Molten hydroxide salt energy storage inaugurated in Denmark

After an inauguration ceremony the facility will be put into operation to demonstrate its ability to store energy charged from renewable power, which it can then discharge as heat or steam for either industry or the electricity system. Molten hydroxide generally melts at lower temperature than other kinds of salt, with Hyme claiming it is the first technology provider to enable its use for thermal energy storage.
Hyme is not the only company deploying molten salt energy storage projects at MW-scale in Denmark, however. Kyoto Group said in August 2023 that it was undergoing testing for its 4MW/18MWh molten salt energy storage project at the Nordjylland Power Station in Aalborg.
One-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions are from industrial heat, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The project has an energy storage capacity of 1MWh with a discharge capacity of 1.2MW of steam. It has been built at a port facility owned by Semco Maritime, a construction and engineering firm.
Other companies involved in the MOSS project were industrial product firm Alfa Laval, design studio Kirt x Thomsen, Swiss engineering firm Sulzer and nuclear technology firm Seaborg. Innovation network Energy Cluster Denmark facilitated the project with financial support from Denmark’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP).
See a video illustration of how the MOSS project works below, from Hyme Energy on Youtube.

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The company has further plans to build a project at the GWh-scale in future as part of an aim to commercialise its solution in 2026.
Hyme Energy is also deploying a larger, 1MW/20MWh project for utility Bornholms Energi & Forsyning (BEOF) for a 2024 completion date, although no update has been provided on that since it announced it in late 2022.

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CAES developer Corre Energy hires Rothschild for investment process

The company is developing several large-scale CAES projects, including with large utility Eneco in Germany and the Netherlands and another in Denmark with five in total. Those three will be around 300-320MW of rated power and a discharge duration of around 3.5 days, meaning up to 27GWh of energy storage capacity, each. It also acquired a project in Texas last year.
The five projects in Europe led Corre to claim that it is the largest developer of energy storage in Europe, with those projects’ combined 100GWh-plus capacity being recognised in various transmission system operator (TSO) planning documents.
That achievement, plus its agreement to sell a 50% stake in the Germany project to Eneco and a construction milestones mean that the company was always going to attract attention, a source familiar with the matter said, indicating a de-listing could be on the cards.
“The listing was to raise development capital, not to have a share price,” they said. “There is a strong interest in investing in the company.”
As a listed company Corre Energy has had a mixed performance. Having listed in September 2021 at around €1.26 per share, it peaked at around €3.90 in February 2023 but now sits at around €0.72. The expressions of interest came in March after a rapid six-month fall.

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DNV Battery Scorecard ‘asks the questions every battery buyer should consider’

“When somebody wants help to purchase a battery system, they can call us, and we can walk them through everything they need to know. This [Battery Scorecard] is sort of the free ‘starter kit’, where we give you a broader view of what’s important in the industry,” Jason Goodhand, global segment lead for energy storage at DNV, told Energy-Storage.news.
Goodhand said customers might want to look at things like balancing cell safety “versus degradation versus cost.”
DNV tests a variety of cells from different vendors across the industry under different conditions. This gives a better understanding of how the devices respond to, for example, different charging rates, whereas if only going on data provided by the OEM, the customer may not be able to make like-for-like comparisons of different cell types.
While the individual cells aren’t named, the DNV storage lead said that the graphs in the report show the spread of performance and safety metrics between batteries from different manufacturers and of different chemistries and form factors can be quite broad.
“While this doesn’t inform you about a specific cell, it does something unique by showing how much they vary,” Goodhand said.
Back in 2019, then-DNV US energy storage lead Davion Hill, who now leads up an energy storage development company, wrote an article for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power on the scorecard and how it was aimed at easing the risks of battery investment.
The 2022 edition, the most recent one prior to the latest, DNV ranked some named cells and providers, finding that CATL and Narada’s cells were among top performers for stationary storage applications. The 2022 edition also carried rankings of manufacturers by production volume, putting CATL, LG Energy Solution, Panasonic, BYD and Samsung SDI in the top five.
According to the 2024 report, the key questions to ask are about technology readiness and bankability, degradation expectations and the sort of testing the cells have undergone, expected lifetime under a variety of use cases, and the battery’s safety profile.
DNV noted that within lithium-ion (Li-ion), the dominant battery on the market, there are some de facto standards of battery size and shape, with lithium iron phosphate (LFP), increasingly the sub chemistry of choice in stationary storage, commonly packaged as 1kWh prismatic cells weighing about 5kg each.
The scorecard also takes into account advances in battery technology, which include improvements to the incumbent lithium-ion batteries, such as anode and cathode advancements for Li-ion and solid-state Li-ion batteries, as well as different battery chemistries like sodium-ion and long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies that could disrupt the market.
In an overview of the Li-ion market, DNV said that the early market for battery energy storage system (BESS) batteries was dominated by a small number of major players, most prominently Samsung, LG and Panasonic.
Over time, as Energy-Storage.news readers will likely know, major Chinese manufacturers including CATL and BYD have taken the lead in the market, spurred on by the manufacturing scale they’ve attained from EV battery production.
More recently, DNV recognised the wave of smaller Asian manufacturers, again mostly from China, that are gaining traction. The company warned that some new suppliers keen to gain market share are offering batteries at lower cost, but this could come at the expense of performance or safety.

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New York launches 42.5MW of BESS projects including like-for-like gas turbine replacer

On the same day, governor Kathy Hochul announced that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York Power Authority have started construction on a 12MW solar carport and 7.5MW BESS unit at JFK airport.
New York state is targeting 6GW of energy storage by 2030, which it hopes to achieve via grid-scale projects of 5MW or over, which the state puts under the definition ‘bulk’, and smaller commercial and industrial (C&I) or community-scale below 5MW, defined by the state as ‘retail’ energy storage, and residential ones.
5-15MW projects approved by NYCIDA
NineDot Energy, a developer of primarily community-scale BESS projects, will deploy two BESS projects of roughly 4.9MW each with a total capacity of 9.8MW and 39.1MWh of energy storage, for completion by Winter 2025.
Elevate Renewables, the BESS arm of legacy power plant owner Arclight, will deploy a 15.1MW/60.1MWh system as part of retiring a 15.1MW gas turbine. The address given for the project is the Athur Kill Generating Station, part of a portfolio it acquired from NRG Energy in 2021, and the BESS has a targeted operation date of December 2025.
All three projects above are located on Staten Island while solar and storage specialist Soltage’s are in the borough of Queens. The company will deploy two 5MW/20MWh BESS projects for completion in Summer 2025.
The NYCIDA is helping the projects to lower the cost of capital by providing discretionary tax benefits, which it has used to support more than 254MW of BESS in the state, it said. The tax benefits can also be used for EV freight charging, cold storage retrofits and other clean energy applications.
That is in addition federal level investment tax credits (ITCs) for clean energy that the projects will be able to benefit from brought in by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The projects are being built in relatively population-dense parts of New York where some of the strictest fire safety regulations exist.
BESS technology there has suffered from a ‘loss of trust’ due to numerous fires according to one developer speaking at Solar Media’s Energy Storage Summit USA in Austin in March, and Hochul recently set up a working group to amend the state fire code to better manage BESS fire risk.
JFK airport
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York Power Authority have enlisted oil and gas major TotalEnergies to build and operate the solar and storage project at JFK airport.
The solar carport will have 12MW of solar power and 7.5MW of BESS though a MWh figure was not revealed. The Port Authority, which also runs New York City’s airports, has a goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The two aforementioned units will be built in a phase one of construction by March 2025 while a second phase will see 6MW of community solar added to serve the grid operated by utility Con Edison.

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LG Energy Solution fires warning shot to patent infringers as battery industry prepares for wave of lawsuits

“The company sees a rising tide of latecomers’ deliberate and blatant unauthorised use of its patents across a wide range of commercialised products, including batteries for consumer electronics, energy storage systems (ESS), and electric vehicles (EV),” it said today (24 April).
It said there has been a surge in patent infringement by those latecomers which has led to market distortion, and called for strong countermeasures to “level the playing field”.
The topic of battery technology patents also came up during a panel discussion at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Giga Europe conference covering Europe’s nascent battery industry in Sweden in February this year.
“There are a lot of patents out there within this space and we’re yet to see some of the major lawsuits,” said Richard Clark, global head of specialty materials and processes for Appian Capital Advisory.
“Silicon anodes for example has probably north of 1,000 patent families, who’s to say who owns what? But as soon as someone does, you know they’re going to be hammered by a lawsuit by everybody else who says they own it.”
“Solid state also has a lot of patents and LFP (lithium iron phosphate) only just came off patent. So I think we’re about to head into a grand era for the world’s understanding of patents and I think we are going to see a lot of lawsuits moving forward as the money involved becomes so large that it’s worth the time of employing a law firm.”
Clark was speaking on the ‘Cathodes, Anodes & Battery Innovation Panel: creating a European hub for mid stream capacity & next generation battery development’ session.
LFP batteries are the dominant lithium-ion battery chemistry in the ESS market, by far, and the main patent families relating to it expired in late 2022. Solid state lithium-ion battery technology is being developed by numerous battery technology companies and has big potential for EVs with its promise of much higher energy density and much faster charging times, with some potential use cases in ESS too.
Silicon anodes meanwhile are being developed in Europe and globally in order to reduce reliance on China for graphite, the main material used for battery anodes today. China supplies nearly 100% of graphite for batteries.
LG Energy Solution is a battery and energy storage technology spin-off of LG Chem, the chemicals arm of the large South Korean conglomerate. It was spun off from LG Chem into a separate company in 2021 but remains 80% owned by LG Chem.
Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd Energy Storage Summit Asia, 9-10 July 2024 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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Macquarie-backed Eku Energy closes first Japan battery storage project with Tokyo Gas offtake contract

It is Eku Energy’s first project in Japan to reach financial close and will be located in Miyazaki City, the capital of Miyazaki Prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. The 30MW asset will be 4-hour duration (120MWh), and a 20-year offtake agreement is in place with Tokyo Gas.
Eku will own the project, with Tokyo Gas having full operating rights for the term of the agreement. Eku Energy is actively developing assets in the UK, Australia, Italy, and now Japan. Construction will begin in the second half of this year with an expected commercial operation date in 2026.      
It is also the first standalone battery storage project in Japan for project finance provider MUFG Bank, although the banking group has financed multiple projects in other territories including the US and Europe. MUFG was also involved in financing an offshore wind project in northern Japan which included a battery storage component, in development by US company Pattern Energy.
Japan’s grid-scale battery storage market has been relatively slow to take off, with relatively limited revenue opportunities that focus largely on ancillary services, with some capability of earning money through the JEPX power exchange spot market.
There are also some subsidy schemes in place. These have variously been described as complex and not as lucrative as in other territories, although useful for promoting awareness of battery storage as an asset class.
However, in light of the government’s recently introduced ‘green transformation’ (‘GX’) strategic policy, investments in renewable energy are poised to ramp up. This means battery storage will be a key technology, along with industrial demand response and aggregated virtual power plants (VPPs), in managing volatility on the country’s electricity grids.
There are also newly introduced low-carbon capacity market auctions, and according to Japan-based independent expert Shunsuke Amanai, JEPX price caps are likely to be raised in the coming years.
Energy-Storage.news has reported in recent months on a succession of major names in Japanese and international business making moves in the battery storage space, including, but not limited to, UK battery storage investment fund Gore Street in partnership with Japanese corporation Itochu, Chinese battery and storage system maker Gotion High Tech with Japanese investment bank Daiwa, and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni.
Another of the country’s major trading houses, Sumitomo Corporation, is reportedly looking to invest around US$1.3 billion in a portfolio of battery energy storage system (BESS) assets around wind and solar PV plants, according to a report from Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia today.
In related news, today, the Tokyo Metropolitan Municipal Government announced details of its own battery storage subsidy scheme, set to run from this year until 2030, with a budget of JPY13 billion (US$84 million) in total and open to entities with either head or branch offices registered in the nation’s capital. It is understood Gore Street Energy Storage Fund and Itochu will be advising the Tokyo government on that scheme.
Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd Energy Storage Summit Asia, 9-10 July 2024 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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Canadian Solar: Storage ‘more complex’ than solar when it comes to localising manufacturing

A separate source close to the company said in the long-term this strategy for domestic content could include battery cell manufacturing, which many agree is key to getting the domestic content incentives.
“Uncertainty surrounding the US election adds to the complexity, prompting close monitoring of developments,” Roy added.
Cell manufacturing in the US also benefits from a US$35 per kWh subsidy under the Act’s 45X Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit, one of the most lucractive aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Most sources also agree that the requirements to qualify for 45X are clearer than for the ITC adder, and as such should be the focus for those looking to leverage the Act’s domestic content incentives, consultancy Clean Energy Associates recently said.
The other aspect of obtaining the 10% domestic content ITC adder is localising BESS assembly to the US. E-Storage’s BESS product is its proprietary Solbank DC block platform, which it is now using on all projects, having previously integrated third-party DC blocks.
The company has already announced numerous firm plans to localise PV technology manufacturing (as covered by our sister site PV Tech) but none for energy storage. Currently Solbank is manufactured from two of its factories in China, in Suzhou and Dafeng.
“Our company history reflects a strategy of globalising manufacturing to leverage local production incentives or mitigate foreign production disincentives. We are currently considering the possibility of manufacturing for BESS outside of China,” Roy said.
Transition to proprietary BESS and deployments
As mentioned, the company transitioned from using third-party DC blocks to using its own product, the 2.5MW/5MWh Solbank DC block for which it manufactures everything except the battery cells. This was the reason for a flat 2023 in terms of year-on-year BESS deployments, of 1.8-2GWh.
That figure will soar to 7GWh in 2024 with the majority of shipments going to the US market, the largest in the world along with China. The company also has a ‘strong delivery backlog’ for the UK and smaller orders to other regions, including Australia.
E-Storage buys third-party power conversion systems (PCS) which it then integrates into full BESS projects with its own engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) service arm. It has deployed more than 3.4GWh (DC) of BESS to-date.
The majority of this has been for the developer-operator arm of Canadian Solar, Recurrent Energy, including the high-profile Crimson and Slate projects in California and Arizona.
Positioning in ‘intensely competitive’ DC block BESS market
Roy claimed that E-Storage’s strong manufacturing backbone and EPC expertise via Canadian Solar can set it apart in the BESS DC block market which has become intensely competitive in the last few years as more China-based companies look to gain global market share.
“Many DC block manufacturers lack EPC integration capabilities. Other system integrators lack deep manufacturing involvement. E-Storage combines both aspects for a unique offering,” Roy said.
He continued: “Despite the intense competition, customers recognise the value of an integrated approach offered by E-Storage and value our ability to deliver global projects.”
Canadian Solar was founded in Canada by Shawn Qu but its leadership team is now mainly based in China along with its manufacturing base, while the E-Storage team is primarily Canada and US-based.

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NGK supplying 230MWh sodium-sulfur battery storage for green hydrogen plant in Germany

The order has been placed by BASF Stationary Energy Storage, which is a subsidiary of the German chemicals company BASF. BASF and NGK have been partnered on efforts to promote, distribute, and market the high-temperature NAS battery technology since 2019, marking the chemicals giant’s entry into the energy market.
NGK noted that the project is still in the planning stage. The order comprises NAS batteries with a maximum output of 18MW and 104.4MWh capacity (5.8-hour duration). It forms the first batch of a supply deal anticipated to total 230MWh.
The NAS battery technology has been on the market for over 20 years. It is aimed at energy storage applications requiring durations of between four – eight hours, operating at temperatures of about 290°C – 360°C, with an intended lifetime of about 20 years, equivalent to around 7,300 cycles.
Each 20-ft containerised unit can discharge 250kW output with a capacity of up to 1,450kWh, stacking individual 1.2kWh battery cells. According to NGK, around 5GWh of NAS battery systems are in operation worldwide.
The batteries have been deployed for a wide variety of use cases, including renewable energy integration and backup power supply. In 2020, BASF and NGK partnered with South Korean power-to-gas company G-Philos to use the NAS technology in green hydrogen production with an initial 19.2MWh order volume.
Familiar name leads customer HH2E
The hydrogen plant in northern Germany is in development by HH2E, which specialises in CO2-free hydrogen production using low-cost renewable energy produced at off-peak times. It claims its hydrogen, usable for heat, storage, transportation fuel or electricity generation, is always offered at a fixed price.
According to the company’s website, it has two large-scale projects currently in development, including the Baltic Sea project at the town of Lubmin in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There, it will aim to leverage offshore wind resources, existing electricity infrastructure, and demand from nearby industrial park facilities.
Perhaps of interest to long-time readers of Energy-Storage.news is that HH2E was founded by managing director Alex Voigt, who began his career in the solar industry before becoming CEO of energy storage pioneers Younicos.
After some time in other roles, including founding and leading thermal energy storage startup Lumenion, Voigt founded the hydrogen company in 2021. Younicos, meanwhile, was bought by Scottish generator and mobile power solutions company Aggreko in 2017.
At the recent Green Hydrogen Summit Europe, hosted by our publisher Solar Media in Lisbon, Portugal, the audience heard that while hydrogen could be a useful tool for decarbonisation in the European Union (EU), particularly in industrial applications, the market requires “rewiring” for adoption to take off.
“The market for solar and wind is somewhat similar; hydrogen requires us to rewire the market to support and implement projects,” Sara di Mario, founder of energy transition advisory Hazel New Energy said.

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Energy storage for data centres can provide ultra-low energy costs and grid balancing services

Ireland is a major hub for energy-intensive data centres run by big tech firms, and the pair will use on-site backup power batteries to provide balancing services to the grid.
Digital Realty said it will enhance its uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems by using the integrated batteries to redirecting loads from the grid to the batteries in real-time, helping the grid maintain frequency levels.
Digital Realty said that 1MW of UPS to the dynamic frequency programme can save the grid 4,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, and the company is integrating an initial 6MW of UPS capacity into the programme.
The partnership is with Enel X Global Retail which manages demand response services globally, with some 8.1GW of total capacity of which 76MW (c.1%) is behind-the-meter battery storage.
A pilot project for the collaboration took place in September last year and going forward the pair want to replicate the success of similar models they have employed elsewhere, such as in Sydney, Australia.
Exowatt launches data centre energy storage solution using heat
In concurrent news, Miami-headquartered startup Exowatt has unveiled a modular energy storage platform using thermal energy for data centres, with a US$20 million seed round.
The Exowatt P3 combines a heat collector, a heat battery and a heat engine in a 40-foot container which can provide both heat and electricity to a facility.
It said that long-term it expects to be able to offer electricity to its customers for as low as US$0.01 kWh or even lower.
It noted that the substantial growth in AI computing increased the energy demand from associated data centres, as it is a highly energy-intensive form of computing.
Exowatt claimed a backlog of demand for its product of over 500MW. The funding came from venture capital (VC) investors a16z, Atomic, and Sam Altman.

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Croatia allocating €500 million for BESS – report

The bulk of that funding will go towards liquified natural gas (LNG) pipelines and infrastructure but €500 million will go to large BESS units, Habijan said.
“All electricity producers who will not immediately release the electricity produced from renewable sources into the network will have such large storage tanks ready for batteries,” he said.
The funding will come from Croatia’s share of the European Union-wide Recovery and Resilience scheme aimed at mitigating the negative economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Similar grant schemes for BESS have used that funding in Spain, Romania, Finland and Greece to name a few.
The minister didn’t give more details about what kind of funding scheme the €500 million would be nor when it would come into effect in remarks reported by the state news agency. However, most other schemes using Recovery and Resilience funding have been via a mix of capex and opex grants per MW of construction, with an auction to decide which projects receive the funding.
Companies active in the Croatian energy storage market include developer-IPPs NGEN and Woodburn Capital while the country is also notable for being the home of Rimac Group, the EV technology firm which last year launched its first BESS product, the Sinestack.
Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd Energy Storage Summit Central Eastern Europe on 24-25 September this year in Warsaw, Poland. This event will bring together the region’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place, as the region readies itself for storage to take off. Visit the official site for more info.

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