Key Capture Energy’s KCE NY 1 project, New York’s first grid-scale BESS. Image: Key Capture Energy.

It’s often considered among the leading US states for energy storage, but to date this reputation New York enjoys has been based more on ambition and favourable policy direction than action. Andy Colthorpe hears why this is expected to change in the next couple of years.

This is an extract of a feature which appeared in Vol.34 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

New York, New York,” goes a popular song from 1978: “so good they named it twice”. Energy storage industry observers may have been reminded of those words in early 2021 when New York governor KathyHochul doubled the state’s energy storage target from 3GW to 6GW, to be achieved by 2030.

That upping of the target set under Hochul’s predecessor Andrew Cuomo is in line with the New York Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) and its goals, which include achieving a carbon-free electricity system by 2040 and net zero emissions will be achieved by 2050, should all go to plan.

It’s also important to note the relevance of the ‘Community Protection’ part of the legislation, which was enacted in 2019. Along with standards on labour and job protection, and stimulating the statewide economy, there is a strong intended environmental justice aspect to the CLCPA.

New York’s fleet of thermal power plants includes about 6GW of peaker plants, often the most polluting to run among fossil fuel assets – and some of New York’s peaker plants run on kerosene or heavy fuel oil, which are even dirtier than natural gas. Those were often built in poorer areas of New York City, which also housed many communities of colour.

Towards the end of 2022, the New York Climate Action Council, convened to oversee the CLCPA’s implementation, published its Scoping Plan. This was followed by the publication of the long-awaited Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0 by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the state’s Department of Public Service, which set out how that 6,000MW energy storage target will be achieved.

Due largely to its favourable policy landscape, New York has sometimes been grouped among the US’ leading states for energy storage. However, unlike the leaders Texas on roughly 2GW and California with double that for cumulative grid-scale installations, New York only had just over 116MW, albeit 1,230MW had been awarded or contracted for already by the end of 2021.

So, what has held New York back? And can Roadmap 2.0 put it into the fast lane?

‘Missing money’

One answer to the first question above is “missing money”, according to CEO Jeff Bishop of energy storage developer-owner Key Capture Energy.

“We’ve been developing in New York state since 2017, and we have a portfolio of about 1,000MW of projects that are under development there, including two projects that are currently in operation, KCE NY1, KCE NY 3, [and] we have one that is at the very end of construction now,” Bishop says.

“For the rest of the state, the key question has been: how do you get the missing money? Where New York doesn’t have the volatility of a market like Texas and so hence, there’s not really the same value proposition there is down in Texas.”

However, with its goals under the CLCPA, New York will need storage, and lots of it, to integrate all the new solar, wind, enable the retirement of fossil fuel plants and so on.

Regular readers of Energy-Storage.news will have seen that a key component of Roadmap 2.0, as it pertains to utility-scale energy storage – or ‘bulk storage’ – as the state defines it, is the planned introduction of tenders.

Those solicitations are still at the proposal stage, require regulatory approval and may change before being rolled out, but they appear likely to be an effective way to structure a market for battery storage, Bishop says.

“We really think that after this goes through all of the regulatory processes, and once they start issuing requests for proposals (RFPs), that this will be a way that we’re going to be seeing storage really taking off in New York State by 2025.”

Good market design, challenging timing

The result of that is the proposed Index Energy Storage Credit (IESC) programme. Similar to a Renewable Energy Credit (REC) mechanism, developers bid a strike price into a state-led procurement, indicating the revenue levels they need to realise to make a project work economically.

This strike price is benchmarked against a reference price indicator set by the state, in other words a “mechanism to look at what the project can reasonably earn in the standard ISO markets for capacity and day ahead energy,” and then pays the developer the difference between reference and strike prices.

It preserves some of the best features of renewable energy procurement programmes, Dr William Acker, executive director of trade association and technology accelerator New York BEST (NY-BEST) says, keeping sufficient performance risk on the developers and encouraging their market participation.

The big risk, and the big persistent challenge, is that of timing, according to energy storage market analyst Vanessa Witte at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. With NYSERDA unlikely to open up RFPs until 2024 at the earliest, it remains unanswered whether the state is able to hit its target in time.

The New York ISO market is “not an easy market to construct in,” and 2030 may be “cutting it close,” Witte says, observing that a couple of developer contacts have expressed that opinion. New York will get to its targeted 6GW and likely surpass it, “but when is that really going to happen?”

There has also been frustration, Witte says, that New York utilities such as Con Edison have not been procuring large volumes. RFPs issued have set prices that aren’t reflective of market value. That said, this is the sort of challenge the Index Credit has been created to solve.

One immense boon for energy storage development is the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). While there are many facets to that legislation, the introduction of the standalone energy storage investment tax credit (ITC) could unlock opportunities for New York developers.

Ravenswood
Generating
Station, New
York’s biggest
thermal power
plant, is being
repurposed as a
clean energy hub,
including energy
storage. Credit: Wikimedia user rhododendrites

Developers keen on New York despite uncertainties

“Companies like mine are attracted to states that have aggressive policies, and goals and that are backing those up with opportunities to have stacked revenue streams around energy storage,” says Kelly Sarber, CEO of Strategic Management Group, a developer of more than US$6 billion of US clean energy projects, and on the Board of Directors at NY-BEST.

New York doesn’t quite have those fundamentals in place, with utility-scale storage only able to play into capacity and wholesale arbitrage markets, which “doesn’t support building big merchant energy storage projects,” Sarber says.

“California and Texas are leading the nation in the deployment of energy storage, and it all has to do with the way that those markets are constructed, and developers are not afraid of risk,” the developer says.

“You’ve got different revenue streams that are more predictable in those markets. You’ve got the benefits of energy storage being able to be monetised in those markets, to a degree that they’re not currently being monetised in the New York market.”

Nonetheless, Sarber has “probably 3,000MW incubating” in the New York market, with sites and substations acquired. In fact, as of April 2022, there was 12GW of energy storage in the NYISO interconnection queue, double the 2030 target.

That congested queue could however give the impression, or an “artificial comfort level” that achieving the goal will be relatively easy, due to a lot of developers seeing an opportunity coming, possibly with a view to flipping projects and selling them on.

‘Good projects will always get built’

Sarber says, however, that as a prolific developer, she is bullish on the New York market’s growth path ahead. The type of energy storage projects Strategic Management Group is working on are “necessary” for the state, and backed by strong policies, New York can achieve 6GW.

“I’m just nervous about the time that’s going to take, and whether we have enough time to get 6,000MW of energy storage built in New York by 2030, based on where we’re at today.”

Fellow developer Jeff Bishop at Key Capture Energy is similarly bullish and says the company has been encouraged by the state’s proactive approach and “massive amount of work” by stakeholders, citing that it’s a question of when, not if, New York’s bulk storage buildout will happen.

“My macro view is: good projects will always get built. It’s just a question of timing. As we’re looking at New York, with all of their climate goals, 6,000MW is going to be the minimum of storage, quite frankly, where they’re going to be needing longer duration storage coming up, they’re probably going to be needing some clean hydrogen.

“I learned a long time ago not to ever bet against New York and New England, where they definitely will achieve the climate goals that they have in place. Sometimes it takes longer, but [they] always get there.”

This is an extract of a feature which appeared in Vol.34 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

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Centrica’s Roosecote battery energy storage system (BESS) project in England. Image: Centrica.

The UK Infrastructure Bank plans to invest up to £265 million (US$331.45 million) in energy storage development in the UK, in partnership with British Gas owner Centrica Plc.

In a statement, Centrica said: “The Bank will invest £75 million on a match funding basis into the Gresham House Secure Income Renewable Energy & Storage LP (SIRES) alongside a £65 million investment from Centrica.”

Another part of the deal will see the UK Infrastructure Bank invest £125 million of match funding into Equitix UK Electricity Storage Fund.

Centrica said it was the Bank’s first investment in electricity storage, and “could facilitate around 1300 jobs and will unlock at least a further £200 million in match-funded private sector capital.”

The Equitix UK Electricity Storage Fund is a UK-based, infrastructure specialist asset manager, which will “focus on a combination of innovative business models across both short and long duration storage”, according to the UK Infrastructure Bank.

The Bank said that the fund would aim to deploy both short duration solutions like household and commercial battery storage systems, as well as long duration technologies like “pumped-hydro, a type of energy storage that uses water reservoirs at different elevations to generate and store electricity. The fund is expected to facilitate 900 jobs across the UK.”

The UK added the most battery storage of any European nation in 2022 according to consultancy LCP Delta,

To read the full version of this story, visit Solar Power Portal.

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The panel discussion about long-duration energy storage on Day 1 of Energy Storage Summit USA, in Austin last week (28/29 March). Image: Solar Media.

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) may be in something of a ‘dot-com’ moment, but grid operators cannot afford the ‘hiccup’ of any bubble bursting, a senior ISO manager said at the Energy Storage Summit USA.

That was the message from Mike DeSocio, director for market design at the New York Independent System Operator (NY-ISO), a speaker on the ‘Long-Duration Energy Storage Powering the Future’ panel discussion at the Energy Storage Summit USA last week, hosted in Austin, Texas by our publisher Solar Media. 

Balki Iyer, CCO and US country manager for LDES startup e-Zinc, introduced the analogy in his opening remarks. 

“All the predictions to-date about energy storage rollouts have been wrong by a factor; wrong by a factor in the right direction,” he said. 

“If we think about the late 90s, ‘internet dot-com’ era – I feel we are in a ‘dot-com’ moment in LDES. I say that because in 1999-2000, no one would have predicted all the eventual use cases of the internet. They knew there was a technology but the use cases came on faster than they could even adopt it. I almost feel it’s the same thing happening in LDES.” 

Joe Ferrari, VP sales Americas for Italy-based CO2 battery company Energy Dome agreed: “It’s not that long ago that the utilities rolled their eyes at the thought of lithium-ion. They weren’t familiar with it, and we’re in that phase with LDES.” 

DeSocio was then asked for his perspective on the main benefits of LDES to a grid operator like NY-ISO. 

“The main benefit is optionality. We need to balance supply and demand on a second-by-second basis. We’re not at the point where renewables can be baseload, and we’re starting to face not a megawatt-capacity issue but a megawatt-hours issue,” he said, before addressing the ‘dot com’ analogy. 

“With the dot com thing, remember that in 2000-2001 there was a bit of a bubble burst. We need to be careful about just adding storage for storage’s sake, and it needs to be done in a way that is balanced and keeps up with new supply resources.”

“We need to build renewables and then add the storage. If we build the storage and then add renewables we’re gonna have a problem.” 

In response, LDES Council executive director Julia Souder said that the world’s climate goals needed a substantial push to adapt LDES technologies at scale. 

“LDES is an affordable, flexible and reliable resource. Our challenge is raising awareness that our products have been commercialised for 10, 20, or even 100 years if we count pumped hydro. The technology is there, we just need to adopt it quickly because we’re dealing with the challenges of decarbonisation today.” 

“With the ‘dot-com’ analogy, yes there was that little hiccup which we all learned from, but we accelerated past it and we need to accelerate on this together.” 

To which DeSocio said: “We just can’t afford that hiccup on the grid.”

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Sodium-sulfur NAS battery installation at IGO’s Nova mine in Western Australia. Image: Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC).

Image: Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC)

Invinity Energy Systems and chemicals company BASF have announced the first deployments of their non-lithium battery storage technologies in Hungary and Australia respectively.

Anglo-American Invinity makes its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage systems, while BASF has the license to distribute the sodium-sulfur (NAS) battery storage technology developed by Japan’s NGK Insulators.

Both technologies are targeted at medium and long-duration energy storage (LDES) market segments, aiming to provide storage at discharge durations longer than the typical 4-hour upper limit at which lithium-ion is widely considered most economical.

Invinity said last week that it has sold a 1.5MWh vanadium flow battery to STS Group, a Hungarian renewable energy project developer. It will be installed at an STS solar-plus-storage project in central Hungary, near the municipality of Öskü.

The sale follows the signing of a multi-party commercial partnership agreement between Invinity, STS and the developer’s strategic partner Ideona Group, which is an asset management company also based in Hungary.

London Stock Exchange-listed Invinity said that the Hungarian partners have identified a potential pipeline of opportunities for VRFB deployments of more than 50MWh in the EU Member State. The flow battery maker has given its two partners a mandate to deploy its devices at solar-plus-storage and grid storage projects.

The initial 1.5MWh deployment will be coupled with a 2MWp solar PV array in an EU-funded project. Seven of Invinity’s VS3 model flow batteries will be installed with up to 6-hour discharge duration. Storing and dispatching surplus renewable energy, the batteries will provide grid-balancing ancillary services.

The project near Öskü will be owned by asset manager Ideona, and installed and integrated by STS Group, which won contracts for the project through a tender held by Hungary’s National Research, Development and Innovation Office.

Invinity has deployed or is contracted to deploy 65MWh of VRFBs at 70 sites in 15 different countries, with a factory in Scotland and offices and operations in the UK, Canada, the US, China and Australia.

Formed by the merger of the UK’s redT and North America’s Avalon Battery in 2020, some of the company’s bigger projects underway include a large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Alberta, Canada, a handful of US solar-plus-storage microgrids, a recent 15MWh order in Taiwan, and Australia’s first-ever grid-scale VRFB installation, a 2MW/8MWh system.

Field test for non-lithium battery tech at mining site

Staying with Australia, a nickel-copper-cobalt mine site in Western Australia is now host to the country’s first NAS battery installation.

It’s a demonstration project where the 250kW/1.45MWh sodium-sulfur system’s operation will be tested and assessed by the Queensland University of Technology’s National Battery Testing Centre together with the University of Western Australia.

Announced yesterday by the Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC), a government, industry and academic research partnership launched by the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Program in 2019, the project is located at resources company IGO’s Nova mine site in Western Australia’s Fraser Range in the Outback.

FBICRC said the NAS battery system entered operation in mid-February.

The trial “is an important way to field test the suitability of this unique technology in a mining environment and how this will contribute to a clean energy future,” IGO acting CEO Matt Dusci said.

The NAS battery, commercially available for nearly two decades and with around 5GWh of capacity deployed at over 250 sites around the world, is being touted as suitable for storage applications requiring 6-8 hours duration.

Chemicals company BASF marked its entry into the energy market by forming a partnership with manufacturer NGK in 2019. Since then, Energy-Storage.news has reported on various projects announced by both NGK and BASF, including a 3.6MWh NAS battery for Mongolia’s first solar-plus-storage project, a 950kW / 5.8MWh system at a BASF production facility in Antwerp, Belgium, and various deployments in Japan and South Korea.

For both Invinity and BASF, the projects in Hungary and Australia are among the smaller projects they have supplied recently, but could be important in staking out their claim to wider rollout in each territory for their non-lithium technologies. Hungary is committed to achieving net zero emissions as a country by 2050, while in Australia FBICRC CEO Shannon O’Rourke said the NAS battery technology could “help to accelerate our clean energy future”.

Read more of Energy-Storage.news coverage of Invinity Energy Systems here, and more coverage of the sodium-sulfur NAS battery here.

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An existing ‘community battery’ system in Western Australia. Image: Western Power.

An AU$120 million (US$81.34 million) government funding round has opened in Australia for community battery energy storage projects.

Defined as battery facilities of between 50kW to 5,000kW nameplate output, connected to the distribution network, grant funding in the range of AU$3 million to AU$20 million per successful application will be available.

Proposals must deploy at least five battery storage systems each, with batteries sharing a grid connection point or co-located to be counted as one facility.

The money is coming from a total pot of AU$200 million allocated through the federal budget for 2022/2023 to fund 400 community battery installations across the country from Australia’s Housedhold Solar Budget.

Of that pot, AU$171 million was allocated to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), to fund at least 342 of those batteries. The money announced today represents Round 1 of that allocation, with projects funded from it to inform projects in a future round.

Community batteries, which store surplus solar-generated energy for later use, aim to maximise the benefits of Australia’s high uptake of rooftop solar PV, even for those households that can’t afford or are otherwise unable to host it on their own roofs.

Another term to describe them, coined by a team from Australian National University (ANU), is ‘neighbourhood batteries’. Writing in a technical paper for our journal PV Tech Power (vol.29) last year, the ANU experts said their preferred monicker comes from the fact that the word ‘community’ implies a degree of local community ownership of the facilities, which is not always the case.

‘Neighbourhood’ instead implies that the benefits of the battery energy storage system (BESS) technology will be shared by a community, even if the ownership isn’t. Either way, the ANU authors wrote that while the medium-sized battery installations do indeed offer numerous benefits to networks and their operators and users, more work needs to be done to establish a business case for them.

The purpose of ARENA’s community battery funding is to determine whether the systems can be a “missing link” in Australia’s energy storage needs, the agency wrote on its corporate blog today. The funding round aims to “fix the knowledge gap” on what is currently still a fairly rare technology set, it said.

“Not everyone is able to install rooftop solar, but by storing electricity close to the point of consumer demand, we can reduce network costs and alleviate constraints in areas with high solar penetration. This will ultimately reduce electricity costs for all consumers,” ARENA CEO Darren Miller said.

Round 1 is split into two streams with AU$60 million available for each. Stream A is for community battery projects by, or to be owned by, distribution network service providers (DNSPs) and installed in front-of-the-meter. Stream B is for project proposals from non-DNSP entities that can be installed behind-the-meter on distribution networks.

ARENA has produced an expression of interest (EOI) which details eligibility and other criteria, which can be seen here.

Some neighbourhood or community battery programmes are also underway by individual Australian states. For example, the state of Victoria in June last year offered funding from a pool of just under AU$11 million for projects that can demonstrate the multi-use benefits of such BESS installations. In February this year, Queensland committed AU$10 million for the deployment of 35 systems in the city of Ipswich.

ARENA meanwhile noted that the funding round follows its pledge of financial support for large-scale BESS projects equipped with advanced inverters. The aim of that programme is to establish how BESS can provide inertia to maintain stability of the grid, which traditionally has been a role played by thermal power plants. In December 2022 ARENA announced AU$176 million funding towards eight projects totalling 4.2GWh through that programme.

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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Eric Spigelman

EDF Renewables North America says it reached two agreements with Indiana Michigan Power (I&M), a subsidiary of American Electric Power, by which I&M will add 554 MW DC (425 MW AC) of solar energy to its clean energy mix. 

I&M will purchase the 236 MW DC (180 MW AC) output from Sculpin Solar under a 30-year power purchase agreement, and will purchase 100% of the equity interests (318 MW DC or 245 MW AC) in Lake Trout Solar following the completion of construction activities.

“We are very pleased to partner with I&M and to contribute to its goal of delivering carbon-free energy to its customers,” says Eric Spigelman, senior director, origination and power marketing at EDF Renewables. “Indiana and its farmers are taking the lead to decarbonize the energy sector, while also revitalizing the local economy with jobs, vendor contracts, taxes and lease payments.”

Combined, these two projects are expected to generate approximately 880,000 MWh of clean energy annually. This is equivalent to avoiding over 624,000 metric tons of carbon emissions annually which represents the greenhouse gas emissions from over 135,000 passenger vehicles driven over the course of one year.

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Duke Energy’s 9MW BESS project in Asheville (pictured) was commissioned in 2020 and until the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune project came online was the state’s biggest. Image: Duke Energy.

US utility Duke Energy has brought online a 11MW/11MWh battery storage project which despite its modest size is thought to currently be the largest project of its type in North Carolina.

The company announced the start of commercial operation of the battery energy storage system (BESS) last week, on land leased within Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina’s Onslow County.

Using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry battery cells, the system is co-located with an existing 13MW solar PV plant with which it shares a connection point to the grid via a Duke Energy substation.

OCI, a subsidiary of the global construction and engineering firm Black & Veatch, was primary engineering, construction and procurement (EPC) contractor.

Details of how the system will be operated were not shared in the statement, but North Carolina state president for Duke Energy Kendal Bowman said pairing the BESS with the solar PV system – which has been in operation since 2015 – “helps strengthen the reliability of our energy grid and makes better use of our existing solar generation”.

Director of public works at the Marine Corps Base Navy Commander Ross Campbell said the base had been able to make “an important investment in the pursuit of energy security inside the fence-line”, through an enhanced use lease (EUL) for the 1 acre plot of land the battery system occupies.

“Integration of the solar plant with a battery energy storage system, unthinkable a decade ago, presents the installation with a number of opportunities to achieve energy resilience objectives,” Campbell said.

“These systems are part of the ongoing collaboration with the Department of Defense and its utility providers to ensure energy security at federal facilities.”

Duke has long way to go to meet 2029 goal

Duke Energy has been criticised by some industry sources in the past for being slower to embrace battery energy storage than many other large utility companies in the US, although it completed its first megawatt-scale plot project, a 36MW/24MWh BESS using lead acid batteries, back in 2012 at a wind farm in Notrees, Texas.

Built with costs shared 50:50 with the US Department of Energy to test the use of batteries for delivering ancillary services, energy shifting and reducing curtailment of the wind farm’s output, that project has since been repowered with lithium-ion batteries.

Duke also built North Carolina’s previous holder of the largest BESS title, a 9MW project in the city of Asheville switched on in 2020. The group, comprising various utilities in its holdings, has about 90MW of battery storage in operation in three US states, most notably in Florida, where it has now switched on a 50MW portfolio, including three projects totalling 34MW/58MWh that came online just over a year ago, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

Going forward, the company said it plans to have 1,900MW of BESS online in all territories by 2029. This could include 1,000MW of standalone battery storage as well as 600MW of batteries at solar-plus-storage plants in the Carolinas, 1,700MW of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) and a mix of other resources like 3,400MW of peak demand reduction through energy efficiency and demand response, announced as part of the company’s proposed carbon reduction plan for North and South Carolina in May 2022.

Duke Energy said the carbon reduction plan, which called for the deployment of 5.9GW of renewable and clean energy technologies, could enable a 70% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and set a path to carbon neutrality by 2050. The company also said it would retire all of its coal plants in the neighbouring southern US states by 2035.

North Carolina governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order in January 2022 setting a 50% emissions reduction target by 2050 against 2005 emissions levels, with Duke Energy claiming its Carolinas Carbon Reduction Plan would be aligned with that goal.

According to North Carolina-based non-profit consulting firm Advanced Energy, in 2022 coal still accounted for 13% of that state’s utility generation mix, with 41% coming from natural gas, 32% from nuclear and just 14% from combined hydro, wind and solar renewable generation.

The larger battery storage sites it did already have in 2022 comprised 15 utility-scale installations and 13 microgrids, mostly for municipal utilities and cooperatives, although Duke Energy completed a solar-plus-storage microgrid with 4.4MW of BESS technology capable of powering the entire town of Hot Springs in Charlotte, North Carolina, earlier this year.

In December, system integrator FlexGen said it had completed the first project in a 40MW BESS buildout across various locations for NC Electric Cooperatives, which collectively represents non-profit utilities serving around 2.5 million people in the state. The new fleet adds battery capacity to the group’s portfolio of 14 solar-plus-storage sites which total 23MW of solar PV and 53MWh of BESS, as well as a number of smaller microgrids.

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Rob Edinger

Opis Renewable Services, a firm that assists renewable energy developers, project owners and stakeholders, says it began operations in Chicago. 

The new company, led by industry veteran Rob Edinger, offers a range of services for wind, solar and energy storage facilities to meet the needs of project owners and OEMs. At its new facility, Opis will offer training for the wind and solar sectors along with high voltage training. It will provide operational services and support to the wind, solar and Bess divisions as well. 

This will allow Opis to provide OEMs, developers and project owners with qualified and trained technicians for long or short-term support, regardless of if the company needs support on scheduled or unscheduled maintenance.

“Our team at Opis is excited to launch and train technicians with exceptional service,” said Robert Edinger, CEO of Opis Renewable Services. “We are committed to delivering high-quality operational and maintenance services for the renewable energy industry, and we are confident that our new facility will help us achieve that goal.”

Opis begins operations at its 20,000 square foot training center conveniently located just ten minutes from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and 20 minutes from downtown Chicago.

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A JA Solar farm

JA Solar, a manufacturer of solar power products, signed a cooperation agreement with Mexican distributor Exel Solar and agreed to establish a long-term partnership for the distribution of its products in Mexico. 

Both parties will work together to provide customers with high-efficiency modules and quality services while contributing to the sustainable development of the Mexican PV market.

Since entering the Mexican market in 2016, JA Solar has established a fruitful cooperative relationship with Exel Solar, a local PV module distributor, enabling both parties to jointly promote the application and development of PV technologies in the market. 

In recent years, both parties have signed distribution cooperation agreements to continuously increase JA Solar’s module shipments in the local market. 

Distributors play an important role in JA Solar’s global sales ecosystem. With more than 10 years of experience in the Mexican PV market, Exel Solar has provided support to promote JA Solar’s products in Mexico. 

Photo credit

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Batteries, whether in vehicles or on the grid, will be a technology that defines the 21st Century, but the scale of that expected demand means a fundamental rethink of the supply chain is required, writes Greg Pitt, VP of battery materials at Worley.

Although demand trajectories vary, experts agree that the energy transition will be hindered by a structural shortage of critical minerals – particularly lithium, graphite, nickel, copper and cobalt – as early as 2025.

Further, as countries accelerate their efforts to achieve net zero, that shortage will only deepen as a result of the increased mineral inputs required by fossil fuel alternatives such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels.

A typical electric car, for example, requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and demand for battery electric vehicles is set to grow with the UK and European governments phasing out the sale of new diesel and petrol engine vehicles in the next decade.

While theoretically there are sufficient mineral quantities in the ground to meet the requirements of the energy transition, a structural deficit exists along the entire battery supply chain.

From mining and extraction from brines, through materials processing to cathode and anode manufacture, the region´s limited domestic industry simply does not have the resources, financial nor human capital, to ramp up supply in time to meet demand. Indeed, the almost collapse of the would-be car battery manufacturer Britishvolt as a result of cashflow issues shows just how difficult it is to develop the supply chain.

While researchers are rapidly innovating new technologies that reduce our dependence on certain minerals, it will be several years before these innovations filter through to product lines.

As such, to keep the energy transition on track, we must seek to address the battery supply chain’s structural deficit by expanding production in new and creative ways.

We don’t have time for bespoke design

There are several challenges to increasing mineral supply, but the most pressing is how to condense typical project timelines to bring new mining, processing and manufacturing capacity online more quickly.

Historically, we’ve been hooked on bespoke infrastructure design which can take a decade or more to deliver. For context, according to the IEA, between 2010 and 2019 it took an average of 16.5 years to take a mining project from discovery through to first production, with construction taking up to five years!

Similar constraints are evident at all stages in the battery supply chain with each production or processing facility requiring complex engineering, investment in the region of half a billion to a billion pounds, and several years to build.

Given the very short runway the industry has to increase supply chain throughput to support the region’s transition to net zero, we need to rethink the traditional bespoke approach to infrastructure delivery.

Design one, build many

Worley’s response to this is to innovate modular designs from which we can build many plants. Much like the trusty Lego block, while each modular block will be different, they will all share common interconnection points.

This has the combined benefit of being quicker to construct but flexible enough so that new technologies and upgrades can be readily assimilated into the plant as they become available in the future. It will also reduce the barriers for the industry when adopting new technologies to help address future market changes such as the declining quality of ore, increases in the use of recycled materials and heightened sustainability standards.

Ultimately, with far fewer bespoke requirements, modular designs are much easier to scale, replicate and disseminate around the world, ultimately fast tracking the industry’s response for more battery supply chain throughout.

This is not entirely new territory as it takes inspiration from the manufacturing mindset embodied by the likes of the automotive, telecommunications and aviation industries as well as our own. Boeing’s move towards standardisation within its design and production, for example, illustrate what is possible even in the face of complex engineering.

While each aircraft can be customised and modified by the end customer to suit certain requirements, much of the core engineering remains the same – the frame, the windows, the wiring looms, etc. This has allowed Boeing to make production more predictable, repeatable, and cost efficient while still being able to manufacture an aircraft from start to finish in nine days.

To make a similar approach feasible for the battery supply chain we need to reimagine the design approach to focus on utility, adaptability of standard designs and speed of delivery.

Partnerships and collaboration are critical to supply chain vision

A large part of the success of this new design philosophy relies on collaboration from the battery supply chain who will ultimately deliver it; dozens of critical vendors for 4,000+ pieces of equipment.

With the right information supported by a collaborative environment, vendors can support this vision of modularity and standardisation in their own products. By leveraging vendor’s expertise, we can streamline equipment supply by adapting designs to accommodate largely ‘off the shelf’ equipment which eliminate the time spent designing and manufacturing custom pieces.

To bring it all together there is then the need for an experienced ‘system integrator’ – an organisation that takes accountability for the overall operating performance and process design, and crafts the participation by various vendors and other parties to align and maximise the contribution by each within their specific areas of expertise.

A simple example of this are the materials handling facilities needed at the receiving and dispatch ends of many such facilities. There are particular requirements for battery materials processing relating to containment of toxic substances and protection from moisture ingress that, with close collaboration from typical vendors of this equipment, can be readily adapted and standardised for this industry – ultimately reducing the need for bespoke design efforts and shortening delivery lead times. More complex examples exist deeper into the plant process – along the same lines and with the same outcomes.

The final piece in this reimagination is to build long-term partnerships with battery material miners, processors and manufacturers to successfully bring this new concept to the UK and Europe.

This is something that must happen quickly if these markets are to successfully establish a domestic battery supply chain that will not only keep pace with short-term demand but also support the region’s medium-term ambition of phasing out new diesel and petrol engine car sales post 2030.

While we are in the midst of the sixth industrial revolution, it is increasingly clear that traditional methods of construction for chemical and mineral processing will not get us there in time. The battery industry must blaze its own trail if it is to contribute at the scale needed to meet the region’s goal of achieving net zero by 2050 and lessen the impact of climate change, at pace.

Driving innovation and leading the charge comes with risk, but with the right blend of creativity and expertise, there is always a way to solve even the most complex engineering problems.

About the Author

Greg Pitt is vice president of the battery materials growth team at Worley, a worldwide team of consultants, engineers, construction workers and data scientists working in the energy, chemicals and resources sectors. Pitt’s duties include identifying key growth areas and technology advancements within the battery materials market.

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