Kevin Hostettler

AVANGRID Inc. has selected DuraTrack solar trackers from Array Technologies to construct its 321 MW True North solar farm in Falls County, Texas, one of the company’s biggest solar facilities under development in the U.S.

Array Technologies is a long-standing supplier of AVANGRID and the Iberdrola Group, and this purchase is an additional step in a partnership that is expected to continue to grow. This agreement was vital to the final investment decision for the construction of the True North project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

“Our durable and low maintenance trackers will help provide clean renewable energy for the Texas grid, ensuring the local community has reliable power for years to come,” says Kevin Hostettler, CEO of Array Technologies.

With the purchase of solar trackers from Array Technologies and with the development of projects like the True North solar farm, AVANGRID has further expanded the presence of clean energy in Texas, where it already generates more than 1,250 MW through six wind farms and has a 1,300 MW pipeline of projects.

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The BESS project. Image: Hitachi Energy.

Hitachi Energy has installed a 6.25MW/7.5MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in the Faroe Islands for utility SEV, with substantial benefits to a connected wind farm.

The energy solutions arm of the large Japanese conglomerate announced the completion of the 1.2-hour project, the largest in the North Atlantic archipelago, last week (1 February).

SEV contracted Hitachi Energy to provide the BESS project back in 2021, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time. The firm provided its e-meshTM PowerStoreTM BESS enclosure for the project.

The project is mainly to provide what Hitachi described as ‘backup power’ to the 6.3MW Porkeri Wind Farm on the archipelago’s southernmost island, Suðuroy, with SEV noting several benefits.

Frequency variations have ‘significantly improved’, the utility said, and the BESS increased the utilisation of the wind farm from 38% to 77% within the first three months of operation.

SEV also noted that since the BESS went online, the utility has had several days with 100% renewable energy on the island of Suðuroy, and that it has been able to take its thermal plant there temporarily offline.

The utility has plans to integrate more BESS projects in the island archipelago, which is an overseas territory of Denmark comprising 18 major islands. It lies roughly equidistance between the UK, Iceland Norway. SEV is targeting 100% sustainable energy by 2030.

“Wind energy will play a really important role and will provide most of the energy in the upcoming years and to balance the system based predominantly on wind energy is quite hard,” an SEV source said in a corporate video from Hitachi Energy.

“We need these huge energy storage systems to balance the system over weeks,” they added.

Hitachi Energy was formed through the acquisition of ABB’s power grids business by Hitachi. It announced last week its JV entity Linxon was targeting 1GW of BESS deployments in Texas in partnership with local developer Available Power. Projects it has recently completed solo include new turbine technology at a pumped hydro plant in Austria and a battery storage system in Switzerland.

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The panel discussion at the Energy Storage Summit EU, hosted in London by our publisher Solar Media. Moderated by National Fire Chiefs Council alternative fuels and energy systems lead officer Matthew Deadman (right). Image: Gareth Davies / Solar Media

The battery storage industry can learn lessons on how to approach fire safety from more established sectors as it works to develop standards.

That was the view of Carlos Nieto, global energy storage division manager at engineering company ABB, speaking at the Energy Storage Summit EU in February.

Speaking on a panel on how technology plays its part in ensuring fire safety for battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, Nieto and fellow panellists were asked by moderator Matthew Deadman, energy systems lead officer at the UK’s National Fire Chiefs Council, how safety in the industry is evolving and what sort of lessons it needs to learn.

“We have to learn from other industries… when there is an airplane crash, there is a commission, there is a study, and the whole industry improves,” Nieto said.

“We need to have more information sharing, more commitment to how we can improve safety.”

Kai-Philip Kairies, CEO of battery analytics company ACCURE Battery Intelligence, said that the BESS industry is similar to where solar PV was in its own infancy, around a decade or even 20 years ago. The technology became bankable as costs fell and there was “all of a sudden” more demand than supply.

That means customers are having to diversify their supply chains to perhaps include Tier 2 and Tier 3 battery suppliers that they may not previously have considered using, which presents its own challenges.

Another comparable factor is that almost all, if not all, commercial or utility-scale PV systems today are managed using digital assets, which offer visibility and a high level of control and monitoring remotely.

“I think we’re seeing this transition in batteries right now,” Kairies said, with cloud-based battery analytics offered by ACCURE and various other providers on the market. Using those layers of digital protection is a “no-brainer,” the CEO said, but the industry is still young.

Stefan Rohr, CEO of another battery analytics company, TWAICE, also appeared on the panel and agreed with his rival CEO’s assessment. With any new technology comes risks, particularly where energy is involved, Rohr said.

That means physical layers of protection as well as digital ones, and as ABB’s Nieto alluded to, a set of processes to go through to learn lessons from any failures or incidents. Stefan Rohr noted however that the highest incidence of safety issues occurs during the first year of a system’s operation, and then much later after several years of use, which again, a digital analytics-led approach can help to accurately predict.

Fire chief Deadman said that in some cases, it isn’t easy to get transparent information on projects and safety learnings in a timely fashion due to commercial sensitivities. He later added that an “integrated approach is where we need to be,” from prevention of safety incidents all the way to worst-case scenarios and their aftermath.

From a UK perspective, the biggest challenge on safety is that there are no real applicable standards, John O’Toole, director of UK asset management at developer Amp Energy, said.

Investors are having to go international to see what standards are applied abroad and try to apply them in the UK. That’s a “pretty good idea” from an engineering standpoint, O’Toole said, but the rapidly-growing market will benefit from developing its own standards.

The good news being, that aspect is being worked on. Having formerly worked at UK developer-investor Gresham House Energy Storage Fund, O’Toole said that sites being developed today are more sophisticated than the earliest he worked on, between five and seven years ago.

Nonetheless, he said, there are a lot of different voices and opinions when it comes to fire safety for BESS, and “no two sites are the same”.  

Energy-Storage.news will be hosting a webinar this week with IHI Terrasun, ‘What experts think you should know about UL9540 codes and standards for battery storage,’ taking place 9 March. Learn more and register to attend free, here.

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A render of the firm’s BESS solution. Image: Volvo Penta.

The power solutions arm of manufacturing firm Volvo Group has expanded into the battery energy storage system (BESS) market, launching a sub-system product initially in the US and Europe.

The company said the launch of a BESS solution is a strategic move to supplement its power generation business and tap into a new segment. A spokesperson for Volvo Group told Energy-Storage.news that the product is a sub-system rather than a full containerised solution.

“We do not supply the full containerised solution and instead, a subsystem (spanning battery system, battery management, monitoring, thermal management, power distribution box and cabling and technical integration expertise) that is catered to the business, application and operational needs of our OEM customer(s),” they said.

A full solution would include a power conversion system, a SCADA platform (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) and energy management system (EMS) as well as container design. The spokesperson confirmed that by OEMs it means BESS system integrators and power-generation OEMs – i.e. those providing full containerised solutions.

The company did not use the term ‘second life’ in its announcement but indicated to Energy-Storage.news that the sub-system will use the same battery technology that Volvo uses in its heavy-duty applications segments.

“The battery system is derived from the Volvo Group’s continuously evolving battery platform that serves heavy-duty applications the likes of trucks or construction equipment,” they said. The company is also investing in battery cell and pack manufacturing.

Note that Volvo Group is a separate entity from consumer vehicle company Volvo Cars, which was sold off by the firm in the 1990s and eventually re-listed on the Stockholm Nasdaq in 2021 by majority owner Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.

Hannes Norrgren, President of Volvo Penta Industrial commented on the announcement: “Battery energy storage is increasingly in demand for a variety of applications including utilities, factories, decentralised microgrids and mobile charging stations. As our solution is application agnostic, we see huge potential for its adoption.”

He added: “We’re starting by introducing the solution to customers in North America and Europe, followed by other markets, and are eager to begin collaborating with OEMs to kickstart new projects in BESS.”

The launch of a BESS product follows on from Volvo Group subsidiaries striking various partnerships in the second life energy storage sector. In 2020, Volvo Buses tied up with Swedish second life startup BatteryLoop while last year Volvo Energy invested in UK and continental Europe second life energy storage firm Connected Energy, covered by Energy-Storage.news at the time.

The subsidiary of another big vehicle OEM, Mercedes-Benz Energy, uses its partnerships with second life firms to complete the qualification process for its battery modules to have them adopted into stationary BESS applications in specific regions. Volvo Group’s existing partnerships could be of a similar nature.

According to Mercedes-Benz Energy CEO Gordon Gassmann in an interview Energy-Storage.news will publish this week, the second life energy storage market is about to phase of consolidation after a period of proliferating startups across the globe. Volvo Group’s decision to launch its own BESS solution could be part of that trend.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the5th 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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Detail of an Aypa Power BESS project in Virginia, US. Image: Aypa Power.

Developer Aypa Power has bought two “late-stage development” battery storage projects in Indiana, US, from Blue Steel Power.

Aypa Power develops utility-scale energy storage and hybrid renewables-plus-storage projects to own and operate. It said earlier this week (1 March) that it has acquired the Williams Power 150MW battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Indiana’s Jefferson County, and Fletcher Power, a 118MW project in Decatur County. Energy capacity figures in megawatt-hours (MWh) were not provided in an announcement.

Both will be connected to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) grid and deliver grid-balancing services as well as capacity. Transmission organisation MISO opened its market resource mix up to electricity storage in September last year.

The company is in the portfolio of private equity firm Blackstone. The developer recently secured a US$320 million credit facility to advance a claimed 15GW+ pipeline of projects in North America, as reported by Energy-Storage.news in January.

Meanwhile vendor Blue Steel Power is a joint venture (JV) between two other developers, Open Road Renewables, and Eolian. Eolian incidentally made headlines in 2022 for being the top recipient of venture capital (VC) funding in the energy storage sector during the calendar year with US$925 million raised, as tracked by research firm Mercom.

More recently Eolian claimed to have the first project in the US to avail of the newly-introduced investment tax credit (ITC) for standalone energy storage with a tax equity investment in two large-scale BESS projects in Texas’ ERCOT market.

Aypa will take over development of the Indiana projects from Blue Steel. Eolian CEO Aaron Zubaty said Open Road and Eolian originated the projects in 2018 anticipating, “the need to add flexible, dispatchable resources to MISO”. Conditional use permits for the sites were granted in late 2022, Zubaty said.

“With anticipated shortfalls in capacity resources in MISO, developing and operating the Williams and Fletcher projects will be critical to efficiently improving grid resiliency,” Aypa Power CEO Moe Hajabed said.

Aypa Power was previously known as NRStor C&I and spun out from Canadian developer NRSTor before being sold to Blackstone in 2018 and rebranded, with a new head office in Texas and a pivot in focus from the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment to utility-scale.

The company recently contracted for the supply of 487MWh of BESS with Canadian Solar’s CSI Solar manufacturing/system integrator subsidiary. That deal was to cover equipment for Cald, a standalone BESS in California.

Cald is expected to come online in the first half of next year, while expected commissioning dates for the Williams Power and Fletcher Power projects in Indiana have not yet been announced.

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 signing ceremony to mark the deal was held at last week’s Energy Storage Summit EU in London. Image: Sungrow/Doral.

Sungrow has signed another battery storage supply deal with renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure developer Doral for projects in Israel.

The contract for the supply of an unspecified “several hundred MWh” of DC-coupled or AC-coupled battery energy storage system (BESS) technology was signed at the Energy Storage Summit EU, hosted in London last week by our publisher Solar Media.

China-headquartered solar PV inverter and battery storage manufacturer Sungrow said the deal with Doral Renewable Energy Resources Group covers equipment for projects set to be delivered from the middle of 2023 and through 2024 for connection to the grid by the end of next year.

As regular readers of Energy-Storage.news may recall, Israel is considered a rapidly growing market for large-scale batteries. This is driven by a combination of renewable energy and decarbonisation policy goals and the uptake of solar PV in particular, coupled with the Israeli grid’s lack of interconnection with neighbouring countries.

The country’s policy target to source 30% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 equates to about 12GW of solar PV capacity – about 26% of the whole, with 4% from other sources.

In a November 2020 webinar with Energy-Storage.news and consultancy Clean Horizon, Israeli Electricity Authority (PUA) regulatory department head Yossi Sokoler said that integrating that big increase in solar would require about 2GW/8GWh of energy storage.

That means the country will be leaning quite heavily on solar-plus-storage hybrid resources, an area Sungrow is well acquainted with. Both it and Doral are carving out a market share in Israel largely as a consequence of government tenders for such projects hosted by PUA.

Doral has got a pipeline of 1.4GWh in those Solar Storage I & II tenders, through which a total 777MW of PV and 3,072MWh were procured, and the deal with Sungrow adds to a 66MW/253MWh supply contract between the two companies signed in April 2022.

Sungrow signed deals with two other Israel-based developers last year: a 64MWh contract with infrastructure solutions provider Afcon for a BESS system to be installed at a natural gas power plant as well as a 430MWh order from Enlight Renewable Energy, which like Doral is a project developer.

Sungrow officially launched its latest range of liquid cooled lithium-ion BESS solutions late last year, the ST2752UX for AC-coupled and DC-coupled utility-scale applications, and ST500CP-250HV, for the commercial and industrial (C&I) market segment.

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The signing ceremony was held yesterday. Image: ACWA Power.

ACWA Power has signed a partnership agreement to develop a large-scale wind energy and battery storage project in Kazakhstan with the country’s ministry of energy and a sovereign wealth fund.

The Saudi Arabian energy and water infrastructure development company said yesterday that the deal was signed with the Central Asian country’s Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund, together with its Ministry of Energy.

While details were not specified in a release sent to media including Energy-Storage.news, ACWA Power said the deal covers a 1GW wind energy and battery energy storage system (BESS) project, scheduled for completion in 2027.

It marks ACWA Power’s entry into the Republic of Kazakhstan, where the company said an initial investment of US$1.5 billion will be made, supporting Kazakhstan’s aims of meeting 50% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2050. ACWA Power said that the wind-plus-storage project will directly displace fossil fuel resources.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud – the country’s energy minister – attended a signing ceremony, along with Kazakh energy minister Bolat Akchulakov and the chairmen of the boards of ACWA Power and Samruk-Kazyna.

It’s the latest in a series of similar deals signed by ACWA Power with governments across Asia: in February a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was inked with the government of Azerbaijan for battery storage; last November ACWA Power signed an MOU with the government of Indonesia covering energy storage and green hydrogen development activities.

ACWA Power has developed more than 44GW of projects across a dozen different countries since founding in 2004, with the company active in areas including renewable energy generation, desalination plants and green hydrogen.

It has been awarded a contract to deliver what is thought to be the world’s biggest off-grid BESS to date, a system with at least 1,200MWh capacity for the Red Sea Project luxury ‘sustainable resort’ off the Saudi coast. Financial close was achieved on that project late last month, with Huawei set to provide the BESS solution.

In October 2021, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Energy, National Wealth Fund and a state owned utility signed an MOU for a wind-plus-storage project of a similar scale to ACWA Power’s, with Total Eren, the independent power producer (IPP) subsidiary of TotalEnergies. The BESS portion of that project is to be supplied by Saft, which TotalEnergies also owns.

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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Renewable Properties, a developer and investor in small-scale utility and community solar projects, has closed its Fund 8 portfolio with two financing partners, Nelnet Renewable Energy and AB CarVal. Fund 8 consists of nearly 30 MW of community solar projects in California and New York.

“AB CarVal and Nelnet have been reliable Renewable Properties partners, enabling us to expand our community solar project portfolio to 15 states,” says Allan Riska, chief investment officer at Renewable Properties.

In 2020, funds managed by project loan partner AB CarVal, a global alternative investment manager, invested $60 million to support the expansion of Renewable Properties’ operations. The capital allowed Renewable Properties to further develop its existing community-scale solar project pipeline, expand development efforts into new and existing markets, and secure new project opportunities and acquisitions.

“Renewable Properties has produced an extensive and diverse track record of small-scale utility and community solar projects throughout the U.S.,” says Jerry Keefe, principal at AB CarVal. “We are pleased to expand our rewarding partnership with Renewable Properties, which continues to demonstrate its capabilities and success in the U.S. community solar market.”

Fund 8 is Renewable Properties’ fourth tax equity fund partnership with Nelnet, a corporate tax equity partner that also has a solar engineering, procurement, and construction and operation and maintenance business.

“With our shared commitment to community solar and providing superior customer experience, Renewable Properties has been an excellent partner for Nelnet through three prior funds,” says Scott Gubbels, president of Nelnet Renewable Energy. “We look forward to continuing to grow our partnership and create a more inclusive clean energy future.”

The Fund 8 projects are located in California and New York, adding to Renewable Properties’ growing pipeline of community solar projects in 15 states. Two Fund 8 projects are in Madera County, Calif. The Avenue 26 Solar Phase I & II projects will commence construction in the second quarter and should be completed by the end of the year. The projects total 11.5 MW.

Fund 8’s New York projects (18.4 MW total) are in various stages of development. The Slayton Settlement Solar A & Slayton Settlement Solar B projects in Lockport began construction at the end of 2022 and are expected to be online in October. Two projects in Batavia will commence construction by May and are expected to be finished by December. The Clemons Road Solar project in Minoa will commence construction in April and is expected to be operational by end of the year.

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Melissa Seixas

Duke Energy Florida says it will begin construction later this month on two new solar projects in Bay and Madison counties that will be a part of the company’s community solar program, Clean Energy Connection.

Mule Creek Renewable Energy Center will be built on approximately 700 acres in Bay County. Once operational, the 74.9 MW facility will consist of approximately 175,000 solar panels.

After a successful community open house, Winquepin Renewable Energy Center will be built on approximately 530 acres in Madison County. This project – also 74.9 MW – will consist of approximately 220,000 solar panels.

“These new renewable energy projects not only help strengthen the energy diversity in the state and advance our clean energy goals, but they also bring additional economic benefits to the communities we serve,” says Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida’s state president.

Through the Clean Energy Connection program, Duke Energy Florida customers can subscribe to solar power and earn credits toward their electricity bills without having to install or maintain their own equipment. The monthly subscription fee will help pay for the cost of construction and operation of the renewable energy centers and is added to a customer’s regular electric bill.

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Meyer Burger’s module production facility in Freiberg

Meyer Burger Technology AG says it plans to introduce a unified product platform for its solar modules that will allow the company to build up manufacturing capacity faster and with less risk.

According to Meyer Burger, the planned products will combine the best of glass-glass and glass-backsheet modules, providing durability, bifaciality, low weight, sustainably high performance and appealing aesthetics in black, white and transparent variants.

The new product platform will enable the scalability of new manufacturing capacities and accelerate mass production; for example, it will eliminate downtime due to product changes and complex procurement logistics processes caused by product diversity. This will enable Meyer Burger to tap further potential for reducing manufacturing costs. In addition, a uniform platform will allow the company to focus its research and development.

The company says the new platform can be combined with future solar cell technologies, such as IBC-HJT and HJT-perovskite tandem, thus securing future development steps on Meyer Burger’s roadmap.

The manufacturing lines for the future Goodyear site in the United States were designed for the new product platform from the outset. Technical upgrades at the Freiberg plant are scheduled to start in the second quarter, and the ramp-up of the third module line in Freiberg will begin this summer.

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