The 1MW/3MWh BESS uses technology developed by Toyota specifically for controlling electric vehicle (EV) batteries as stationary storage units, and operating technology and safety standards developed by TEPCO.

Toyota said in a release that it expects the verification project to begin construction “around summer” this year, with verification tests to begin before the end of 2023.

Toyota and TEPCO aim to use the project towards the development of storage systems for consumer energy services applications such as backup and integrating onsite renewables generation, and balancing the supply and demand of electricity on the grid as the share of renewable energy grows.

The pair’s new BESS solution can be connected with power conversion systems (PCS) that exist on the market already today, and use multiple stacked battery units.

While details of where battery cells will come from for the installation were not given, Toyota Motors said it will work with two other companies in the Toyota Group, infrastructure and industrial development solutions company Toyota Tsusho and machinery manufacturer Toyota Industries, as well as automotive OEM Denso – in which Toyota has a 25% stake – in its second life repurposing activities.

The company said that evaluation of the new second life BESS will be conducted “over the next several years of operation”, at Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation’s (Eurus Energy’s) Tashirotai Wind Farm, a 7.650MW renewable energy power plant that itself went into operation in 2002.

Eurus Energy and its parent company – Toyota Tsusho – will carry out the installation, with Toyota, TEPCO, Eurus and Toyota Tsuho all playing an active role in the battery storage verification project.

Eurus Energy’s Tashirotai wind farm, where the BESS will be installed. Image: Eurus.

Toyota Tsusho is also known to be working on a US project to trial the use of zinc-air batteries made by startup E-Zinc to provide 24-hour long-duration energy storage (LDES) at another Eurus Energy wind farm, this time in Texas.

In an interview with this site in April, E-Zinc CCO and US country manager Balki Iyer said that project had been pushed back a little from its Spring 2023 anticipated start date, but that the companies involved were “largely on track with the project timeline”.

Eurus also began its own first BESS project late last year, a 1.5MW/4.85MWh installation in Fukuoka, southern Japan, aiming to use it for participation in power trading markets and grid-balancing.

In perhaps more closely related news, in late October last year, Toyota Motors and Japanese power generation group JERA (a joint venture between TEPCO and another utility, Chubu Electric Power) partnered to develop and deploy a hybrid BESS combining three types of battery.

Also using batteries “reclaimed” from EVs, that project, at a thermal power plant in Japan’s Mie Prefecture will feature a 485kW/1,260kWh system that comprises lithium-ion, nickel-metal hydride and lead-acid batteries.

In an earlier tie-up, from 2019, Toyota and TEPCO were among partners developing and trialling a bi-directional energy trading system using blockchain ledger technology in the pair’s homeland, while Toyota Tsusho more recently was involved in a project in Japan that got approval to supply vehicle-to-grid (V2G) energy into grid-balancing power markets.

Read more of Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of the second life BESS space, here.

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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ESA, a provider of clean energy solutions, has completed the first phase of a new solar farm project in Central Florida. This three-phase project is part of ESA’s ongoing effort to provide pathways to decarbonization for companies and communities nationwide.

The project will consist of three 1.2 MW DC systems that will support all the electricity needs onsite for a local agricultural leader. The solar farm project will help cut electricity costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create a more reliable source of electricity and promote clean energy in the region.

The array utilizes a ground-mounted system equipped with Terrasmart Glide racking, a state-of-the-art design built to provide maximum efficiency and stability.

“Working alongside local agricultural leaders to promote sustainable energy practices is how we help them meet their growing energy needs,” says Justin Vandenbroeck, executive vice president of ESA. “This project will power a cannabis facility, one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity consumption, rivaling data centers and EVs.”

The second phase of the project is slated for completion by the end of this year.

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Then, just a day or two later, it was revealed that financial close has been achieved on Oneida Energy Storage Project, a flagship project supported at various stages by both Ontario’s provincial government and Canada’s federal government.

At 250MW, the scale of Oneida is significant in megawatt terms as a step into the sort of scale we’re more commonly used to seeing south of the border in the US than in Canada. What’s perhaps even more interesting is that at 1,000MWh, the project is a rare early example in the country of a 4-hour duration large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) project.

Flagship project helps lay groundwork

The contracts awarded in Canada’s largest-ever energy storage procurement are only the first tranche being made by the IESO, regular readers of Energy-Storage.news will know. Back in October last year, the Ontario government said it would be making a procurement of a total 4,000MW of energy resources.

That would include between 1,500MW and 2,500MW of storage, together with natural gas, the latter representing expansions or extensions to contracts for existing thermal power plant facilities rather than new-build.

The primary function of those resources will be in contributing to resource adequacy (RA), Patrick Bateman, an independent consultant currently working with the national trade association, Energy Storage Canada, says.

The most populous province in Canada isn’t struggling to meet its electricity demand today, but is projected to be challenged as demand growth is projected into the middle of this decade.

Nuclear retirements and refurbishments will be taking some of that capacity offline, while Ontario is experiencing load growth, from a combination of electrification of transport, buildings and industry. The latter includes a proliferation of steel and aluminium plants that will be adding “some very, very significant amounts of load to the grid”.

In addition to providing that “firm, dispatchable capacity,” Bateman says, the contracted resources will be allowed to play into merchant market opportunities, which could include ancillary services.

The IESO made its electricity demand forecast back in 2021, recommending that new resources be procured and online by 2027 as the situation begins to get tighter from 2025, leading to the tender, LT-1, being conducted on an expedited timeline.

Ontario’s biggest BESS projects to date have been large-scale behind-the-meter resources for industrial facilities to reduce their Global Adjustment demand charges, like this one. Image: PRNewsfoto/Convergent Energy + Power)

Resource adequacy rewards longer-duration resources

A term we most frequently associate with California, resource adequacy is, as the name suggests, ensuring sufficient energy is available to cover demand. It’s what has driven California to become an early adopter of 4-hour duration battery storage, in the same way it was an early adopter of solar PV and shorter duration lithium-ion BESS at scale.

What that means for sunny California is that the state tends to have abundant solar resources during the daytime, and clearly less so in the evening.

While batteries aren’t yet commonly used to cover all of those evening and nighttime hours, being able to use four hours of storage between the evening peak hours from 5pm to 9pm each night has significant benefit in reducing the need to rapidly ramp up, control and dispatch thermal resources as soon as the sun starts to go down.

While Ontario’s situation isn’t precisely analogous to California’s, it’s telling that at least some of the publicly revealed winners of the LT-1 procurement have done so with bids for 4-hour duration BESS.

Developer Boralex was the biggest winner in the tender, awarded contracts for 380MW nameplate power output from two projects, both of which are 4-hour duration. Furthermore, at 300MW/1,200MWh, Boralex’s Hagersville Battery Energy Storage Park will be even bigger than the Oneida project.

Step-change in scale of procurements

So, Oneida, which has an expected capital cost of about CA$800 million (US$587.15 million) to get commissioned, will be the biggest project in Ontario and in Canada for perhaps only a short time from 2025, when it comes online, until Hagersville does. And perhaps other even bigger projects might come up from the next round of LT-1 – we wouldn’t bet against it.

But, even when Oneida is overtaken as the biggest BESS in the province, its status as a historic project for Canada’s energy storage sector seems assured.

Jason Rioux, chief development officer at NRSTor, the Canadian energy storage pioneer which has formed a joint venture (JV) with the Six Nations of the Grand River indigenous community to co-develop the project, says work done to get Oneida off the ground can benefit the industry, the IESO and perhaps the whole country in the long run.

Having done “many deals” with the IESO in the past for smaller projects using varying technologies, NRSTor went through a couple of years of negotiation with the system operator during the five years or so Oneida’s development journey so far has represented. It has even directly contributed to the IESO’s ability to host the LT-1 procurement, Rioux says.  

“We’ve gone through a special gating process established to digest this project and see it move forward, and the nature of a couple years of contract negotiation with the IESO gave, I think, a lot of the foundation for understanding how to bring on large scale energy storage in the province of Ontario.

“…it has really helped the IESO scale up to a larger procurement process that is based on some experience, bringing a project to fruition and financing a large-scale storage project in this market.”

Indeed, for the IESO, it marks a big step-up. It first procured energy storage in 2012, awarding just 6MW of regulation services contracts to two projects, while subsequent procurements in 2014 and 2015 awarded 28.8MW and 11.75MW respectively.

Merchant risk and contracted revenues combine

Perhaps one area where that series of discussions over Oneida helped most was in shaping a long-term contracting structure for storage that would also give developers the ability to also earn revenues from other applications on top of providing resource adequacy.

Oneida has a 20-year agreement in place, giving the IESO rights to charge and dispatch the BESS to meet its peak load, called an Energy Storage Facility Agreement (ESFA).

Northland Power, also in the consortium developing Oneida, said last week that it expects about 60% of the revenues it earns from its 72% stake in the project will come from the ESFA, and the rest will come from the wholesale market, including ancillary services opportunities.

Jason Rioux of NRStor says the Oneida journey, as he called it, has been characterised by the “trials and tribulations with launching a larger-scale project and getting it financed in a market that has some contracted revenues, and some merchant revenue exposures all mixed up together”.

The balance that needed to be struck, he says, was to do that “in a way that puts appropriate risk on developers and owners of the projects and delivers the best value possible to the ratepayers in Ontario, electricity consumers in Ontario”.

And that, at the heart of it, may well resonate with folks working in other markets around the world. A similar approach is being taken by authorities and electricity network operators in New York and in Australia. Germany’s Innovation Tenders for hybrid clean energy projects, which have already been launched, are also not dissimilar.

Tenders are set to be launched in both of those regions where contracts awarded are expected to be long-term agreements that offer stable returns for developers and investors, giving them that much-craved revenue certainty. At the same time, they will be able to – and perhaps need to – take a degree of merchant risk to make profits.

Developments in Ontario and Alberta, Canada’s leading provinces for energy storage by pipeline and installed capacity, are in focus in the upcoming Q2 2023 edition of our quarterly journal, PV Tech Power (Vol.35). Digital subscription to PV Tech Power is included in your Energy-Storage.news Premium access.

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Enphase Energy Inc. has launched the IQ Battery 5P, its most powerful home battery to date, for customers in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The IQ Battery 5P is modular by design and can deliver 3.84 kW continuous power and 7.68 kW peak power for three seconds, offering homeowners the ability to start and operate some of the most power-hungry devices during power outages.

The new Enphase battery starts at 5 kWh of capacity and can be configured up to 80 kWh. The third generation of Enphase Energy System components include IQ Battery 5P, IQ System Controller 3/3G and IQ Combiner 5/5C, all offering an improved experience for homeowners and installers as a result of more power, resilient wired communication and an improved commissioning experience.

The IQ Battery 5P also comes with a 15-year limited warranty in the United States and Puerto Rico.

The Enphase Energy System with the IQ Battery 5P can be configured for self-consumption, savings, or full backup functionality. For customers in California, the Enphase system is optimized to support California’s new solar rules (NEM 3.0) by enabling self-consumption and exporting energy at the appropriate times to create maximum value. 

The IQ Battery 5P can be configured without backup capabilities. This new setup will come without the IQ System Controller, minimizing the overall system components so homeowners can reduce the upfront costs and receive a quicker return on their investment. An IQ System Controller can be added at any time to provide backup functionality.

“The IQ Battery 5P is integral to our product offerings, as quality and innovation are part of our DNA at Enphase,” says Badri Kothandaraman, president and CEO of Enphase Energy. “We are excited to bring this new technology to the United States and Puerto Rico through our world-class installer network. Together, we will create a superior customer experience by providing clean, reliable power.”  

Customers can order the IQ Battery 5P now, with production shipments expected to begin in the third quarter.  

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Matt Potere

Sunlight Financial Holdings Inc., a technology-enabled point-of-sale finance company, and Solar Insure, a solar monitoring and warranty company, have formed a strategic partnership. The collaboration will enable Sunlight’s installer partners to seamlessly offer homeowners Solar Insure’s 30-year monitoring and solar warranty service for residential solar installations.

“Thoughtfully assessing risk has always been a strategic focus for Sunlight, as we have maintained the industry’s best credit performance through over $8 billion of funded solar loans,” says Matt Potere, CEO of Sunlight Financial. “Offering a warranty should help installers sell more solar, ensure homeowners receive a terrific long-term experience and improve loan performance.”

Solar Insure’s monitoring and warranty service offers a wide range of benefits. They include 30-year coverage on roof penetration and on parts (panels, inverters, optimizers and racking).

Competitive reimbursement rates for service call truck rolls and labor. Fast payouts and processing of claims (typically within seven to 10 days) and zero for homeowners for covered claims.

“Solar Insure’s partnership with Sunlight Financial is an exciting step in our mission to protect homeowners who invest in solar and energy independence,” says Solar Insure CEO and founder Ara Agopian. “Our shared values of innovation and excellent customer service for homeowners will accelerate the growth of the solar industry.”

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Matt Cimo

Energy Toolbase, a software platform for solar and storage developers, and Green Bridge Energy, an investment and technology platform for clean energy projejcts, have joined forces to provide Northeast-based commercial solar developer RISE with financing for a solar system to power a nonprofit, private college.

RISE tapped Green Bridge Energy’s financing solution within the ETB Developer platform to provide an indicative power purchase agreement (PPA) quote for the system that will finance its entirety. The 257 kW solar system will be constructed on the campus of a private college in Falmouth, Mass., to help the school stabilize electricity expenses and achieve environmental, social and governance goals. 

RISE utilized the direct financing integration within the platform to deploy Green Bridge Energy’s PPA quoting and was selected as part of a competitive bid process for turnkey solar funded by a PPA. 

All ETB Developer platform users have access to the Green Bridge Energy financing integration, which allows developers to instantly generate PPA quotes for C&I and nonprofit solar+storage projects without leaving the platform. This solution eliminates the need to go between multiple applications and speeds up modeling, optimizing a financing solution and deploying projects. 

With over three decades of combined experience in solar development, structured finance and investment, Green Bridge is a top financier of C&I projects through PPAs and operating lease structures. The company assists commercial real estate owners in deploying clean energy and EV charging infrastructure to create new revenue streams, greener sites and energy cost savings at $0 upfront cost. 

“Working with Green Bridge to provide financing quotes within ETB Developer has been a game-changer for our users getting projects sold faster,” says Matt Cimo, manager of the developer channel at Energy Toolbase. “

Green Bridge CEO Byrne Huddleston concurs, adding, “The Green Bridge financing partnership with ETB is equipping developers with the certainty of execution, greater operational efficiency and more attractive financing to win more business in the market.” 

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Lithium carbonate mainly comes from Australia, South America and China, while the vast majority of lithium carbonate refining is done in China.

Nickel and Cobalt, other principal metals needed or lithium-ion nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cells, also jumped in 2022 but have since come down.

Lithium carbonate prices declined over the start of 2023 to a low in April before picking back up again. Jordan Roberts, Battery Raw Materials Analyst for Fastmarkets, said that the lithium carbonate price would remain elevated over 2023 but not reach the highs of 2022.

“We also have to consider the fact that supply always disappoints to the downside and we can probably expect delays to those new units expected to come online and ramp up during the remainder of the year,” Roberts said in the firm’s BRM Global Outlook webinar on Tuesday (23 May).

“We expect more sensible buyer behaviour and an evolution in contract contracting prices towards referencing spot indices to keep prices from averaging such highs as as in 2022.”

He concluded that long-term average annual prices will continue to move downwards over time. The sharp falls seen in late 2022/23 were due to a combination of new supplies flooding the market, destocking dynamics, lower downstream demand and overall bearish demand.

Muthu Krishna, battery manufacturing cost modeller, talked about the effect of the long-term decline in costs further downstream on the prices EV and energy storage firms will pay for battery packs, both NMC and LFP (lithium iron phosphate).

NMC, or specifically NMC811, would hit US$68/kWh at the cell level by 2029 at which point LFP cells could cost US$65/kWh.

At the pack level, NMC could go under US$100/kWh by 2027 while LFP could achieve the same figure in 2025. Both figures are globally weighted average prices, so will be achieved sooner in China where costs are lower.

However, expected supply shortages post-2029 mean prices could start to pick back up around the end of the decade, Krishna added.

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ACP publishes quarterly reports on progress in the industry, highlighting policy, regulatory, technological and other trends as well as supplying statistics and data on utility-scale clean energy.

Two of its latest reports, out this week, recap the full year for 2022 in one, while the other is an update from Q1 2023. Energy-Storage.news will cover the first quarter 2023 report tomorrow on the site, while this story will continue looking back on 2022 with ACP’s help.

The growth in energy storage deployments tallied broadly with the annual report published in March by Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables in the research group’s US Energy Storage Monitor series.

Wood Mackenzie found that 4.8GW power output was deployed during the year along with just over 12GWh energy capacity – albeit this slightly higher megawatt number counts storage at all scales, including residential and non-residential (commercial & industrial, community and government facilities etc.).

It’s also the second time ACP has announced its 4GW/12GWh storage deployment number, as it did back in February as it tallied year-end numbers, but the comprehensive new report added more detail to the picture. At that time, the trade association said installed grid-scale BESS capacity in the country had reached 9GW/25GWh by the end of 2022.

While storage had (another) breakout year, the view from across the entire sector was a bit less positive. There was a decline in deployment volume from the previous two years, although the total 25.5GW across the three utility-scale technologies recorded nevertheless made 2022 the third highest year on record.

The reasons for a 25% decline in installations from 2021 to 2022 were varied, ACP said. They included well-documented supply chain issues and solar PV module procurement challenges, the lengthy wait and difficult process to get interconnection to the grid and the uncertainty over the various provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), particularly the production tax credit (PTC).

This led to delays for around 53GW of projects that would otherwise have been expected to go online, according to the report.

Inflation Reduction Act already ‘supercharging’ the sector

Still, as ACP CEO Jason Grumet noted in a foreword, annual installations across all three technologies, including onshore and offshore wind, are projected to triple by 2030 in the US, with the IRA already “supercharging clean energy deployment,” Grumet said.

One key set of questions many in the industry had about the IRA went some way towards being answered recently, as the US Department of Energy (DOE) released guidance on its domestic content provisions for clean energy equipment to get the PTC and investment tax credit (ITC) earlier this month.

The industry is having a transformative impact on the economy, with 450,000 employed, investment into at least 50 new manufacturing facilities totalling more than US$150 billion announced in the past 10 months, and 80% of clean energy projects located in low-income communities.

 “The clean energy revolution is underway. We have the technology, financial capital and workforce to power our economy with clean, affordable and secure energy,” Grumet said in a statement.

However, while “American energy innovation” enjoys broad bipartisan support, the industry – and country – still needs its lawmakers in Congress and Governors across the states to: “enable the siting and construction of new energy facilities and support the build out of transmission that is required to bring clean power to the people,” according to Jason Grumet.

Energy storage accounts for about 14% of a 140GW total development pipeline. While batteries represent only around 4% of the 227,852MW installed base today, the largest project that came online in 2022 in terms of energy capacity across the three technologies was Crimson, the 350MW/1,400MWh project in Riverside County, California, brought online by Recurrent Energy.

Meanwhile, ACP said that from mid-August 2022 as the IRA passed, through Q1 2023, there were 10 announcements of new, expanded, or re-opened grid-scale BESS manufacturing facilities in the country, from a total 47 announcements across the technologies.

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Utility-scale solar developer and manager Lightsource bp is beginning commercial operation of its 152.5 MW AC/173 MW DC Bellflower Solar project, located about 40 miles east of Indianapolis in Henry and Rush counties, Indiana.

Lightsource bp developed, financed and will own and operate Bellflower Solar, and it has entered into a virtual power purchase agreement with Verizon with respect to the energy generated by Bellflower Solar.

Lightsource bp planted 800 acres of land under and around the solar panels with vegetation that includes native species beneficial to pollinators and other wildlife. An additional 10 acres has been dedicated to lush pollinator gardens with more than 60 different types of flowering plants.

The solar farm is participating in a national research study that will measure the ecological benefits of pollinator habitats at utility-scale solar. Land under and around the solar panels is also being kept in agricultural production. A local commercial beekeeper is managing hives and will produce solar farm honey. Another local Indiana farmer will graze sheep to help maintain the vegetation.

Kevin Smith, CEO of the Americas at Lightsource bp, says: “Beyond delivering clean, affordable and reliable energy, Lightsource bp has a deep commitment to maximizing the sustainable benefits of our solar projects for communities, protecting ecosystems and improving biodiversity.”

Bellflower Solar is expected to generate $30 million in property tax revenue to Rush and Henry counties over its life, benefitting local schools and other community public services. Its operations budget of $2.4 million each year will be primarily spent in the region.

The Bellflower project created hundreds of U.S. jobs across the supply chain, while supporting domestic manufacturers and low-carbon products. More than 350 people worked onsite during peak construction to build the facility. SOLV Energy was the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the project, which included installation of 377,000+ ultra-low carbon solar panels manufactured by Arizona-based First Solar along, with smart solar trackers manufactured by New Mexico-based Array Technologies.

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David Absher

Toyota and renewable energy company Savion have executed a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) for the automotive manufacturer to offtake 100 MW of the electricity generated from Savion’s Martin County Solar Project.

The project is converting the former Martiki Coal Mine, a brownfield site in Martin County, on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, into a new solar photovoltaic facility.

Once an active mountain-top coal mine that closed in the 1990s, the Martiki site has clear access to sunlight, making it an ideal location for reclamation and the installation of solar photovoltaic panels for electricity generation.

Construction on the project is anticipated to begin in the middle of this year, and commercial operation is expected in 2024.

“It is important that renewable power is more available to large-scale U.S. energy buyers, and converting brownfields like this offers a path forward for former energy communities to take advantage of the infrastructure they already have with transmission lines while providing clean energy to the grid,” says David Absher, senior manager of environmental sustainability at Toyota Motor North America.

The 100 MW that Toyota will offtake will be used primarily to help reduce the company’s carbon footprint in North America, supplementing the model it has created of environmental stewardship in Kentucky, the state with Toyota’s largest vehicle manufacturing plant in the world. The move is consistent with the company’s plans to make all its operations in North America carbon neutral by 2035.

Savion is developing the Martin County Solar Project with the support of local development partner Edelen Renewables. With backing from state officials and local leadership, the development phase continues to advance. Once completed, the overall project is expected to be one of the largest solar energy generation facilities operating in Kentucky.

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