June Sauvaget

SunPower, a residential solar technology and energy services provider, says it designated Stitt Solar and Sun N Us Solar LLC as Master Dealers. 

The Master Dealer program is designed to deliver customers expertise and service through local and independent solar companies.

Participation in SunPower’s Master Dealer program is by invitation only. To earn the designation, dealers must obtain stringent customer satisfaction scores, complete rigorous training requirements, pass all residential inspections, meet revenue targets, agree to carry the SunPower moniker in their brand, and exclusively sell SunPower solar solutions. SunPower works with more than 850 dealers across the U.S., 35 of which are now Master Dealers.

“SunPower Master Dealers share our commitment to provide a superior customer experience with a unique ability to execute with an intricate knowledge of the markets they serve, trusted relationships with their consumers and a high level of craftsmanship,” says June Sauvaget, EVP and chief marketing officer for SunPower. 

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Wartsila GridSolv Quantum BESS. UL9540A testing is carried out at four different levels from cell to complete system. Image: Colbún S.A./Wärtsilä.

Finnish energy technology company Wärtsilä’s battery energy storage system (BESS) product GridSolv Quantum has achieved the “best possible outcome” in UL9540A testing.

Wärtsilä said earlier this week that its fully integrated, modular platform, using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells from manufacturer CATL, had met all of the fire safety tests requirements for Outdoor Ground Mounted BESS equipment.  

UL9540A, created by UL Solutions in conjunction with the US-based National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), tests for fire hazards associated with electrochemical energy storage systems when a cell goes into thermal runaway.

It focuses especially on the risk of propagation – thermal runaway causing heat and then fire to spread from one cell to another – which if unchecked or uncontained can lead to more serious fires or explosions.

In a recent webinar presented by Energy-Storage.news with system integrator IHI Terrasun, battery and BESS safety experts from DNV discussed UL9540 codes and standards for battery storage, including an overview of the UL9540A tests: what their intention is, as well as examining some typical test data and what it showed.

As DNV energy storage safety lead Carrie Kaplan explained in the webinar, UL9540A determines a system’s cells capability of going into thermal runaway, as well as evaluating a system’s fire and explosion hazard characteristics. It is part of key certifications required by many authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs) in the US, such as NFPA 855 code and IFC 2021, and is required for most large-scale projects to get financing and approvals.

The test can inform better BESS design, as well as the requirements for spacing between units to prevent spread of fire. Kaplan said it is important to note that UL9540A is not a ‘pass/fail’ test, but instead has four outlined levels of testing with corresponding performance criteria.

These are: cell level, module level, unit level and installation level, and a BESS needs to go through each one to meet those performance criteria.

It was proven that if a cell in Wärtsilä’s GridSolv Quantum went into thermal runaway, it would not propagate to adjacent cells or units, while the Lower Explosive Limit of the equipment at system level is below 25%, without risk of deflagration.

The product exhibited no explosion risk, and no flames caused from the thermal runaway went beyond the outer dimensions of the units. Wärtsilä touted that the results mean GridSolv Quantum units can be installed within 10ft of one another and stay in line with relevant fire codes and standards.

‘Scenario did not become hazardous’

Noah Ryder, a managing partner at Fire & Risk Alliance, one of the parties overseeing the testing, said Wärtsilä had “achieved the best possible outcome from the tests”.

“There was no external flaming observed, the concentration of gases was manageable and the scenario did not become hazardous. This is as good as it gets from a results standpoint,” Ryder said.

Nick Warner of Energy Safety Response Group, one of the other overseeing parties, recently co-wrote a Guest Blog on the critical importance of energy storage fire safety for Energy-Storage.news with Wärtsilä energy storage director of product management and hardware, Darrell Furlong.

Warner and Furlong said that while industry fire codes require testing to be done as per UL9540A, “safety conscious manufacturers have expanded their testing to go beyond the focus on thermal runaway”, with some also seeking to validate explosion protection systems using full-scale testing.

Fluence also completed UL9540A tests for its Fluence Cube BESS product a few weeks ago, while Wärtsilä’s battery supplier CATL recently got accredited to carry out its own UL9540A tests through a partnership with UL Solutions.

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Project site of the Madero and Ignacio BESS assets in South Texas. Image: Wärtsilä

The US state of Texas continues to be a hotbed for energy storage activity, as CATL announces a major supply deal and the country’s first battery storage project to get ITC incentives comes online.

Just a few weeks ago, developer Eolian claimed the first project to avail of the newly-introduced investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage through tax equity financing.

Eolian’s 200MW/429MWh pair of interconnected battery energy storage system (BESS) assets in the Texas city of Mission was also claimed to be the largest fully merchant BESS project in the world. Tax equity investment came from a fund managed by Churchill Stateside Group.

The projects had begun construction in January 2021. Wärtsilä, the BESS technology provider and system integrator selected by Eolian, said earlier this week that the commercial operation date (COD) has been reached for the twin projects, called Ignacio and Madero, each of 100MW output.

The two companies had to work through an “exceptionally difficult period” to carry out the project installation and commissioning due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global supply chain issues, Wärtsilä said.

“Texas needs more flexible capacity solutions like energy storage for grid support and energy resource optimisation,” Wärtsilä’s VP of Americas Risto Paldanius said.

“This will help the state as it faces the natural replacement cycle of older inflexible generators and adapts to more frequent extreme weather events.”

Eolian invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” to construct the Madero and Ignacio BESS assets even during a time when the ERCOT market is undergoing a redesign, Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty said.

“We did this because of an unwavering belief that the highly flexible and instantly-dispatchable multi-hour resources at this site will do the hard daily work of fast-ramping and quick starts, allowing ageing, inflexible and increasingly fragile generators to remain available to the system in backup roles.”

As with other Wärtsilä BESS projects, the Texas duo uses the company’s GridSolv Quantum integrated modular BESS solution, and onboarded with the Wärtsilä GEMS Digital Energy Platform, the company’s energy management system (EMS). The latter is key to the assets being able to deliver ancillary services effectively to the ERCOT grid, and the Eolian systems are the first in ERCOT to qualify to deliver new fast frequency response services.

As noted in a recent news story on Energy-Storage.news, the ITC’s requirement for tax equity financing means transactions and financing structures required to avail of the incentives will be complex and expensive to negotiate. Despite that caveat meaning the big players with deep pockets might be best placed to benefit from it, the ITC is however widely expected to boost the business case for energy storage projects across the US.

CATL signs 450MWh Texas deal rising to 5GWh

CATL has signed a supply deal with energy storage project developer HGP Storage for projects in Texas, starting with a single 450MWh site.

The two companies announced their deal on Monday (27 March), with the Chinese battery maker – the world’s largest lithium battery manufacturer – set to supply its EnerC containerised liquid cooled BESS solution to the developer.

Dallas-headquartered HGP is relatively new to the battery storage space but its leadership has a track record of delivering energy and infrastructure projects including thermal backup generation and currently has a claimed 1GW/1.4GWh pipeline of distributed and utility-scale battery projects in Texas.

No further details of the 450MWh project were given in a release, although the companies did say it will begin commercial operations in 2024. Beyond that, CATL and HGP have entered into a “long-term partnership to facilitate up to 5GWh” of BESS in the state, including distributed and utility-scale projects.

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Seed and Greet EV charge station, one of just two projects in Germany featuring large-scale BESS at an EV charging facility. Image: Tesvolt.

Germany’s installed based of large-scale energy storage facilities is predicted to roughly double in the next couple of years, after 2022 saw a comeback for the segment.

After a few consecutive years of declining in size, Germany’s utility-scale energy storage market saw a record 434MW/467MWh deployed during 2022, a record figure, according to a market review published by a consortium including experts at RWTH Aachen Technical University.

In the latest edition in an annual series, last year the researchers found that in 2021, the residential segment continued to lead the market but a renaissance in the underperforming large-scale systems segment (defined as over 1,000MWh energy capacity) was forecast for 2022.

That came after just 36MW/32MWh of large-scale installs were estimated for 2021, meaning 2022’s figures represent a 910% increase, RWTH Aachen expert Jan Figgener told Energy-Storage.news.

The residential segment still dwarfs large-scale for market share however: in 2021, 145,000 household systems totalling 739MW/1,268MWh were installed, compared to 1,164MW/1,944MWh of new residential installations in 2022 across about 200,000 homes. That represents 52% growth year-on-year in energy terms and 60% growth in power output for residential, defined for the purpose of the study as projects below 30kWh capacity.  

Commercial and industrial (C&I) systems of between 30kWh to 1MWh capacity were a distant third by comparison to the other segments in 2022, with just 43MW/84MWh of systems approximated to have been installed, albeit it has also grown from the 27MW/57MWh recorded in 2021.

The report’s authors said cumulative installs for grid-scale projects reached 1,072MW/1,204MWh by the end of 2022, across 149 large-scale storage assets. However from adding up publicly announced projects alone, a further 1,123MW/1,414MWh could be installed within the next two to three years.

Unlike other advanced markets for utility-scale BESS where a wave of smaller sub-10MW projects leads to later waves of project twice or even ten times as large, project sizes in Germany remain relatively small. Around 77% are below 10MWh, although the authors noted that multiple projects of over 200MWh are announced for future deployment.

Evolving applications for Germany’s grid-scale BESS

The use cases for large-scale storage systems in Germany are beginning to shift. Ancillary services still remain the main application, with around 658MW/750MWh of energy storage built for this purpose to date. However, while prior to 2019, almost all large-scale performed frequency containment reserve (FCR) exclusively, saturation in that market led to declining prices paid by grid operators and a corresponding slowdown in the market to 2021.

Today’s energy market, characterised by high prices across the board, mean Germany’s FCR prices are again attractive enough for energy storage. This is not expected to last and increasingly, the recently introduced automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR) market which is estimated to be three to four times bigger in size than FCR is becoming an attractive option.

Large-scale energy storage used for renewable energy integration is also on the rise, with about 200MW/250MWh in operation today and 700MWh more projects announced. This is driven partly by the introduction of so-called ‘Innovation Tenders’ by the regulatory Bundesnetzagentur, which award contracts to projects that combine two forms of clean energy technology. This has led to a growth in mostly solar-plus-storage projects, with only one wind-plus-storage project winning through such an auction to date.

On a related note, this week the Bundesnetzagentur increased the maximum feed-in tariff (FiT) that PV-plus-storage projects can get through the Innovation Tenders by 25% from previous auction rounds, to 9,18ct/kWh (US$0.995/kWh). This has come after a recent auction round was severely undersubscribed.

There are also 130MW/150MWh of BESS in what the report called multi-use operation, where assets are combining functions such as behind-the-meter peak shaving with ancillary services.

Other use cases include 50MW/50MWh of large-scale storage in operation at large industrial sites and a very small wedge of others such as EV charge stations.

The final other use case highlighted by the report has drawn some interest from the global energy storage industry for its application of energy storage as a transmission asset: Germany’s transmission system operator (TSO) ‘GridBooster’ projects.

There are 450MW/450MWh of these planned as pilots, including the 250MW contract awarded to global technology provider Fluence by TSO Transnet. The GridBoosters essentially add N-1 redundancy to transmission lines, reducing the TSOs’ need to invest in expensive grid infrastructure with the BESS assets helping to increase the network’s carrying capacity.

The pilots are expected to come online in the next three years and their sole application will be as grid management resources.

Again, as with the Innovation Tenders, there has been some recent news about GridBoosters, with TSOs including requests to get a further tranche of such projects approved in long-term planning proposals filed with regulators this month.

In a September 2022 article for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (vol.32), Energy-Storage.news writer Cameron Murray took a look at Germany’s grid-scale energy storage market and the drivers behind its expected return to life.

What remains to be seen is the impact of bigger picture topics that have already dominated energy industry conversation across the European Union in 2023. Those include the EU’s Green Deal Industrial Plan which includes measures to reform Electricity Market Design to promote the uptake of clean energy on the grid, and measures to stimulate economic activity across the clean energy value chain from raw materials extraction to manufacturing and deployment.

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First Solar Inc. says its manufacturing facility in India has been awarded financial incentives under the Indian government’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) program. First Solar was one of only three manufacturers selected to receive the full range of incentives, which are reserved for fully vertically integrated manufacturing. 

The incentives are subject to the facility meeting product efficiency and domestic value creation thresholds, which will be evaluated on a quarterly basis beginning in the second quarter of 2026 through 2031.

The PLI program is intended to promote the manufacturing of high efficiency solar modules in India and to reduce India’s dependency on foreign imports of solar modules. Under the program, manufacturers are selected through a competitive bid process and receive certain cash incentives over a five-year period following the commissioning of their manufacturing facilities. 

Among other things, such incentives are based on the efficiency and temperature coefficient of the modules produced, the proportion of raw materials sourced from the domestic market, the extent to which the manufacturer’s operations are fully integrated within India, and the quantity of modules sold from such manufacturing operations.

First Solar’s new facility, expected to be commissioned in the second half of this year, is located in the state of Tamil Nadu and will have an annual nameplate capacity of 3.4 GW DC. Designed using the advanced manufacturing template established by First Solar’s newest factory in Ohio, the facility will produce the company’s Series 7 modules.

First Solar produces its thin film PV modules using a fully integrated, continuous process under one roof and does not rely on Chinese c-Si supply chains. The company’s eco-efficient module technology, which uses its proprietary Cadmium Telluride semiconductor, has low carbon and water footprints.

First Solar is also expanding its U.S. manufacturing footprint, which currently stands at over 5 GW of annual nameplate capacity with three operating factories in Ohio, to over 10 GW by 2025 when it completes its new $1.1 billion factory in Alabama and a $185 million expansion of its existing capacity in Ohio. The company is expected to have over 20 GW of annual global nameplate manufacturing capacity by 2025.

Photo by Priamo Mendez on Unsplash

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Dan Shugar

Nextracker Inc., a provider of solar tracking and software solutions, has signed a multi-year volume commitment agreement with Strata Clean Energy to supply 810 MW of trackers for large-scale solar power projects in Texas, Arizona and Virginia. 

Consistent with Nextracker’s years-long campaign to grow its partnerships with U.S. suppliers, much of the equipment will be sourced from U.S. factories.

“Strata’s integrated model of solar and storage development, EPC and operations generates value for utilities and landowners,” says Dan Shugar, founder and CEO of Nextracker. “Our expanded U.S. supply chain is well-positioned for their needs to reliably deliver high performing solar power plants, while creating more jobs in communities across the country. We’re excited to enter into this agreement with Strata to deliver low-cost high-performing solar power plants.”

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Scott Canada

Swift Current Energy is ramping up construction this spring for its Double Black Diamond solar project in central Illinois. The company has contracted St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Companies as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor. 

Swift Current has also selected First Solar to provide the 800 MW DC solar modules for the project and Nextracker to provide the smart solar tracker solutions for the project. The majority of the project’s 1.6 million solar panels will be manufactured in the United States.

In coordination with local unions, the project is hiring approximately 435 craft workers to construct the Double Black Diamond solar project, with crews having already begun sitework. Peak workforce is expected to be onsite for approximately 14 months, beginning in late spring 2023. The project is expected to reach commercial operation by fall 2024, with Swift Current continuing to own and operate the facility.

“As the developer and long-term owner of Double Black Diamond, we are thrilled to prepare for full mobilization of the more than 400 skilled workers who will construct this project,” said Eric Lammers, CEO of Swift Current Energy. “The Double Black Diamond solar project brings together American-based businesses McCarthy, First Solar and Nextracker to construct a market-leading project that we hope will serve as an example for other projects to come.”

The project has set apprenticeship, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion hiring goals, which are being facilitated by local unions for carpenters, laborers, operators, electricians and crew leads. In partnership with the unions, McCarthy will train workers who are inexperienced in utility-scale solar construction to assist with future workforce needs and accommodate the exponential regional and national growth of the solar industry.

McCarthy is responsible for the design, procurement, construction and commissioning of the solar facility, which represents the largest solar energy project in Illinois and will significantly enhance the region’s sustainable energy infrastructure.

“With the expansive growth of utility-scale solar construction throughout the country, we are thrilled to be able to facilitate the development of a more diverse workforce while also supporting the state’s sustainability goals – Double Black Diamond truly represents a community impact project for the region,” says Scott Canada, executive vice president of McCarthy’s renewable energy and storage team.”  

Once operational, the project will provide reliable, renewable energy and offset the equivalent emissions of more than 85,000 Illinois households per year. In collaboration with Constellation, it was announced in August that the City of Chicago would be a key end-user for the Double Black Diamond solar project. 

Starting in 2025, the City of Chicago will partially source its large energy uses such as Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport as well as certain other large facilities with renewable energy from the Double Black Diamond solar project. Additionally, the project is expected to bring $100 million in tax revenue to Sangamon and Morgan counties in central Illinois, where the project is located.  

Additionally, State Farm and PPG will purchase zero-emission, renewable energy from the Double Black Diamond solar project. Illinois-based State Farm will procure approximately 103,000 MWh of energy per year from Constellation, as part of the insurance company’s continued efforts at reducing its overall impact on the environment. The energy purchased by State Farm is the equivalent to what is currently used to power eight of State Farm’s corporate facilities in Bloomington, including its corporate headquarters and operations center.

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An Agilitas solar-plus-storage project in Massachusetts. Image: Agilitas Energy.

Agilitas Energy, a developer of distributed and smaller utility-scale solar PV and battery storage projects in the US, has entered the Texas ERCOT market.

The company said yesterday that it has agreed to acquire a portfolio of standalone energy storage projects in development for around US$75 million, from Gulf States Renewable Energy, a Texas-based subsidiary of California solar and battery storage development company GSR Energy.

Comprising six assets totalling 60MW output in the Greater Houston area of Texas, they will serve utility CenterPoint Energy, which serves residential customers in the region, charging with surplus energy at off-peak times, for inputting to the grid when demand peaks and it is most needed.

They are identically designed and sized at 9.96MW/20.721MWh each, with BYD Energy as battery supplier. Two will begin commercial operation this year and the remaining four will come online in 2024. Agilitas will buy each project when fully permitted and ready to enter the construction stage.

It marks a geographical departure for Agilitas, which has to date focused on the Northeastern US, with projects that include Rhode Island’s first-ever utility-scale BESS, a 3MW/9MWh asset that came online last year. Other projects include community solar-plus-storage in Massachusetts that qualified for that state’s SMART incentive programme.

It also marks something of a departure in a sense that its projects to date have focused on renewable energy markets in US states or grid operator regions that are policy driven e.g, feed-in tariff or net metering, with additional wholesale market participation and behind-the-meter benefits like peak shaving, whereas Texas’ ERCOT wholesale market is much more of a merchant play.

At the end of last year, Agilitas president and board member Barrett Bilotta said the company was looking to build on the momentum it had built up in the Northeast and expand into additional markets, but at the time did not mention which ones that might include nor drop hints that Texas was in the frame.

In one of our Year-in-Review 2022 Q&A blogs, Bilotta did say however that Agilitas Energy expected to be able “to leverage the benefits afforded by the IRA,” noting that as part of the energy storage industry in a country freshly committed to supporting clean energy that “we have lots of momentum propelling us forward”.

Agilitas raised US$350 million in equity investment last year from global alternative asset management group CarVal Investors to help fuel its expansion, while Bilotta also noted that the developer doubled its employee headcount in 2022.

“Texas has always represented the holy grail of energy and is one of our key expansion markets because it’s a leader in energy production, energy consumption and renewables,” Bilotta said of the deal yesterday.

ERCOT was a topic of focus in our recent webinar with energy trading and storage asset optimisation firm GridBeyond, which is building on its experience in the UK and Ireland energy storage markets to take on Texas. GridBeyond’s heads of energy trading and forecasting discussed the available revenue opportunities for batteries in ERCOT and how best to capture them.

Bilotta noted that in addition to expanding into Texas, Agilitas is also “planning to bolster our renewable portfolio to include sources beyond solar, partnering with other leading renewable developers to achieve these goals as necessary”.

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Dan Siegel

Birch Creek Energy LLC, a St. Louis-based renewable energy company, has acquired Foundation Solar Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based solar developer focused on greenfield solar projects primarily in the MISO and PJM markets. 

Together, Birch Creek and Foundation Solar have developed over 1.7 GW of solar and storage projects since 2019 and have a combined development pipeline of 13.5 GW in varying stages of development.

“We are excited to add the expertise of Foundation Solar to the Birch team,” says Dan Siegel, CEO of Birch Creek. “They not only bring immediate value by materially increasing our portfolio in key markets such as PJM and MISO, but the acquisition of the team brings a proven greenfield engine which will increase our velocity and scale.”

Lazard Frères and Co. LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to the seller, Hull Street Energy. Foley and Lardner LLP acted as legal counsel to Hull Street Energy, and Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarborough LLP acted as legal counsel to Birch Creek.

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Matt Lynn

Lendlease, a real estate and investment group that manages almost 8,000 homes for the U.S. Army on Oahu, and Holu Hou Energy (HHE), a provider of design-to-service solar plus energy storage systems, have signed a contract to install HHE’s HoluPower energy storage and solar PV systems on homes at Lendlease’s Island Palm Communities.

The installations will come in the form of HHE’s EnergyCluster, where multiple residential units have their systems connected in an energy network. Excess solar generation from any unit’s system in the network that would normally be lost is directly shared in real time with other connected units that have load above solar generation. The benefit is that the optimized PV and energy storage systems can meet 75% to 80% or more of the overall residents’ energy needs while not exporting power to the utility grid.

“Lendlease Communities is proud to partner with Holu Hou Energy on this innovative renewable energy project, which will not only improve the quality of life for military families at Island Palm Communities, but also contribute to a more resilient and stable electric grid in Oahu,” says Matt Lynn, SVP, energy and utilities at Lendlease. 

Lendlease and HHE began planning in 2021, which culminated in constructing a pilot project in May 2022. Since then, the pilot has been operating across six residential units. In a typical month, approximately a third of the total generated electricity is shared with other units in the cluster, thereby solving issues related to vacancy and resident load variability while proving the value created through a clustered approach versus stand-alone systems.

The savings realized by Island Palm Communities through deployment of HHE’s systems is being reinvested to enhance the housing and amenities Lendlease offers to military families on the installation. Additionally, residents now have back-up power that can be utilized during grid outage events. 

Each residential unit will have approximately 10 kW of PV and 25 kWh of energy storage, with six residences typically being connected in an HHE EnergyShare network. Construction is set to begin summer of 2023, with initial installations at the Aliamanu Military Reservation near Honolulu.

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