Tim Larrison

Primergy Solar LLC, a developer, owner and operator of utility-scale solar, distributed solar and energy storage, has closed with Rabobank on a $75 million revolving credit facility with the option to increase up to $200 million. The facility will be used to support a growing development pipeline of solar and solar+storage projects across the U.S. Primergy’s near-term portfolio exceeds 3.2 GW of solar PV and  2.3 GW of storage projects targeting operational dates through 2026, which includes the previously announced Gemini and Iron Point/Hot Pot projects in Nevada. A further 5 GW of solar PV and 4.3 GW of storage projects are planned for operational dates after 2026.

“We are grateful for Rabobank’s partnership and support,” says Tim Larrison, CFO at Primergy. “This facility will allow Primergy to continue to expand our project portfolio, as we focus on developing large-scale solar and storage projects that deliver impactful decarbonization of power supplies in multiple U.S. regions and create positive financial impacts for local communities.”

The new debt facility further diversifies Primergy’s financing sources and supports the continued growth of a diverse portfolio of projects which now spans 17 states.

“As leading utility-scale developer, this facility provides Primergy a flexible financing vehicle through which it can efficiently grow its development pipeline targets,” states Claus Hertel, managing director of project finance. “Rabobank is pleased to have structured this financing to allow Primergy to meet its growth targets in diverse geographies and supporting the energy transition, representing a strong alignment with the bank’s strategy of supporting clients’ decarbonization goals.”

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Smartville’s first commercially operating energy storage system, in San Diego, California. Image: Smartville Inc.

We caught up with Mike Ferry, president of California-based second life energy storage firm Smartville Inc.

Second life energy storage, the repurposing of EV batteries into stationary systems, has taken off this year. As readers of Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of the space will know, this year has seen several new companies appear and raise tens of millions of dollars, procurement deals with vehicle OEMs in the hundreds of MWh and even now GWh-scale, and even systems using multiple battery chemistries.

California-based Smartville is one of those looking to capitalise on the opportunity in North America, along with its main competitors Moment Energy, Element Energy and B2U. Ferry discussed the company’s product and value proposition, its existing and future deployments and plans, growing its manufacturing capacity and its project using Tesla batteries, reported on separately here.

Energy-Storage.news: Tell us about Smartville Inc, why it was founded and what you do today?

Mike Ferry: CEO Antoni Tong and I founded the company three years ago in San Diego, California. As researchers at the University of California, San Diego, our advanced energy storage lab received US$2 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) through the ARPA-E programme. Our technology was really focused on how to safely and reliably repurpose used lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries for grid storage, and being able to both predict and extend their useful life.

We realised early on that the only way to grow a real market for this type of technology is to be able to absolutely warranty or guarantee the performance of these batteries in a repurposing application and a second life.

We validated our technology using battery modules obtained by disassembling EV battery packs, and we cycled modules of different chemistries from different automakers. As a result, we now have software and hardware that can use batteries of different states of health within the same system and we’re able to improve total system state of health over time, and then we’re able to warranty the performance of those batteries in that second life. At that point, we decided to shift from repurposing simple modules and to design our system to repurpose entire battery packs.

We believe focusing on battery packs rather than disassembly and modules allows us to scale. For this market to reach the MWh and even GWh projects it does not make sense from a labour or financial perspective to disassemble.

So what is your main physical product?

Our main product is an energy enclosure called MOAB, which can hold between six to 10 battery packs with a nominal rating of anywhere between 200-500kWh depending on the type of battery packs we’re using and the state of health of those battery packs.

We have a number of systems that I would characterise as laboratory type systems but our first system that is out in the field is one that we commissioned last month (at UC San Diego).

It has one enclosure with Tesla batteries, and the other enclosure contains Nissan LEAF battery packs. And then we operate those two MOAB enclosures as a single energy storage system, which provides energy services to the buildings that the system’s adjacent to.

So we consume solar power during the day, and discharge the battery after the sun goes down. And then we also provide backup power to critical facility loads within the warehouse that the batteries service.

What are the advantages and challenges of using entire battery packs instead of individual modules?

We see mostly advantages and not challenges. But the main challenge is that we have to be able to speak to each battery pack. Each battery pack speaks a slightly different language and has variation in how the battery management system is engineered.

So we need to speak to each battery pack and then have that all those battery packs roll up into our universal battery management system (BMS). We spent quite a bit of time developing that communication technology and that software.

And even within battery packs, different generations of battery packs will have slightly different communication and data protocols. And in speaking to battery packs, we’re not just able to tell the battery: “turn on turn off, open a contacter or close a contacter, charge discharge,” etc.

We’re also gathering critical data from each battery pack on cell voltages and on cell temperatures on internal resistance.

And we’re using all of that data, not just to control the battery pack – so that we can operate an energy storage system consisting of all different kinds of battery packs – but we’re also feeding all of that data into our database, so that we’re able to monitor the state of health of all those batteries and then feed that into our lifecycle modelling software.

We’re then able to predict how those batteries are going to perform over time. So not just in terms of their overall energy storage capacity, but in terms of their power-to-energy ratio, their efficiency, their internal resistance.

These are all elements that you need in order to make a real product out of these batteries. You need to understand exactly how the batteries are going to perform, and exactly how long they’re going to be able to perform at those different performance metrics.

And to what extent are the battery packs you use true ‘second life’ packs which have been in a vehicle out on the road, versus off-the-factory-floor, discarded, or test vehicle ones?

We’re working with automakers that want to see how battery packs throughout the different parts of their lifetime can operate in an energy storage system. Battery packs that are on the one end of the spectrum have completely gone through their useful life in a vehicle and might be at less than half of their original state of health, and the automakers want to see how those packs behave in an energy storage system.

We also have incorporated battery packs that are almost brand new. There are a large number of what I call ‘orphaned’ battery packs coming out of the salvage market. So you’ll have a vehicle that’s in an accident, where the front end and back end will be smashed and the insurance company will write off the whole car and sell the vehicle into the salvage market. But even though the vehicle is no longer useful, the battery, being tucked between the wheels and engineered to withstand collisions, is still very usable and undamaged.

So we’ve repurposed new battery packs and mixed them with old battery packs and shown how we can operate battery packs of different states of health within a single system.

Our technology allows us to be incredibly flexible in what type of batteries that we’re able to repurpose. And we think that is pretty critical for growing this market at this stage where the numbers of electric vehicles in the market and the number of batteries that are being produced is really starting to grow and build, and I think it’s hard to predict where the next big volumes of battery supplies are going to come from.

So let’s say an OEM whose battery packs you’ve never worked with before tells you they have 100 packs they want you to put into a system – how quickly could you incorporate that into your BMS and enclosure into a usable product?

If it uses standard CANbus data protocols we could incorporate it into our BMS in a few weeks. Fitting the battery packs into our physical enclosure would be in the order of a few months.

Did you work directly with Tesla and Nissan or through third-party sellers?

For Tesla we work through third parties, for Nissan and other automakers we work directly with them.

So Tesla is the exception – why is that?

Our experience in the US is that Tesla does not seem to be interested in working with outside partners. They’ve also publicly stated that they’re not focused on battery repurposing, not in their current business model at least, which I think might change over time. But that’s their public stance at the moment. We’re absolutely open to working directly with them but the opportunity hasn’t presented itself.

To what extent do you do your own manufacturing and system integration and how are you approaching UL 1974 certification, which competitor Moment Energy told us is needed to manufacture second life storage systems in the US?

We’re currently working with national testing laboratory Innertek to qualify our facility here in Carlsbad, San Diego, as a UL 1974 manufacturing facility. We see UL 1974 and UL 1973 as critical to certify in our system as well as another regulation called UL 9540. Our intention is to achieve those certifications by the first quarter of 2024.

We’re working with outside manufacturers at the moment but all of the final assembly and testing and commissioning will be done at our Carlsbad facility. In August we received US$2 million from the California Energy Commission (CEC) to ramp up that facility.

We’ll carry on working with a third-party manufacturer to build the physical enclosure and racking systems but that Carslbad facility will be doing the assembly, putting together the batteries, power electronics, high voltage cabling, communications, thermal management systems and the final testing and commissioning.

It’s not currently a hard requirement for a system to be built in a UL 1974-certified facility. Our first operational system isn’t. A great deal depends on the local permitting agency that you’re working with which is responsible for ensuring the safety of individual installations, and most of their staff want to see certified equipment, which make sit far easier to permit on-the-ground projects.

But permitting agencies can permit individual projects without UL certifications if they feel that the project is safe and meets certain requirements. So in our first project we worked very closely with the permitting agency so that we could get the system installed and operational.

But that strategy is not something that is scalable, because you’re spending a lot of money and time to permit a single project. To achieve scale, you really need to have the certifications so that permitting agencies can easily permit your equipment and a construction project that utilises your equipment.

Give us an idea of the scale of your manufacturing capacity in the coming years?

For next year we’ll be fairly low scale. We’ll manufacture 20-30 of our 250kWh enclosures. By early 2024 we want to have a certified product and want to deploy 50-100MWh of product that year.

Do you have your own energy management system (EMS) platform and how big a focus is that for you?

We do have our own proprietary EMS platform that’s currently operating at our deployed system in here in San Diego, at another system operating in Irvine, and in all of the test systems working at our facility in Carlsbad. The interface between our master battery management software and EMS platform is really the focus for us, and moving forward we see this interface as one of our many long-term areas of competitiveness and value.

Tell us about how you’ll use the US$6 million you recently received from the DOE and second life projects you’ve got coming up?

Much of that money will be helping us to productise our enclosure system at a much faster pace than we could otherwise. We have operating prototypes but we’re iterating on our product and developing our second and even third versions. The money will also help us to certify our product to UL 9540 and our manufacturing facility to UL 1974.

Beyond our product, a significant portion of the funding is allocated to a large demonstration project which will be a 4MWh system in central California that will be co-located with an existing power plant. That will probably be deployed in 2024 as well and is in partnership with California’s largest privately-owned independent power producer (IPP).

At the end of Q2 next year we’ll be installing another prototype system with utility Southern Power to install one of our enclosures in Georgia. Additionally, we have several other early-stage projects in the pipeline for 2023, but our company’s primary focus is on certification, commercialisation, and scaling our ability to manufacture and deploy systems at large scales, which we really see ramping up in 2024.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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A new approach to manufacturing perovskite solar cells has addressed previous problems and yielded devices with high efficiency and excellent stability, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report in the new issue of the journal Science.

Developing highly stable and efficient perovskites based on a rich mixture of bromine and iodine is considered critical for the creation of tandem solar cells. The two elements, however, tend to separate when exposed to light and heat and thus limit the voltage and stability of a solar cell.

“This new growth approach can significantly suppress the phase segregation,” says Kai Zhu, a senior scientist at NREL, principal investigator on the project, and lead author of the new paper “Compositional texture engineering for highly stable wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells.” His co-authors from NREL are Qi Jiang, Jinhui Tong, Rebecca Scheidt, Amy Louks, Robert Tirawat, Axel Palmstrom, Matthew Hautzinger, Steven Harvey, Steve Johnston, Laura Schelhas, Bryon Larson, Emily Warren, Matthew Beard, and Joseph Berry.

Other researchers involved are with the University of Toledo.

The new approach addressed that problem and produced a wide-bandgap solar cell with an efficiency of greater than 20% and 1.33-volt photovoltage and little change in the efficiency over 1,100 hours of continuous operation at a high temperature. With this new approach, an all-perovskite tandem cell obtained an efficiency of 27.1% with a high photovoltage of 2.2 volts and good operational stability.

In the tandem cell, the narrow-bandgap layer is deposited on top of the wide-bandgap layer. The difference in bandgaps allows for more of the solar spectrum to be captured and converted into electricity.

Perovskite refers to a crystalline structure formed by the deposition of chemicals onto a substrate. A high concentration of bromine causes more rapid crystallization of the perovskite film and often leads to defects that reduce the performance of a solar cell. Various strategies have been tried to mitigate those issues, but the stability of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells is still considered inadequate.

The newly developed approach builds upon work Zhu and his colleagues published earlier this year that flipped the typical perovskite cell. Using this inverted architectural structure allowed the researchers to increase both efficiency and stability and to easily integrate tandem solar cells.

The NREL-led group used that same architecture and moved further away from the conventional method of making a perovskite. The traditional method uses an antisolvent applied to the crystalizing chemicals to create a uniform perovskite film. The new approach relied on what is known as gas quenching, in which a flow of nitrogen was blown onto the chemicals. The result addressed the problem of the bromine and iodine separating, resulting in a perovskite film with improved structural and optoelectronic properties.

The antisolvent approach allows the crystals to grow rapidly and uniformly within the perovskite film, crowding each other and leading to defects where the grain boundaries meet. The gas-quenching process, when applied to high-bromine-content perovskite chemicals, forces the crystals to grow together, tightly packed from top to bottom, so they become like a single grain and significantly reduces the number of defects. The top-down growth method forms a gradient structure, with more bromine near the top and less in the bulk of the cell. The gas-quench method was also statistically more reproducible than the antisolvent approach.

The researchers achieved an efficiency that exceeded 20% for the wide-bandgap layer and operational stability with less than 5% degradation over 1,100 hours. Coupled with the bottom cell, the device reached the 27.1% efficiency mark.

The researchers also tried argon and air as the drying gas with similar results, indicating that the gas-quench method is a general way for improving the performance of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells.

The new growth approach demonstrated the potential of high-performance all-perovskite tandem devices and advanced the development of other perovskite-based tandem architectures such as those that incorporate silicon.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office funded the research.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy LLC.

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Innovative agrivoltaics demo system 2022 (Credit: RWE)

RWE and Forschungszentrum Jülich are planning on generating power and farming land on the same site in the Rhenish lignite mining district. The plan is to generate solar power in tandem with agricultural and horticultural activities on about seven hectares of recultivated land at the edge of Garzweiler Mine in Titz-Jackerath in the district of Düren in North Rhine-Westphalia. The research project is funded by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia through the progres.nrw program.

“In addition to a faster expansion of wind power, the energy transition in Germany also needs utility-scale solar plants,” states Katja Wünschel, CEO of onshore wind, and solar Europe and Australia at RWE Renewables. “RWE is also playing its part here – during this decade we will be investing up to €15 billion gross throughout Germany in our green core business and implementing every renewables project that is possible. As land is a scarce resource, we want to use this innovative demonstration project to show how agriculture and solar power go hand in hand.”

For Germany to be able to achieve its climate targets, land must be made available for the expansion of solar power and innovative plans must be developed. In addition to floating-PV plants on lakes, agrivoltaics (Agri-PV) offers major potential for expansion. Fraunhofer ISE assumes a technical potential of up to 2,900 GWp in Germany. Agri-PV is the simultaneous use of land for electricity generation and food production or animal husbandry with potential synergies between these different uses. That applies in particular when solar modules protect crops from excessive sunlight or hail, possibly even allowing for crop yields to be increased. At some plants, it is also possible to collect rainwater from the PV modules and use it for irrigation.

“To leverage the full potential offered by Agri-PV, we first need to clarify some fundamental questions, especially regarding suitable crops, the optimal PV system design, and best concepts for cooperation with farmers. These are the relevant areas we want to look at in our demonstration project,” says Wünschel. “We also need to make sure that the right regulatory framework is in place. For example, a dedicated tender segment within the German Renewable Energy Sources Act would be helpful in taking innovative technologies such as Agri-PV to full market maturity so that this technology can make its full contribution to the energy transition in Germany.”

Professor Ulrich Schurr, head of plant sciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich, is certain that the Rhenish lignite mining district, with its high-quality farmland, can benefit from Agri-PV.

“The combined use of land for PV plants and agriculture is a genuine option for the future in our region,” adds Professor Schurr. “Dual use of land could enable farmers to reduce the consequences of climate change, improve crop yields through higher-value crops, and generate electricity at the same time.”

A first, smaller Agri-PV plant in Morschenich-Alt shows that this is possible in principle. This plant is being operated by Forschungszentrum Jülich and other partners as part of the BioökonomieREVIER initiative.

“The larger demonstration project with RWE in Jackerath now gives us the opportunity to compare further technical solutions and investigate the growth behaviours of various crops under real conditions. That will enable us to take the insights we have already gained to a deeper level.”

The aim is to develop suitable cultivation methods and value-adding strategies for operators of Agri-PV plants. Forschungszentrum Jülich is contributing its scientific expertise to the demonstration project. RWE has recultivated land and long-standing connections with regional farmers and is providing the extensive technical expertise it has gained from the development, construction and operation of solar plants worldwide.

Three different technical Agri-PV solutions are planned for the demonstration project in Jackerath, all allowing the simultaneous use of the land for electricity generation and agricultural production. The first system uses a vertical design leaving enough space for harvesting machinery between the module rows. In the second system, the modules are installed in rows as well, but they are mounted horizontally and are automatically tracked to follow the sun over the day. This should optimize energy yields and make additional land available to the farmer.

In the third system, the PV modules are elevated on a high pergola-like substructure, with crops such as raspberries or blueberries cultivated below them. The demonstration plant will have a peak capacity of about 3 MW (more than 2 MW AC). Once the permit has been received, construction is expected to begin in summer 2023.

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Kyle Wallace

PosiGen, a provider of renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions for low-to-moderate (LMI) income homeowners, has added Kyle Wallace as vice president of public policy and government affairs. In his new role, he will work with state policymakers, utility commissions, utilities, and community and environmental groups to help shape energy policies to provide equitable access to PosiGen’s #SolarForAll commitment.

As the vice president of public policy and government affairs, Wallace will lead PosiGen’s state legislative and regulatory work in current and emerging markets. A top priority will be to engage with industry, policymaker and environmental justice stakeholders to develop equitable policies for rooftop solar, energy storage and energy efficiency.

“Kyle is the right person to lead the company’s efforts to establish PosiGen as the national trusted voice for policymakers on how to bring solar to underserved communities,” says Steven Burt, PosiGen’s chief compliance and policy officer.  “His experience and commitment to clean energy will allow him to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and state policies to expand PosiGen’s reach.”

Wallace previously served as the director of public policy for the northeast at Sunrun. He also served on the board of the New York Solar Energy Industries Association. Wallace started in energy through Utah State University’s Energy Policy Initiative as a contributor. He then joined Vivint Solar in 2015 and held multiple roles involving public policy, market expansion and analytics.

“PosiGen’s unique commitment to serving the households who need solar and energy efficiency the most was incredibly powerful to me,” Wallace comments. “Over the last few years energy equity has been a major source of discussion, but too often those words were not actually leading to meaningful policy action. I’m excited to be in this role where I can be a champion for underserved communities to ensure they too benefit from a clean energy future.”

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The 20MW KCE NY 1 project, commissioned in 2019, was New York’s first grid-scale BESS, part of just 115.5MW of total battery storage output cumulatively deployed in the state by the end of 2021. Image: Key Capture Energy.

Energy storage plays an important role in more than just the electricity sector in a plan for the “deep decarbonisation” of New York State approved this week.

The New York Climate Action Council, brought together by the state to help oversee implementation of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act legislation.

The Act, introduced by former Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2019, requires 70% of New York’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030 and zero-emissions across the electricity system by 2040.

The council announced on 19 December that its 445-page Scoping Plan had been approved and adopted, after a 19-3 vote of its members that day. It will now be submitted to present Governor Kathy Hochul and State Legislature by 1 January 2023.

The plan goes through New York’s economy sector-by-sector, offering recommendations in each. ‘Energy storage’ is mentioned in the plan 78 times. In the context of the electricity sector, renewable sources like solar PV and an incoming major buildout of offshore wind paired with energy storage is discussed as being key. The technology is then also mentioned extensively as playing an important role in electrification of transport and of buildings.

At the beginning of last year, Governor Hochul had raised the state’s energy storage deployment target, doubling it from 3,000MW by 2030 to 6,000MW.

According to the New York Department of Public Service, as of the end of 2021, 1,230MW of energy storage had been deployed, awarded, or contracted, equivalent to 82% of an interim 2025 target of 1,500MW.

However, data shows the emphasis is very much on “awarded or contracted” rather than “deployed,” with only 115.5MW of battery storage power output cumulatively installed, mostly representing distributed systems and only a couple of grid-scale projects online, mostly in rural Upstate areas.

The deployment of storage will be guided by the New York State Energy Storage Roadmap produced by the state Department of Public Services and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The president and CEO of the latter, Doreen Harris, is co-chair of the Climate Action Council along with NY State Dept of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos.

At this year’s RE+ 2022 national clean energy trade show in September, NYSERDA VP for distributed energy resources (DERs) David Sandbank gave a hint of various incentive programmes and bulk solicitations that may be launched to stimulate investment into energy storage. Sandbank also said that the Energy Storage Roadmap 2.0, the newest iteration since Hochul’s upping of the state target, would likely be ruled on by the regulatory New York Public Service Commission (PSC) by Q2 or Q3 2023.

‘Missed opportunity,’ dissenting New York Climate Action Council member says

The plan was welcomed by the New York League of Conservation voters, which tweeted its support, applauding the Council for its work. The Scoping Plan will put New York on track to be “as ambitious and aggressive as possible while not losing sight of the limits of what is practicable,” the League said.

“From offshore wind, to clean transportation, to clean buildings, today’s vote places New York firmly on the path to a clean energy future. We look forward to working with Governor Hochul, all relevant state agencies, & the Legislature to implement this plan w/ all due haste.”

Meanwhile NY-BEST, the trade group and technology R&D accelerator, congratulated the Council, noting that the plan “features a major role for energy storage across sectors”.

The plan outlines that the cost of inaction on climate and making New York more resilient and lower carbon far exceeds the cost of inaction by US$115 billion, while the net direct costs of the plan’s measures would be small, at up to 0.6% of the size of New York State’s Economy in 2030 and 1.3% by 2050, particularly with the tailwind of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Federal incentives behind it, it claimed.

However, one of the three council members to oppose the plan published a scathing criticism. Gavin Donohoe, president and CEO of the Independent Power Producers of New York trade group, said the plan did not go far enough in addressing concerns around electric system reliability as well as risks to the disruption of heat and transport infrastructure networks that will largely need replacing or upgrading.

Donohoe said the Scoping Plan did not “lay out the most cost-effective and technologically feasible path toward meeting our climate goals,” as it should.

“The State has missed opportunities to address zero emissions technologies needed to keep the lights on. We may achieve our 2030 goals, if absolutely everything goes as anticipated by the Plan. Getting from 2030 to 2040 is going to need magic, since the pathway and timetable for identifying and developing zero emission dispatchable resources, so that they are operating by 2040, is missing,” Donohoe said.

The Scoping Plan can be seen here.

More to follow…

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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The Folsom Control Room at CAISO’s headquarters. Image: CAISO.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has enacted market rule changes to make it easier for energy storage to provide grid ancillary services and help grid reliability.

The Energy Storage Enhancements proposal was adopted by CAISO’s governing entities last week (16 December) and will be implemented by summer 2023, when extreme heat threatens the stability of the grid.

Primarily, the changes include improved accounting of a battery system’s state of charge to better certify the resources are available as needed, and improved tools for exceptional dispatch to ensure resources are compensated, thereby ensuring their energy is available during peak hours.

CAISO’s storage sector manager Gabe Murtaugh told Energy-Storage.news about the upcoming changes in an interview in April, saying at the time that “…no other market has anything like this in place today and the storage community is really excited to see this change implemented.”

The adopted proposal, which you can read in full here, will make it easier for battery storage systems to provide grid ancillary services, specifically ‘regulation up’ and ‘regulation down’ (the other two CAISO procures are spinning reserve and non-spinning reserve). It will do this by making sure that battery systems’ energy is accurately priced and that the systems are fully charged when needed by the grid.

First, the proposal brings in an enhancement to the equation that governs state of charge to better aligned predicted state of charge with actual state of charge when battery systems are providing regulation up and regulation down.

The second change requires that scheduling co-ordinaters for energy storage resources submit economic energy bids to charge when awarded ‘upward’ ancillary services or economic bids to discharge when providing regulation down.

This will ensure that, should a storage resource deviate from its anticipated state of charge, it will still have the ability to charge or discharge if it is in danger of not meeting requirements for providing ancillary services.

According to the proposal, the changes will only apply to the real-time market, not the day-ahead one after requests from stakeholders. It also includes provisions to make it easier for co-located energy storage resources to charge from the grid, something many contracts do not allow.

Battery storage has grown to become an increasingly important component of the CAISO grid and played a substantial role in averting energy crises amidst extreme heatwaves, notably in September this year and July last year.

As shown below, its operational capacity over 2022 so far has nearly doubled to just under 5GW as of the end of November. With most systems now four-hour duration, that equates to nearly 20GWh online today.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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From left: Piotr Szyszka, CEO of PKE Pomorze; Mateusz Kloc, CEO of Heyka Capital Markets Group; Piotr Czembor, CEO of Hynfra Energy Storage; Michał Maćkowiak, Board Advisor of Hynfra Energy Storage. Image: Hynfra Energy Storage.

Battery storage projects from Hynfra Energy Storage and OX2 totalling 130MWh have won contracts in energy auctions in Poland this week.

A capacity market auction for 2027 from transmission system operator Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne (PSE) closed at PLN 406.35/kW/year (US$93) and handed out long-term contracts to energy resources.

System integrator Hynfra Energy Storage (HES), along with investor Heyka Capital Markets Group developer PKE Pomorze, won a 17-year contract for a 7.5MW/30MWh energy storage system.

The four-hour duration project in the city of Wrocław will support the electricity network, provide renewable load shifting and integrate into an ultrafast EV charging station.

“This year’s auction is the first one in which a capacity market contract was signed for energy storage systems. This is extremely important, as energy storage systems perfectly support the power system and have the ability to provide power to the grid faster than any other source,” said Piotr Czembor, CEO of HES.

The companies plan to participate in future capacity markets with larger portfolios of energy storage facilities. Just last week, HES said it plans to deploy 500MW of battery storage in Poland.

A total of 486MW of solar PV was awarded contracts in energy auctions held this week in the country, as reported by sister site PV Tech.

HES’ contract win coincides with a comparatively larger, 50MW/100MWh energy storage project also winning a contract through an auction in Poland this week, although winning company OX2 was much less specific on exactly which auction that was. Energy-Storage.news has asked the firm to clarify and will update this article in due course.

The Sweden-headquartered firm said on 21 December that it had won auctions for a solar farm of 100MW alongside the energy storage project, and that it would start construction in 2023.

“This is very good news and we look forward to realising another solar farm and our first energy storage project in Poland. It is a very dynamic market and we will continue to invest and expand our portfolio of projects there”, said Paul Stormoen, CEO of OX2.

The company’s total project portfolio in Poland is about 2.5GW. Energy-Storage.news earlier this month reported on two battery storage projects it is developing in Sweden, totalling 60MW.

The landmark auction awards coincide with a new report produced by the Polish Electricity Association (PKEE) and EY, ‘Polish Energy Transition Path’ (link). The country is targeting 32% renewable energy by 2030 and bringing online more energy storage is one of several ways to balance energy demand and supply and maintain grid stability as more renewable resources come online.

Giving contracts to energy storage in its capacity market was one of the ways to support the sector recommended in the report, so this week’s announcements from HES and OX2 were timely.

Energy storage has not yet played a major role in the energy sector in Poland due to high costs compared to conventional units, it added, but profitability of projects should grow in line with volatility of electricity prices.

Alongside HES’ 500MW plans, state-owned company PGE Group plans to have 800MW of energy storage by 2030, including a 200MW/820MWh it recently announced.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the eighth annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 22-23 February 2023. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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Lora Anguay

To help deliver on its 2030 Zero Carbon Plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from its power supply, Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) and Swell Energy have signed an agreement for Swell to act as the aggregator for the new My Energy Optimizer Partner+ program – a residential customer-driven virtual power plant initiative.

The initial effort will bring 20 MWh and 10 MW of renewable capacity to SMUD by recruiting, installing and aggregating capacity from customers’ battery storage systems located in the utility’s service area. The program has the opportunity to scale to 54 MWh and 27 MW over the term of the partnership. Contract capability is based on a 2-hour deliverable capacity, inclusive of exports with day-ahead notification for up to 240 events per year.

The virtual power plant program is one of the advanced initiatives underway in California to aggregate residential solar and battery storage systems, in a centralized manner, to reduce carbon emissions and make the electric grid more renewable, resilient and reliable. While individual solar and battery storage systems help customers manage their own energy needs, the My Energy Optimizer Partner+ program enables customers to operate their individual systems alongside many others to aggregate and dispatch renewable energy sources to benefit their communities. Participating My Energy Optimizer Partner+ customers will receive both upfront and ongoing compensation, or GridRevenue, based on the capacity of their solar and energy storage systems.

“As more SMUD customers add solar panel systems paired with battery storage solutions, they’ll be better able to manage their own energy needs while making meaningful contributions toward reducing their community’s carbon footprint,” says Lora Anguay, chief zero carbon officer of SMUD. “We are excited to partner with Swell to make this program a reality in 2023 and continue to deliver on our decarbonization plan, which promises environmental protection, excellence in grid resiliency and reliability, affordable rates, and local economic and workforce growth opportunities that benefit the entire region.”

Currently, there are approximately 600 customer-sited energy storage systems in SMUD’s service area, with an additional 400 in the interconnection process and thousands more projected over the next several years. The success of programs like the My Energy Optimizer Partner+ is based not only on total enrollment but also on the additional job opportunities created for local installers and on the socially equitable impact of the program. Accordingly, SMUD has committed to funding batteries for low-income customers in the service area through local non-profits such as Grid Alternatives.

“We’re honored to work with SMUD towards the achievement of their Carbon Zero 2030 plan through the deployment of a multifaceted virtual power plant across SMUD territory and the overall CAISO grid,” comments Suleman Khan, CEO of Swell Energy. “Our collaborative virtual power plant will provide real-time energy management and synchronized battery dispatch across SMUD’s customer base, enabling large-scale renewable deployment and minimizing the need for conventional power plants in the region. We believe this model is a beacon for how municipal utilities and other publicly owned utilities can achieve scale and value with distributed energy resources.”

My Energy Optimizer Partner+ will launch enrollments in Q1 of 2023, with operations planned to start in April 2023. Enrollment will be open to both new and existing solar and storage customers. Customers on SMUD’s Solar and Storage Rate can optimize onsite energy usage by pairing solar with energy storage.

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The 200MW/400MWh BESS project in Ningxia, China. Image: Hithium Energy Storage.

A 200MW/400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) has gone live in Ningxia, China, equipped with Hithium lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells.

The manufacturer, established only three years ago in 2019 but already ramping up to a target of more than 135GWh of annual battery cell production capacity by 2025 for total investment value of about US$4.71 billion, announced the project’s commissioning yesterday.

The project was connected to the grid earlier this month, through a system integrator called ROBESTEC, about which little information appears publicly available. However, it is understood that although Hithium makes and provides complete BESS solutions as well as cells, in this case it was the cell supplier.

The facility stores energy at times of abundant generation from solar PV and wind, putting it into the grid during times of peak demand. It will also help regulate grid frequency.

At this year’s RE+ 2022 solar PV and energy storage trade show in California, Hithium launched its new 300Ah prismatic cell and a 46mm cylindrical cell, touting the prismatic cell’s capability to go through 12,000 cycles in its lifetime and to operate without capacity fade for the first three years of use. Those will be on the US market by Q1 2023.

Xiamen Hithium Energy Storage Technology, to give the company its full name, is one of a growing number of Chinese battery manufacturers making LFP cells and with products dedicated to the stationary BESS market.

In an interview earlier this year, featured in Vol.32 of our quarterly journal PV Tech Power, industry analyst Cormac O’Laire said that annual production capacity of BESS-specific cell factories in the country will reach more than 200GWh by 2025.

That, O’Laire said, should be enough to cater for global demand from the sector combined with European – and latterly US – companies that are scrambling to build up manufacturing of their own, but which would be nowhere near capable of meeting that demand independently of China.

Furthermore, O’Laire, senior manager for market intelligence with Clean Energy Associates (CEA), said that with more than 5 million tonnes of LFP cathode active material (CAM) capacity expansions announced in China, equivalent to about 2TWh, there is a strong possibility LFP could be a surplus market as early as 2024.

While recent soaring prices of materials including lithium carbonate have put upward pressure on battery costs, BloombergNEF’s recently published annual survey of battery pack prices found LFP packs are still on average 20% cheaper than nickel manganese cobalt (NMC), even with a higher proportion of lithium carbonate being used in LFP production.

There are also reportedly concerns in China about NMC for stationary applications, with LFP perceived to be the safer choice.  

According to official Ministry of Industry and Information Technology statistics, China’s production output of lithium-ion batteries for energy storage reached 32GWh in 2021, a 146% increase from 2020.

As well as being the world’s manufacturing centre for batteries, China is also the country most involved in the entire lithium battery value chain, as highlighted and analysed recently by BloombergNEF.

Downstream, the country is targeting 30GW of non-hydroelectric energy storage deployment by 2025, and 120GW of new pumped hydro by 2030.

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