Orix and utility Kansai Electric Power Company, set to be in operation by 2024 and other Japanese conglomerates like Mitsubishi Corporation and Toyota Tsuho working on smaller projects of about 1MW each, presumably ahead of scaling up for future projects.  

Only one region of Japan, the northern inhabited island of Hokkaido, has seen significant BESS development. This is due to the island offering plenty of land for large-scale renewables, but lacking grid capacity and relatively little interconnection with the rest of Japan, leading its regional power company Hokkaido Electric, to stipulate that all new renewable energy facilities must be paired with a certain amount of energy storage.

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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The energy sector accounts for the major share of greenhouse emissions, so replacing polluting fossil-based power with energy from renewable sources would help to significantly reduce the emissions. At the recent G7 Summit in Japan, member countries committed to increase offshore wind generation by 150GW and solar by 1TW by 2030.

So the question is not whether we are able to turn to 100% renewable energies but how do we balance all that energy, which is not available on demand? How do we achieve a stable and reliable power supply from these intermittent sources?

Integrating a share of less than about 20% renewable energy into a grid is not that difficult, but above that threshold, the need for balancing technologies becomes more and more acute.

Not only short but frequent fluctuations need to be leveled out in order to keep the grid stable, but also large amounts of energy need to be absorbed, when in excess, and released when demanded, often many hours or days later, ultimately achieving autonomous power supply based on variable renewable energy (VRE). Congestion might become an issue even for well-developed grids.

One indispensable technology, or rather set of technologies, to address these challenges is energy storage. That’s not a new concept. Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) has been with us for over a hundred years, while more recently, stationary batteries are increasingly deployed to integrate VRE.

Lithium-ion batteries, helped along by the growth of electric vehicles (EVs), have become widely adopted in the stationary storage sector. While they are well fit to serve short-duration applications, technologies, specifically designed to cover several hours of charging and discharging, offer a better cost-performance ratio once we get to applications requiring six or more hours of discharge.

There are many long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies that are starting to go into commercial use, but most of them are in their early stages, and certainly do not come with the same track record as the sodium-sulfur batteries (NAS battery), developed by NGK Insulators and distributed by BASF.

Already proven by more than 20 years of deployment in the field in more than 250 projects for industry and utilities with the total output of almost 5GWh, the NAS battery is one of the most mature long-duration technologies today.

NAS batteries are suitable for a wide range of climate conditions, as this project in Dubai, UAE, shows. Image: NGK Insulators Ltd.

Designed to discharge energy for 6 hours or longer, NAS battery units are scalable to hundreds of megawatt-hours. While having a high energy density and fast response time, the systems also convince by a design life of 20 years, or 7,300 operating cycles due to a very low degradation level.

The NAS battery storage solution is containerised: each 20-ft container of 250kW and 1,450kWh output combines 6 modules of 242kWh each. Multiple containers can be combined to create bigger installations of any required size.

The main raw materials used, such as sodium, sulfur, aluminum oxide, are abundant and neither supply chain nor prices are an issue – which may come as some reassurance to customers given the bumpy ride other battery technologies have seen over the past couple of years.

Durability and climate resilience are also important metrics: the NAS batteries can be deployed in either high or low temperature geographies. To give two recent examples, a project in South Korea was installed at temperatures around -10°C, another in Australia at temperatures above 30°C, both in the same week.

Safe, cost-competitive technology solution

NAS batteries have an elaborated safety concept which underwent extensive testing with third parties. That includes a work carried out by NGK with the Japanese Hazardous Material Safety Techniques Association back in 2011 and a safety audit conducted by TÜV Rheinland in 2019. With only one incident reported since 2011, a safety record of NAS batteries is really remarkable. Not surprisingly, NAS batteries have been chosen in several recent projects for co-location with hydrogen production.

Across the globe, testing and certification of energy storage technologies from cell to system level according to UL9540A and UL1973 standards is becoming crucial for bankability. NAS battery is certified to UL1973 for safe installation and operation of storage systems and has been evaluated according to UL9540A, a further proof of safety and competitiveness.

Besides the stability of raw materials pricing and their ideal technological fit for applications of 6 hours and beyond, another important aspect of the NAS battery’s cost-competitiveness is low Opex: Arriving on site in containerised form, the systems are simple and quick to install. The durability of the technology makes it a low maintenance asset. A low level of degradation through cycling reduces the need for system augmentation over project lifetime, and full nominal capacity is available through 100% depth of discharge, all of which helps customers to optimise a total cost of ownership.

Australia’s first NAS battery installation was recently completed at a mining site. Image: NGK Insulators Ltd.

Why has BASF entered the energy storage market with NAS technology?

You may ask why BASF, a renowned chemical company, has decided to enter this market.

BASF has a bold decarbonisation strategy which matches many of the world’s leading economies in targeting net zero emissions by 2050. Central to this transition is the use of technologies, which will replace fossil fuels with electricity from renewable sources, and energy storage is one of them.

Also NGK Insulators, the manufacturer of the NAS batteries, headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, aims to achieve net zero emission by 2050. 

The two companies have joined forces since 2019 to scale up the NAS technology, combining BASF’s global reach and strong R&D capabilities with NGK’s know-how in ceramics and experience in manufacturing NAS batteries. 

Today, BASF not only distributes the NAS battery worldwide, it is also working with NGK on the next generation of sodium-sulfur batteries, with product launches forthcoming in 2024.

To learn more about NAS batteries, visit the BASF website here. BASF Stationary Energy Storage GmbH will be presenting the technology at this year’s Intersolar Europe / ees Europe in Munich, Germany, from 14 to 16 June 2023 at exhibition booth B1.209.

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Maggie McKenna

The Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) recently granted power plant and battery energy storage system (BESS) approval and issued a substation permit and license for Sunnynook Solar + Energy Storage, a project of Sunnynook Solar Energy Inc., which is a majority owned subsidiary of Westbridge Renewable Energy Corporation.

Located in Special Area No. 2, Alberta, the Sunnynook project, is the second of Westbridge’s five Alberta ventures to receive power plant and BESS approval from the AUC. Sunnynook Solar Energy now has the go-ahead to commence construction and operation.

The project consists of a solar power plant with an approved capacity of up to 270 MW AC, BESS with capacity of up to 200 MWh and the substation. Approval is granted subject to provisions by the Hydro and Electric Energy Act and the Alberta Utilities Commission Act. It is anticipated that applications to the AUC relating to interconnection approvals will be filed in the fourth quarter of 2023.

“We are pleased to announce the successful attainment of AUC approval for our Sunnynook project, marking yet another significant milestone for our organization,” says Maggie McKenna, Westbridge director and COO. “This progress is a crucial step forward in advancing the Sunnynook project toward the ready-to-build stage.”

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The AES Corporation, a utility and power generation company, has acquired the 2 GW Bellefield project, which is currently in late-stage development, and is the largest permitted solar-plus-storage project in the United States. 

Located in Kern County, Calif., where AES1 already has considerable operations, the project includes two phases, each with 500 MW of solar and up to 500 MW of four-hour duration battery energy storage. 

Phase one of the Bellefield project has a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) to deliver energy to an existing AES corporate customer. AES expects to contract up to an additional 1 GW of solar-plus-storage in phase two by the end of this year. Both phases of the project were developed by the seller, Avantus, and are expected to come online in 2025 and 2026, respectively.

“This significant acquisition accelerates AES’ deployment of unique renewable energy solutions to our key corporate clients in the California market,” says Andrés Gluski, AES president and CEO.

Over the last decade, AES has grown its portfolio of renewable energy projects, including 15 GW of installed capacity, a 12 GW backlog of projects with signed long-term contracts (including phase one of the Bellefield project) and a global pipeline of 61 GW.

Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) is an investor in AES’ clean energy business in the US with 25% ownership of the business’ growth projects.

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