Axpo has already deployed a small battery storage project on home turf, this 2MW/2.17MWh unit at the Jona-Rapperswil power station. Image: Axpo Holding.

Switzerland’s largest energy firm Axpo has entered the battery storage market in Sweden, buying a project from developers RES and SCR set to come online in 2024.

Axpo has acquired the 20MW/20MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Landsrkona from global renewable energy developer RES and local outfit Scandinavian Capacity Reserve (SCR).

The project will come online in 2024 and will be connected to local utility and distribution system operator (DSO) Landskrona Energi. RES will continue to support Axpo with construction management, asset management and operation and maintenance after the sale is finalised.

Landskrona Energi is one of Sweden’s approximately 170 DSOs.

“We look forward to realising this project in Sweden with RES and working with Landskrona Energi. Axpo has set itself the goal of developing a significant volume of storage capacity in Europe by 2030, and this project is an important step on our way,” said Frank Amend, head of Batteries & Hybrid Systems at Axpo Group.

“We are pleased about the early participation in this project, especially by involving an important player like Axpo. Batteries will play an important role in Sweden’s full-scale electrification, and at a local level here in Landskrona, battery storage will help support and strengthen our electricity grid,” added Johan Holmstedt, CEO of Landskrona Energi.

The BESS market in Sweden has seen an uptick in interest in the last few years as the ability of the country’s hydroelectric fleet to provide the required balancing services has started to be stretched in light of increasing renewables and electrification.

The total operational BESS capacity by MW could double or even quadruple in 2023, according to developer Ingrid Capacity chief strategy officer (CSO) Nicklas Backer in an interview conducted at the Energy Storage Summit in London last month.

Read more of our coverage from the Energy Storage Summit 2023. For more information and to register for next year’s 9th edition of the Summit, taking place 21, 22 February 2024 in London, visit the official website.

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A solar PV plant Qair Energy deployed in Morocco. Image: Qair Energy.

France-based independent power producer (IPP) Qair Energy will deploy 60MWac of solar-plus-storage projects on the island nation of Mauritius after it won a state tender.

The company announced the finalisation of four separate power purchase agreements (PPAs) for the projects’ energy with the Mauritius’ Central Electricity Board (CEB) earlier this month.

Qair will provide the country’s main utility with power and energy from four Solar PV and Battery Storage (BESS) Hybrid Facilities in Balaclava, Petite Riviere and Trou d’Eau Douce (two projects). The projects total 60MWac of solar PV capacity and an unspecified amount of attached battery energy storage.

A spokesperson for Qair told Energy-Storage.news that it could only reveal more details about the storage portion once the final design was set, but said it would primarily be load shifting solar and providing grid ancillary services. They added it would be deployed using grid forming inverters connected to lithium-ion batteries.

Mauritius, which lies some 1,000km east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is aiming for a 60% renewable electricity generation mix by 2030, which is today dominated by oil and coal. The CEB issued request for proposals (RFPs) for the purchase of electricity from solar-plus-storage facilities totalling 90-110MW of power in March last year, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time.

Qair’s awarded projects equate to around 7% of the country’s current installed power capacity of 876MW, a figure from the CEB’s website.

Qair is an IPP that develops and operators renewable energy, green hydrogen production and energy storage projects, with its main office in Paris and smaller ones across the French-speaking world. It has 1GW of capacity in operation or under construction and a total pipeline of 30GW across 20 countries in Latin America and EMEA.

It has 35MW of operational capacity spread across one wind and two solar plants in Mauritius already and is looking to deploy some 500MW of solar PV in Italy, as reported by Energy-Storage.news’ sister site PV Tech.

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Wandoan South BESS, a 100MW/150MWh project in Queensland which went online last year. Image: Vena Energy.

The government of Queensland has said its strategy of keeping its energy sector in public ownership will be key to an orderly transition away from fossil fuels.

The claim was made in a statement from the Australian state’s energy minister, Mick de Brenni, as a plan to develop a new Clean Energy Hub including a 250MW battery energy storage system (BESS) was announced last week.  

Regular readers of Energy-Storage.news and our sister site PV Tech will likely be aware that the Queensland government’s recently implemented Energy and Jobs Plan not only puts in place a target for 70% renewable energy by 2032, but also seeks to develop out the state’s clean energy value chain, from raw materials to manufacturing of equipment like solar PV modules and batteries.

“The Queensland Energy and Jobs Plan is all about a future of cheaper, cleaner and secure energy for Queenslanders, with 70% of it renewable by 2032. While southern states like NSW are seeing a disorderly transition, where privatisation has ripped the heart out of their energy grid, Queenslanders can be assured that their energy system will be safe, stable, and secure for the future,” de Brenni, whose full job title is Minister for Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen and Minister for Public Works and Procurement.

“Because we’ve kept the system in public ownership, we can control the transition by not shutting the gate on our power stations, their workers, or communities who will play a leading role in the energy transformation.”

The Clean Energy Hub would be built at the site of Swanbank power station, a 385MW combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant owned and operated by state-owned energy group CleanCo near the Queensland city of Ipswich. Going further back, the site was formerly an important part of the legacy coal-based economy of the region, including mining and generation.

The site already has an existing 1.2GW grid connection point, in what was described in a ministerial statement as a strong part of the Queensland network.

The Clean Energy Hub would include solar PV generation, battery storage and green hydrogen, and CleanCo has launched an Expression of Interest (EOI) for the 250MW BESS and seeking community input on the project.

In addition to the battery project, CleanCo is also seeking expressions of interest for “alternative energy options including potential hydrogen production and hydrogen use, while also exploring alternative energy storage options,” according to CEO Tom Metcalfe.

Metcalfe said that community engagement aspect would include an “authentic co-design process,” and that CleanCo will be “asking the community to reimagine the future of the Swanbank Clean Energy Hub to ensure we balance social, commercial, environmental and economic outcomes for the region”.

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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The site for the project in South Australia, which is expected to come online at the end of next year. Image: Zen Energy / Zen.

Utility Zen Energy has acquired a large-scale 2.5 hour battery storage project from developer and IPP RES in Australia, with a forecasted commercial operation date (COD) of end-2024.

Zen has acquired the 111MW/270MWh Templers Battery Project from RES, located north of Adelaide in South Australia, the utility’s first battery storage project.

Templers has received approval to connect to the grid and is expected to start construction in the second quarter of 2023, shortly after financing arrangements have been finalised. Construction is expected to take around 15 months.

That means the project should be energised, commercially operating and providing services to the National Energy Grid by the end of 2024. Zen will use the battery energy storage system (BESS) to support the delivery of energy to its customers in the state, and will also provide grid stability services to grid operator AEMO.

Anthony Garnaut, CEO of ZEN Energy, commented: “Storage plays a critical role in allowing more renewable energy into the grid. When it is commissioned in late 2024, the Templers battery will have the most storage capacity of the batteries in South Australia, and it will quickly followed by bigger batteries supported by ZEN and others.”

“At the rate we’re going, South Australia will be 100% well before 2030, enabling the revitalisation of core industries and for Australia to evolve into a renewable energy Superpower.”

Matt Rebbeck, CEO of RES in Australia, added: “RES is excited to have provided development services to ZEN on the final development items and continuing discussions to provide support with construction and asset management arrangements”.

Although Gaurnaut claimed the BESS project will be the largest in the state when it goes online, other larger projects are also in the works.

Developer Maoneng secured development approval in late 2021 for a 450MWh project, Gould Creek BESS, which it says on its website will be completed this year. France-based Neoen is working on a hybrid renewable project, which could potentially include 900MW of battery storage.

As previously written by Energy-Storage.news, grid operator AEMO forecasts that Australia will need 46GW/640GWh of energy storage by 2050 and recently said there was an ‘urgent need’ for a ramp-up in investment in long-duration energy storage (LDES).

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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Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Works Building and Safety Division has approved GAF Energy‘s Timberline Solar, a nailable solar shingle, for installation in the county.

The review confirmed that Timberline Solar meets or exceeds the county’s 2023 codes for electrical, residential, building, green building and existing building, as well as 2022 building energy efficiency standards. 

Timberline Solar, which launched in 2022, is a solar roof covering certified to UL 7103 as a building-integrated photovoltaic roof covering. Timberline Solar also meets a Class A fire rating under UL 790 and ASTM E108. GAF Energy, a Standard Industries company and a provider of solar roofing in North America, produces Timberline Solar at the company’s R&D and manufacturing facility.

“In designing Timberline Solar, we put safety and durability first,” says Martin DeBono, president of GAF Energy. “In the last year, Timberline Solar has been approved for tough standards in wind, snow and fire.”

The Timberline Solar Energy Shingle has a depth of less than a quarter inch and integrates with traditional shingles. Timberline Solar meets a host of third-party safety standards covering both roofing and solar, and has received more than 30 design and innovation awards and honors.

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The Alamo 2 solar farm

OCI Solar Power, a utility-scale solar developer, recently served as the EPC while upgrading its Alamo 2 solar farm.

The 4.4 MW AC project sits on 45 acres of land and began operating in March 2014. After eight years of maintaining the solar farm, responding to a steady number of mechanical failures, and witnessing new and emerging tracker technology in action, OCI Solar Power undertook a second upgrade in which it also performed the EPC scope of work.

“We found ourselves repairing trackers and then fixing them again days later because of mechanical issues. It was very similar to what our Alamo 1 solar farm located south of San Antonio was experiencing a few years ago,” says Jason Thompson, construction manager for OCI Solar Power. “Now both solar farms have state-of-the-art trackers from Array Technologies Inc. and increased production.”

OCI Solar Power finished a renovation to its 39.2 MW AC Alamo 1 solar facility in 2019 and completed its six-month upgrade at Alamo 2 in Q4 2022. Similar to the previous upgrade project at Alamo 1, the upgrade at Alamo 2 was done in sections. This allowed the solar farm to stay partially energized so that it could continue providing power to CPS Energy, a public power, natural gas and electric company.

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Franklin Whole Home (FranklinWH) battery storage units. The startup is among Sunnova’s battery partners. Image: FranklinWH via Twitter.

This edition of news in brief from around the world in energy storage focuses on virtual power plant action in the US.

Sunnova leverages virtual power plant to offer ‘lowest rate’ energy in ERCOT

Residential solar PV provider Sunnova has launched an “Adaptive Retail” energy plan in the Texas ERCOT market through a new partnership.

Pairing up with distributed energy resources (DERs) software platform company David Energy, the new plan promises that customers will get the lowest retail energy rates available.

It will do this by aggregating the capacity of customers’ home solar and battery storage systems into a virtual power plant (VPP), dispatching the stored energy into wholesale markets as well as accessing demand response opportunities and ERCOT’s ancillary services markets for grid balancing.

That means the fleet of home DERs can participate flexibly into those markets, adapting to the changing conditions of the network as required.

“By combining a retail energy plan with software that connects to a broad range of devices many customers already have, David Energy’s platform can turn Texans’ homes into power plants. The potential to bring hundreds of megawatts of much needed flexible capacity to ERCOT via these VPPs in the near future is very real,” David Energy CEO and co-founder James McGinniss said.

Sunverge, Evergy try out VPP in Missouri

VPP and DERs aggregation specialist Sunverge is taking part in a pilot with utility Evergy to explore the benefits of home storage systems in Missouri, US.

The pilot programme will look at both the utility and customer perspectives, exploring “new and innovative ways to manage energy effectively and efficiently,” according to Evergy manager of operations technology Chad Carsten Sr.

Evergy is an investor-owned utility (IOU) serving 1.7 million customers in Missouri and Kentucky. Its pilot with Sunverge will see 50 homes enrolled and is due to go live in the first half of this year.

Sunverge’s DERs control, dispatch and aggregation platform will be used to provide peak demand reduction, load levelling, whole home backup, distribution feeder management, ancillary services like frequency regulation and voltage support, and other services like renewable energy smoothing to the grid.

For customers, it could enable them to reduce their energy bills, add backup to their home loads and to generate energy for themselves using solar PV.

“The combination of real-time dynamic load flexibility and aggregated grid services is a powerful tool for utilities like Evergy that are planning for the grid of the future and integrating the growth of DERs. The result will be a more resilient, more flexible, and cleaner electric grid,” Sunverge CEO Martin Milani said.

Sunverge is considered something of a home energy storage VPP pioneer, delivering the first VPP to bid into the PJM wholesale market through a pilot in Maryland and partnering with EV charging providers. CEO Milani outlined many of the benefits and opportunities for VPPs, as well as the challenges and barriers to market entry, in a wide-ranging two-part interview with this site in 2020.

Winter Storm Elliott is evidence VPPs have a vital role to play, says Voltus

The capabilities of VPPs were in evidence during the recent Winter Storm Elliott, according to another distributed energy resource platform and virtual power plant provider.

Voltus, which has VPP programmes aggregating fleets of commercial and industrial (C&I) DERs, rather than residential, said that 11.6GWh of load relief to the grid in the US and Canada was delivered from its portfolios.

This included responding to the Emergency Load Response Program (ELRP) in the PJM Interconnection market that spans portions or all of 11 different Eastern US states. It was the first time ELRP has been called on since 2014.

Roughly 57GW of generation shortfall was registered against demand as it peaked on the morning of 24 December, as conventional thermal power plants struggled to cope with the harsh weather conditions.

Voltus urged the 12 US states that have effectively “banned” VPPs, as the company described it, to rethink their position, and noted that while the resources in the VPP portfolios come from C&I customers, ultimately all grid users, including households, benefit from their use.

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 company said strong market demand for high-quality clean energy generation led to the increase in funding. Image: Origis Energy.

Renewable energy platform Origis Energy has obtained a US$750 million credit facility for its solar and energy storage development project pipeline in the US. 

The company said this financing round followed a US$375 million credit facility announced in May 2022, claiming it was the largest credit facility announced this year for a utility-scale solar and storage development project pipeline.

First Citizens Bank’s division CIT was the lead arranger, with other lenders including Santander, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rabobank and Nomura, to name a few. 

“The offering upsized our 2022 facility by double and was also oversubscribed. The recent passing of the Inflation Reduction Act invoking incentive stability, market demand for high-quality clean energy generation and the strong Origis track record drove high interest in this financing round,” said Jamie Edwards, managing director of finance and accounting at Origis Energy.

Meanwhile, Origis Energy signed a supply agreement for more than 700MW of bifacial PERC PV modules from manufacturer Boviet Solar Technology last year.

Origis Energy ordered Boviet Solar’s Vega Series 550W PERC monocrystalline bifacial PV modules for its US utility-scale solar projects, with delivery expected in 2023. It was the second agreement that Origis made last year after it signed a 400MW supply agreement with Maxeon Solar, again for utility-scale projects and with delivery starting in June 2023.

This story first appeared on PV Tech.

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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Chad Carsten

Evergy, an investor-owned utility serving customers in Kansas and Missouri, will be using Sunverge’s distributed energy resource (DER) control, orchestration and aggregation platform in its Missouri service territory.

A new pilot project centered around 50 residential customers is expected to be operational in the first half of 2023. It will includes intelligent, real-time dynamic control of energy storage combined with holistic load management. The energy storage assets will be aggregated as a multi-service and multi-asset virtual power plant system, creating value on both sides of the meter, according to Evergy.

Evergy will explore benefits to its customers including backup power, bill reduction, and self-generation. Value to the grid includes peak demand reduction and load leveling, whole home backup, distribution feeder demand management, frequency regulation and response, voltage support, and renewable energy smoothing.

“Evergy is committed to exploring new and innovative ways to manage energy effectively and efficiently,” says Chad Carsten, senior manager of operations technology. “The integration of intelligent real-time control and comprehensive load management will not only bring value to both the customers and Evergy, but it will also demonstrate the company’s dedication to advancing a responsible energy transition.”

“Utilities across the country are exploring ways to operationalize DERs into core distribution operations and unlock the value of distributed resources,” adds Martin Milani, CEO of Sunverge. “The combination of real-time dynamic load flexibility and aggregated grid services is a powerful tool for utilities like Evergy that are planning for the grid of the future and integrating the growth of DERs.”

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Brian Boulanger

Silfab Solar Inc., a solar photovoltaic module manufacturer, has closed a second investment round led by ARC Financial Corp. to help fund Silfab’s next expansion of manufacturing to include domestic PV cell and module production at a third facility to open in the United States.

The $125 million investment from ARC’s Energy Fund 9 includes co-investments by Manulife Financial Corp., Ontario Power Generation Inc. Pension Plan, CF Private Equity and BDC Capital’s Cleantech Practice.

“Silfab is ideally situated to meet North America’s growing appetite for domestically manufactured cutting-edge solar products,” says Brian Boulanger, CEO of ARC. “ARC remains confident that Silfab will be a driver in cleantech manufacturing and U.S.-engineered product innovation. Silfab continues to implement an impressive growth plan built around its unwavering commitment to manufacture high-quality products and its decades of innovation and experience.”

Silfab’s third facility is anticipated to be fully operational in 2024 with an initial annual capability of 1 GW of cell production and an additional 1.2 GW of PV solar module assembly. The new facility is expected to generate more than 800 new jobs.

Other details of the new facility, including location, will be announced at a future date.

“Domestic production of solar cells represents a strategic effort to further manage our supply chain and to apply our technical prowess from the ground up for a comprehensive manufacturing process,” says Paolo Maccario, Silfab’s CEO. “Silfab has grown more than 40 percent since ARC’s initial support. We are thankful for our collaborative relationship with ARC and with the Biden administration and its Inflation Reduction Act, both enabling us to accelerate our U.S. manufacturing strategy.”

ARC’s first investment, announced in September 2021, enabled Silfab to make further enhancements to production lines at existing Washington facilities in order to deploy next-generation PV modules to North American consumer, business and institutional markets.

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