The company has opened up the procurement of its first 25MW/50MWh BESS to competitive solicitations in a tender that will be open internationally. The aim is to determine that the technology is suitable for scaled deployment in Estonia, as well as in the other markets Eesti Energia serves.

The BESS will be installed in Ida-Viru, Estonia’s most north-eastern county, which contains rich shale oil deposits, which is the main mineral mined in the country, with shale oil-to-electricity representing a major part of Eesti Energia’s business today.

However, the utility is targeting exiting electricity production from shale by 2030, and then by 2040 to have retooled its shale business to instead produce raw materials for the chemical industry, having ceased production of liquid fuels from shale oil by that time.

The company also needs to meet expectations and needs of the Estonian state, which include raising the share of electricity generated from renewable energy to at least 40% by 2030 while ensuring stable revenues and stable supply of electricity.

Energy storage will be a key tool in facilitating the rapid uptake of renewable energy, Eesti Energia board member Kristjan Kuhi said, adding that a system based on renewables would not have been subject to the same intense spikes in the prices of electricity felt across Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Storage systems can be used to mitigate high peak pricing while enabling the storage and dispatch of renewable energy, Kuhi, Eesti Energia’s development manager for energy solutions said.

Towards the beginning of this year, regulators in Estonia gave approval for its first-ever pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant, due to begin construction in summer 2024 following the conclusion of a tender process, which is anticipated by the end of 2023.

The 550MW/6GWh PHES plant, in development by Estonia-based holding company Alexela and two co-owners of the project, will play into the Nord Pool Spot power market.

Lithuania, Ukraine also recent adopters of BESS technology

It will be interesting to see how closely Estonia’s energy storage development path mirrors that of another Baltic state, Lithuania. Global energy storage system integrator and services provider Fluence is currently thought to be putting the finishing touches on a four-project, 200MW/200MWh portfolio of BESS installations for Lithuanian state-owned energy group EPSO-G and its special purpose company formed for the project, Energy Cells.   

Part of the motivation for the Lithuanian project on transmission operator Litgrid’s networks is to further the country’s energy independence from Russia and facilitate synchronisation with other European power networks. It follows an initial 1MW pilot project (pictured above), on which installation was completed in 2021.

Ukraine’s first grid-scale BESS pilot was completed just a few months before the invasion, again playing a key part in de-coupling the country’s energy networks from dependence on Russia – and effort that is ongoing and has been expedited, despite the impact of the brutal war. Towards the end of last year, the World Bank said it would finance a tender for further BESS projects in Ukraine, to be built at existing run-of-river and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plants

Eesti Energia did not discuss its forthcoming pilot project in the context of those geopolitical concerns, focusing instead on the energy transition and potential economic benefits of BESS technology in its release yesterday.

The company did however announce its own planned 225MW PHES plant last year, stating then that it would aid a wider push for independence from Russia, proposing the plant to also be located in Ida-Viru at the site of a disused shale mine.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher, Solar Media, will be hosting the 1st annual Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe this year, 26-27 September 2023 in Warsaw, Poland. See the website for more details.

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“There there will be other, let’s say, form factors of the gravity solution to take advantage of different applications that we’ll be talking about this year. And it’s very interesting, because you can get ultra low costs,” Piconi said.

“If you think about taking advantage of existing topology, or landscapes, that means you’re taking costs out of what otherwise we’d have to build in the structure of EVx, and just taking advantage of certain components that we’ve already built.”

“And then you essentially get to really the lowest cost of storage in the world. There’s nothing out there that would get to these types of CapEx-consequential, let alone levelised cost, of storage, because the blocks don’t degrade over time.”

This sounds like a way of deploying gravity-based solutions in a manner akin to Gravitricity, which has designed its system to go into vertical mine shafts in the earth, storing the energy medium at, and on, ground level (although this is Energy-Storage.news’ interpretation).

Energy Vault has increasingly been expanding into battery energy storage system (BESS) deployments, which Piconi said is because the long duration energy storage market has not taken off as quickly as expected. He said it is part of a strategy of offering short (BESS), medium (gravity) and long-duration energy storage (through green hydrogen) to customers, to be able to provide whatever they need.

But the firm is nonetheless still clearly very focused on the gravity technology for which it is known, claiming 2GWh of project awards for the segment in its first quarter results – although those project awards still need to be converted into firm project orders, as per the company’s reporting methodology.

When asked for more details on these gravity energy storage project awards, Piconi would only say they are all ‘outside of the US’ but ‘not all in China, to be clear’.

Energy-Storage.news will be publishing the full interview with Piconi, touching on projects, strategy, technology and challenges in the coming week.

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The First Nation community’s microgrid is designed to provide resilience during public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), during which California utilities essentially shut off distribution feeder lines to areas at risk of wildfires, to prevent equipment causing or exacerbating the deadly fires. It will also be available for use in emergency outage situations caused by other things.

Redflow CEO Tim Harris told Energy-Storage.news that additionally, the microgrid will help offset the Band’s use of power from the grid during peak demand periods.

Funding will come from the California Energy Commission (CEC) grant programme for long-duration energy storage (LDES), aiming to help a range of different LDES technologies to bridge the gap towards commercialisation through impactful real-world projects. The total pot for that programme is US$380 million, US$140 million of which is being allocated during the 2022-2023 fiscal year and the remainder the following year.

The zinc-bromine system will be one of the biggest zinc-based energy storage facilities in the world. At 20MWh, it is designed to deliver about 12 hours storage duration, but can run for longer depending on the size of the load it is serving.

The ‘islandable’ system – meaning it can be disconnected from the grid but continue to function independently – will support energy needs of the Tribe “for approximately 20 hours a day, with longer durations possible depending on load profile,” Harris said.

“During summer months, with greatest productivity occurring from the solar array, the project may be able to sustain Tribal operations for extended periods of time, with tribal operations having an average peak load of circa 1MW – though this may grow over time,” according to the CEO.

Leading the project, and recipient of the grant, is Faraday Microgrids, a California-based specialist in the technology set. Faraday has already worked with the CEC on projects that have included non-lithium energy storage technologies, while Redflow too has some experience working with the California energy authority on a 2MWh industrial flow battery project which has been in operation for over a year.

Faraday anticipates getting project agreements formalised and issuing a notice to proceed to Redflow in July of this year, with the Australian flow battery company to supply the battery and provide technical support for the project.

Diversifying California’s range of LDES options

For California, it’s the latest in a series of resiliency microgrid projects of this type deployed to help low-income and disadvantaged communities. For example, in November last year it approved a hybrid storage project for the Viejas Tribe of Kumeyaay Indians in Southern California using Eos Energy Enterprises’ zinc hybrid cathode technology paired with a vanadium flow battery from Invinity Energy Systems.

At 60MWh, that is claimed to be the US’ biggest renewables microgrid by the project partners, but the Redflow project marks new territory in trying out the zinc-bromine battery chemistry of the Redflow devices at scale.

Zinc is the fourth most abundant metal in the world and can be sourced from “very benign places,” and in terms of pricing is “reasonably stable,” Harris said, while Redflow currently sources bromine from the Dead Sea, but could find alternative sources if needed.

Zinc-bromine electrolyte enables a higher energy and power density than some other materials. For example, the CEO claimed that for the company’s operational 2MWh project in California – Redflow’s first in the US – the customer, a biofuel plant operator, could fit a Redflow system into the required footprint, where other flow batteries types would not go.

Redflow has done more than 250 customer projects around the world for customers including telecoms companies in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, off-grid sites of various kinds in Australia and Asia, and discharged more than 3GWh of energy from its systems to date.

Most of its projects have been more distributed in scale, with the 2MWh California project for biofuel producer Anaergia being its biggest so far. In March, the company was also revealed to be in discussions with US energy efficiency and renewables solutions provider Ameresco over its technology being used in Ameresco projects in North America and Europe, while its zinc-bromine flow battery is also on Black & Veatch’s list of approved suppliers.

At the Pasketa Rancheria project site, 2,000 units of Redflow’s third generation 10kWh ZBM3 batteries will be deployed in modular ‘pods’ of 200kWh each.

With California targeting net zero status by 2045, it already has world-leading position in the deployment of battery storage, almost all of which is lithium-ion at this point. However, the view going forward is that much, much storage will be needed.

As highlighted in the state’s Clean Energy Transition Plan, an updated version of which was unveiled a few days ago by governor Gavin Newsom, a significant and growing portion of that will have to be long-duration.

CEC energy research and development division director Jonah Steinbuck said the Faraday-Redflow project is “an important step” in that transition.

“It reflects the CEC’s goal to commercialise proven long-duration energy storage solutions and support the energy sovereignty of tribal nations such as the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians,” Steinbuck said.

“With emerging energy storage technologies such as those developed and deployed by Redflow and Faraday, we will be better positioned to expand and diversify California’s energy storage portfolio, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and enhance the reliability and resilience of our grid.”

More from our interview with Redflow’s Tim Harris will be published on Energy-Storage.news Premium in the coming days.

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Until early last year, Europe had a much more significant pipeline of manufacturing plants in progress, but the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) changed everything and the US looks to have eclipsed Europe’s planned GWh of annual production for 2030. (Read all of our coverage of battery manufacturing and gigafactory projects here.)

According to CEA’s Energy Storage System (ESS) Supplier Market Intelligence Program (SMIP), “…North America’s planned capacity is forecasted to outpace Europe’s due to the IRA”, it said.

Research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence confirmed to Energy-Storage.news that its data also shows the US – alone, excluding Canada – overtaking Europe for planned production capacity.

The firm’s data as of 31 May has the US production capacity at 1185.6GWh in 2030, ahead of Europe’s 1177.2GWh. For all of North America, the figure is 1260.6GWh annual production capacity in 2030.

Both firm’s figures only include lithium-ion battery chemistry, so would exclude gigafactory projects from iron-air battery firm Form Energy and metal-hydrogen battery company Enervenue.

The milestone for the US has been coming, with studies recently showing significant risk of delays or cancellation to swathes of Europe’s pipeline and Energy-Storage.news hearing from gigafactory project designers that some firms have been pivoting across the Atlantic to capture the IRA’s benefits.

CEA noted that Korean and Japanese-based lithium-ion battery cell suppliers account for most of the planned manufacturing capacity to 2025 outside of China.

It also forecasts that the market share of Tier 1 suppliers will fall in the years to 2030 as more new Tier 2 and 3 companies enter the market.

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The Neurath project will total 80MW/84MWh and require €50 million of investment while the Hamm batteries will have a capacity of 140MW/151MWh and account for €90 million of investment.

The projects are scheduled to enter the country’s balancing market from the second half of 2024 and will also participate in the wholesale energy market.

The company announced it was building the projects in November last year, at which time it only revealed the MW power and not the MWh capacity. However, the ratio between power and energy of the systems mirrors that of other large-scale battery storage projects it is bringing online, like two totalling 112MW/128MWh in Werne and Lingen.

And like its other projects, the new systems will be virtually coupled with RWE’s network of power stations to optimise their combined dispatch onto the grid.

The Neurath and Hamm projects are the top two largest battery storage systems that Energy-Storage.news is aware of in Germany under construction. The current largest operational system is the one in Werne brought online by RWE late last year, totalling 72MW, and the 67MW Smareg4 project in Thuringia.

Roger Miesen, CEO RWE Generation commented: “As the proportion of renewables in the electricity mix increases, so does the need for flexible battery storage systems. They balance out fluctuations in the electricity grid in seconds, which means they are the key to a reliable electricity supply. In terms of size and technology, the new large-scale battery storage facility in Neurath and Hamm is setting standards throughout Europe.”

The German grid-scale energy storage market, once the most active in Europe in the mid-2010s until a lull in the latter part of the decade, has started to pick back up again last year with around 400-500MW coming online, a figure expected to increase in the coming years.

Energy-Storage.news looked into the growth drivers, challenges and opportunities in a special feature for a recent edition of PV Tech Power, the quarterly downstream journal from Solar Media’s editorial division, now accessible via subscription to ESN Premium.

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Heelstone Renewable Energy LLC has closed on financing to fund the construction of three portfolios composed of five utility-scale solar projects, totaling approximately 345 MW DC.

All five projects – Lyons Solar, Blackwater Solar, Bird Dog Solar, Hobnail Solar and Wolfskin Solar – are currently under construction and expected to be operational either late this year or in early 2024. Four are located in Georgia and represent projects Heelstone has fully developed.

“Our background in finance enabled us to identify the opportunity and work closely with our capital partners to create a solution capable of securing tax equity and project debt,” says Justin Gravatt, CEO of Heelstone. “Our team has put a lot of effort into these projects, and it’s really gratifying to see that effort pay off through a successful financial close.”

Fifth Third Bank, National Association, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association, served as co-lead arrangers on the approximately $357 million in debt financing. City National Bank, Comerica Bank, First Horizon Bank and United Community Bank acted as co-documentation agents. The debt facility will support construction and operation of the projects.

In February 2023, Heelstone closed a $175 million corporate facility with BlackRock Alternatives. “With BlackRock’s corporate facility, we were able to finalize the development of the projects to obtain the financing,” adds Gravatt. “BlackRock’s corporate facility will continue to be the bridge that enables us to develop our over 15 GW of pipeline.”

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Dr. Shawn Qu

Canadian Solar Inc. has sold its 100 MWp Azuma Kofuji solar project located in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture. Mizuho Securities Co. Ltd. facilitated the sale to Japanese investors

Canadian Solar expects to recognize the revenue from the transaction in the second quarter of 2023. Recurrent Energy‘s local subsidiary will continue to provide long-term operations and maintenance services for the plant after the transaction.

The Azuma Kofuji solar project began commercial operation in the third quarter of 2022. It is Canadian Solar’s largest project in Japan and Fukushima prefecture’s largest operational solar project to date, producing nearly 110 GWh of clean and reliable energy yearly, supporting approximately 31,000 households. The project is powered with Canadian Solar high-efficiency HiKu modules and the clean energy generated is being purchased by the Tohoku Electric Power Company at JPY36 (US $0.26) per kWh under Japan’s feed-in-tariff program for the remaining tenor of 18 years.

Chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar, Dr. Shawn Qu, says: “The dedication by everyone in the team allowed us to develop the project from a piece of abandoned agricultural land to what it is today. The successful delivery and sale of the largest PV project in Fukushima Prefecture is another example of Recurrent Energy’s strong execution capabilities in the global project development business.”

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Zaid Ashai

Nexamp, a developer and manager of solar and storage assets, has secured more than $400 million in tax equity and debt commitments led by U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance and Mitsubishi UFJ Finance Group (MUFG), respectively. 

This latest round of financing will support the creation of 49 solar and battery storage projects in six states spanning the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest and enable more than 25,000 households to receive a combined $6.5 million in estimated annual electricity bill savings. 

As Nexamp works to develop these community solar facilities across all six states, this investment will also create a total of 2,390 construction and operations jobs to support local economic growth in addition to expanding solar access for rural and underserved communities. 

Community solar, or shared solar, allows local residents to subscribe to a solar farm and receive credits on their monthly utility bill to reduce their annual electric costs. The projects, which have a total generating capacity of nearly 250 MW DC and can power up to 40,000 households. They are sited in predominantly rural communities in Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota and Illinois, to help eliminate barriers associated with installing solar panels.

“Nexamp is expanding its reach to meet the critical needs of communities, especially those that are historically underserved, ensuring they’re represented in the transition to a resilient, dynamic and clean energy grid,” says Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai.

Nexamp’s financing effort was bolstered by the Inflation Reduction Act, which extended and expanded the investment tax credits for clean energy resources. Beginning in 2023, newly established bonus credits will ensure that low-income and other traditionally marginalized communities will more equitably share in the direct benefits and economic growth. 

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Volvo Penta provides power solutions to a range of industries, notably engines and other power components to marine, mining, construction, power generation and also large EVs. Its BESS solution uses the battery technology it has developed in-house for those solutions.

“We have created the infrastructure for producing batteries in-house, so we have the opportunity to utilise them and bring volumes to a wider variety of applications,” VP Product Management for its Industrial Business Prabhakaran Sundaramurthi told Energy-Storage.news.

The solution uses both new and second life batteries, he added, initially just the former but the company has plans to secure second life cells and put them back into operation. “It will take a while before we get a reasonable amount of second life batteries from the market. But we have a responsibility to ensure circularity, so it will be part of our business model.”

We asked Sundaramurthi what advantages Volvo Penta’s existing activity gives it compared to existing products and players in the BESS market.

A battery energy storage system using the company’s batteries. Image: Volvo Penta.

“The biggest advantage that we bring is that our solutions are heavy duty in nature and we focus a lot on the safety aspects, ensuring global safety for the whole system,” he said.

“We also bring lots of efficiency, power density and a continuous evolution of the total solution as such. You can build a lot of features based on our system and add value to the end-customer.”

He claimed this gives its batteries a high charging and discharging rate, which would help with, for instance, ‘block loading’ when there is a sudden loss of grid. Its BESS could take a very high load in a short space of time and stabilise the system.

Sundaramurthi declined to provide any figures on how much of its BESS sub-system has been deployed or could be deployed in the coming years.

It recently tied up with Utility Innovation Group (UIG) which will deploy BESS projects across a range of market segments using Penta’s sub-system. UIG president Derek Tugwell described Volvo Group’s e-mobility equipment architecture as “…incredibly energy-dense”. Penta then acquired a minority stake in UIG, last month (April).

Penta does not produce its own battery cells, instead securing them from Tier 1 supplier Samsung SDI which it then packages into modules and packs. Volvo Group has plans to set up a gigafactory in Sweden to build cells to support its aim for 35% of its products to be electric by 2030.

Volvo Penta had 2022 revenues of 18.1 billion SEK (US$1.6 billion), just under 4% of the Group’s total of 473.5 billion SEK. The bulk (86%) of the Group’s sales are from trucks and construction equipment.

Volvo Group is a separate entity from consumer vehicle company Volvo Cars, which was sold by the group in the 1990s and re-listed on the Stockholm Nasdaq over two decades later, in 2021, by then-majority owner Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.

The company’s other subsidiaries have intersected with the second life energy storage sector too. In 2020, Volvo Buses tied up with BatteryLoop, part of big recycling firm Stena, while last year Volvo Energy invested in UK-based second life firm Connected Energy.

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BayWa r.e. Solar Systems, the distribution arm of BayWa r.e. in the United States, will now include Tesla Powerwall, a rechargeable battery storage system.

This collaboration is the first of its kind in the country. It brings together Tesla’s residential solar battery system with BayWa r.e., a trusted ally for a network of leading solar installers as they expand their roles into residential energy consultants.

BayWa r.e. will add Tesla Powerwall in California and is already working to expand availability to other U.S. states in the coming months. Tesla Powerwall eliminates the need for consistent utility grid consumption by storing excess energy produced by a solar system and using it during periods of low production, such as at night or during power outages.

“By adding Powerwall to our best-in-class storage technology suite, our solar install partners can unlock self-generation for American homeowners all while reducing their electric bill and carbon footprint,” says David Dunlap, vice president of product strategy at BayWa r.e. Solar Systems.

Following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and NEM 3.0 in California, residents are actively seeking efficient ways to reduce their rising power bills and protect themselves from frequent utility grid outages through sustainable energy solutions. With a 13.5 kWh energy capacity and a max load of 10 Powerwall’s per system, homeowners can store up to 135 kWh of energy right on their property and become their own clean energy power plant.

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