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Vanadium flow battery sector gets boost with UK rental deal, new plant in Germany and environmental impact whitepaper

Austria-based CellCube commissioned a whitepaper to compare its VRFB product’s environmental impact versus lithium-ion. Image: Enerox/Cellcube.

The vanadium flow battery sector received a boost this week with news of a rental partnership between Invinity and Dawsongroup plc, a new electrolyte plant in Germany and a whitepaper around the technology’s environmental impact.

Vanadium flow batteries’ lower degradation than lithium-ion make it a good candidate to compete with lithium-ion for medium duration use cases (4-8 hours), and a potential solution for future long-duration energy storage (8-24 hours or more) needs.

But the commercialisation of the technology to-date has been held back by numerous factors, most notably a higher upfront cost than lithium-ion and a supply chain that has yet to ramp up to the capacity needed for large-scale projects (outside of China).

Announced project sizes for VRFB firms are starting to increase, with 2022 seeing VRFB firm Invinity Energy Systems’ recently getting its largest order-to date, Austria-based CellCube striking a five-year, 1GWh rollout deal in South Africa and the first half of an 800MWh project coming online in China.

Invinity and UK commercial rental firm Dawsongroup sign MOU

One way to lower upfront costs is to lease vanadium flow battery products rather than buy them outright, and a partnership between Invinity Energy Systems commercial asset and rental business Dawsongroup plc announced yesterday (16 January) will seek to do just that.

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed between the pair with a view to more definitive agreement down the line whereby Dawsongroup Power Solutions Limited will procure battery storage products exclusively from Invinity and become its exclusive rental partner in the UK market.

The companies expect to target customer commitments of more than 50MWh over the next two years.

As part of the agreement, Dawsongroup has acquired a 0.22MWh Invinity VS3 battery to be installed at its headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK this year. The battery system will be used as a showcase project for Dawsongroup’s corporate customers to view Invinity’s vanadium flow battery technology in operation.

Leasing of vanadium electrolyte is a model which has previously been used by Avalon Battery, a firm that merged with redT to become Invinity Energy Systems, and which has explored it since. It has also been proposed by primary vanadium producers like Largo.

New vanadium electrolyte plant in Germany approved

AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group, a speciality metals and minerals producer, has announced it will build a vanadium electrolyte plant in Nuremberg, Germany.

The management board last week (9 January) approved plans to build the plant, with a target capacity of 6,000m³ vanadium electrolyte, at its subsidiary AMG Titanium. Basic engineering for the plant was completed in November 2022 and production is expected to start at the end of 2023.

Although not explicitly said, the announcement indicated the plant may serve AMG’s downstream energy storage division AMG Liva, which recently launched a hybrid energy storage system (ESS) product combining lithium-ion and vanadium redox flow technology.

It sold its first system to Wipotec, a Germany-based global provider of intelligent weighing and inspection technology, in December 2022.

AMG said that the plant’s expansion is a vital strategic investment and will strengthen its strategy to enable energy efficiency and carbon dioxide reduction for its customers in industrial operations. It cited AMG Titanium’s technological expertise in producing highly purified vanadium products. Much of the world’s vanadium supply comes from slag, a by-product of smelting ores and metals.

CellCube says its VRFB’s environmental impact is 45-75% lower than lithium-ion

Austria-based VRFB company CellCube (official name Enerox) has released a whitepaper comparing the environmental impact of its technology of choice compared with today’s industry incumbent.

The whitepaper involved completing a ‘cradle-to-gate’ lifecycle assessment (LCA) analysing its VRFB’s environmental impact from raw material extraction through to customer deployment and the 20-year lifetime of a four-hour system with one cycle per day, with all power charged from renewables.

The analysis compared its VRFB’s figures to a 2018 study on lithium-ion and VRFBs of the time (Weber et al., 2018, Life Cycle Assessment of a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery).

CellCube’s VRFB had a global warming potential (GWP) of 32.6 kg CO2 per MWh, 15% lower than the 2018 study’s VRFB and 45% lower than the lithium-ion battery. This was in a scenario without reused materials going into the products.

With reused materials going into the product, its VRFB came out with a GWP 10% higher than the 2018 study’s VRFB, but some 75% lower than the lithium-ion battery.

Read the full whitepaper here.

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.

Battery storage can help solve Texas’ ‘Super Duck’ challenge of integrating renewable energy

Texas’ winter storms have caused big swings in demand outside of the traditional summer peaks ERCOT experiences. Image: Texas Army National Guard courtesy of Staff Sgt. Yvonne Ontiveros

Texas’ ERCOT grid is facing some extreme swings in its ability to match supply with growing demand for electricity in the US state, presenting an economic opportunity for energy storage.

ERCOT is responsible for the grid and wholesale power markets in most of Texas. Due largely to a fully competitive market structure, it has also become a hotbed for solar PV, wind and now energy storage deployment.

In a webinar hosted last week by energy software and consulting group Ascend Analytics, the company’s director of market intelligence said that this growth, coupled with an ageing thermal power plant fleet and coal plants becoming uneconomical, present a need for flexibility.

That flexibility can be largely provided by energy storage systems with relatively short durations, Brent Nelson said, particularly as ERCOT’s renewable energy buildout is forecast to continue, with solar PV in particular set to add a “massive amount in a very short period of time”.

Last year ERCOT recorded its highest-ever summer peak demand of 80GW, and experienced a 70GW peak during the Winter Storm Uri, significantly beyond the previous high of 66GW recorded in 2018. Demand side drivers are only set to amplify, with the likes of Samsung building a microchip factory and Tesla expanding its production within Texas.

Meanwhile on the supply side, between 2020 and the end of 2023, Ascend Analytics said wind generation will have grown by about 7.5GW, and solar PV by about 18GW, with perhaps about an extra gigawatt of each technology granted interconnection agreements but not yet posting financial security announcements.

Coupled with an expected 10GW of solar PV additions in 2024, that adds about 20GW to ERCOT’s installed base to about 14GW to 15GW already installed.

Nelson said that the ERCOT market is at risk of encountering an extreme version of the famous California Duck Curve of solar production versus grid demand, which Ascend has dubbed a “Super Duck”.

That would be those occasions where wind and solar both coincidentally tail off in the evenings, causing a “massive net load ramp”. Nelson noted that if the 25GW of solar coming offline does so of an evening of very low wind, perhaps dropping wind generation to about half, a 40GW net load increase will result.

Energy storage will be a critical resource to help manage that Super Duck, but at current forecasts, there may be no more than 10GW online in the ERCOT market by the end of the 2020s.

Need for long-duration energy storage will grow

Nelson said that this, and a lot of the other issues facing ERCOT, can be solved by using shorter duration energy storage systems – typically battery storage with up to about 4-hours’ duration, but in the case of Texas more likely at about 2-hours.

However, as more and more renewables come online, challenges associated with longer duration events will become harder to solve. There should be, and likely will be, some market restructuring over the medium to longer term in ERCOT to start valuing long-duration energy storage (LDES) resources, according to the Ascend Analytics market intelligence director.

That lack of market signals will likely mean combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) thermal peaking power plants will remain online as long as possible, although Nelson quipped that he wouldn’t recommend building a new one.

Other drivers for storage development include a high level of solar PV curtailment already seen on the ERCOT grid, with more than 20% of solar generated in April 2022 curtailed as it coincided with relatively high wind generation.

The US’ federal incentives for wind, solar and standalone storage brought in by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and set to last until 2032, will together with high gas prices mean the economics of wind and solar remain strong, Ascend Analytics predicts.

Texas also has some competitive advantage in that respect, according to Brent Nelson, who said that the state may be the best aligned of any in the US to capture 10% bonus rates to investment tax credit (ITC) and production tax credit (PTC) incentives.

Bonuses are paid out based on a number of different criteria being met by developers for their projects, such as siting of clean energy facilities at former coal mines and other fossil fuel economy-linked regions and communities, of which Texas has plenty. There is also very good alignment, Nelson said, between those areas that can earn developers bonus tax credits, and the areas where new resources are needed to help solve volatility issues.

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.

Australia’s Queensland and Victoria to host major battery industry developments

Rendering of Recharge Industries’ Geelong factory. Image: Recharge Industries.

The government of Queensland seeks input on its battery industry strategy, while an engineering provider has been appointed for a large-scale battery gigafactory in Victoria.

Queensland’s state government has promised to develop and publish its official Battery industry Strategy by mid-2023, following the September announcement of an Energy and Jobs Plan which commits the Australian state to getting 70% of its energy from renewable sources by 2032.

As part of the Energy and Jobs Plan, State Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced that AU$500 million (US$348.72 million) from a AU$4.5 billion Renewable Energy and Hydrogen Jobs Fund would be given to state-owned companies for investment into large-scale and community-level battery storage deployments.

Queensland also holds reserves of important raw materials for lithium-ion and flow battery technologies and the government aims to stimulate activity in the upstream segment of the battery market.

With Palaszczuk currently in the final week of a three-week leave of absence, Acting Premier Steven Miles hosted the launch yesterday of a discussion paper identifying the opportunities and challenges ahead in pursuing that goal.

The paper, produced by consultancy firm Accenture for the government, said Queensland’s battery industry could create up to AU$1.3 billion economic activity and more than 9,000 jobs by 2030. Accenture predicted that Australian demand for batteries will reach 90GWh by that time, with 26GWh in Queensland.

Globally, stationary energy storage for the grid is forecast to be the fastest growing segment of the battery market, experiencing around 37% growth annually, versus 17% for passenger electric vehicles (EVs).

While EVs will be the much bigger global market overall at US$82 billion forecasted value by 2030, compared with US$12 billion for grid-connected storage, within Queensland itself, Accenture forecasted a 14GWh potential market size for grid storage and 27GWh total in Australia, making it the single biggest market opportunity.

Alongside that grid-scale stationary storage, there could be as much as 7GWh behind-the-meter storage in Queensland and 14GWh across Australia, with about 1GWh additional battery demand for off-grid applications in the state and 5GWh in the country.

Steven Miles was speaking at an event in Maryborough, the Queensland city where Energy Storage Industries- Asia Pacific (ESI) is building a factory making flow batteries with technology licensed from US company ESS Inc – the holder of proprietary IP for a type of flow battery using iron and saltwater electrolytes.

Lithium-ion batteries will likely be the dominant battery technology for the near future, and Queensland has some opportunities to assemble lithium devices and participate in the value chain via R&D and other activities.

However, while lithium is the overall more valuable market, it could be in other more niche technologies, like flow batteries, that the state may hold the most competitive advantages. Queensland holds significant vanadium reserves, around 30% of the world’s supply and end-to-end vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) making would mean capturing maximum value from that.

Materials for ESI’s iron flow batteries too can be sourced within the state, with the company developing a 400MW per year factory.

With the discussion paper now out, the government has invited public comments as the Battery Industry Strategy takes shape. The comment period closes at the end of March 2023 and the discussion paper can be viewed here (1.9mb PDF).

Accenture appointed for 30GWh factory’s engineering design

Meanwhile, in Victoria, Accenture (again) has been appointed to work on the detailed engineering phase of a battery gigafactory scheduled for construction to begin during 2023.

New York-headquartered manufacturer Recharge Industries has established a regional HQ in Geelong and has secured key equipment, to be delivered by the middle of this year.

The gigafactory will be able to make 2GWh of batteries at a site in the Victorian city annually by 2024. Recharge then wants to ramp up the factory to 4GWh annual production capacity and eventually as much as 30GWh, targeting both stationary battery energy storage system (BESS) and electric mobility markets.

“Establishing a sovereign manufacturing capability to produce state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery cells is critical to Australia’s renewable energy economy – meeting national demand, generating export income and securing supply chains,” Recharge Industries CEO Rob Fitzpatrick said.

Meanwhile Accenture group digital engineering and manufacturing consultancy Industry X’s managing director Soeren Schrader said the global transition to clean energy is being hampered by supply chain challenges.

The Geelong gigafactory will “go a long way” to help Australian industry to tackle those challenges, Schrader said.

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.

Hanwha, LGES Pursue Battery Production Investments in U.S. Market

Justin Lee of Qcells

Hanwha Group and LG Energy Solution (LGES) are investing in building battery production facilities in the United States. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding in Seoul for comprehensive battery business cooperation for ESS and other clean-tech energy solutions. The MOU was signed by LGES and three subsidiaries under Hanwha Group – Hanwha Solutions, owner of clean energy manufacturer Qcells, Hanwha Corp./Momentum and Hanwha Aerospace.

The two companies will also pursue technology cooperation for developing advanced ESS solutions tailored for commercial, industrial and utility market. They include enclosure, heat management and other balance of system.

Hanwha Solutions owns Qcells, a silicon-based solar manufacturer in the United States. The other Hanwha subsidiaries – Hanwha Corporation/Momentum and Hanwha Aerospace – will also participate in battery cooperation with LGES.

In 2022, LGES advanced into the field of ESS System Integration by establishing a new corporation, LG Energy Solution Vertech. Inc., which offers customers a streamlined approach to energy storage system integration and a secure battery supply chain through LGES.

Hanwha Momentum will seek to supply key battery manufacturing facilities for LGES, which is constructing joint battery factories with global automakers such as GM, Stellantis and Honda. Its existing factories in Korea, Poland and Michigan are also scheduled to expand. Hanwha Aerospace is also planning to work with LGES to develop special-purpose batteries for Urban Air Mobility.

“We have decided to collaborate with LG Energy Solution, which has several large-scale manufacturing facilities being constructed in U.S., to target the U.S. ESS market boasting fast growth thanks to green energy policies,” says Hanwha Group. “Our aim is to maximize synergy at home and abroad by promoting partnerships in various fields, such as supplying battery manufacturing equipment and developing special-purpose batteries.”

“Our partnership with Hanwha Group is expected to take the competitiveness of each company’s battery-related businesses a step further,” states LG Energy Solution. “By signing this MoU with leading, like-minded energy companies, we put ourselves in the best possible position to successfully expand the influence of our solar and ESS businesses in the U.S., and we will do our very best to provide customers with comprehensive green energy solutions.”

IRENA Reelects Francesco La Camera as Director-General

Francesco La Camera

The 13th session of the Assembly has concluded with significant decisions for the future of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). IRENA’s global membership of 168 countries has appointed the incumbent director-general for a second term of four years. Francesco La Camera has served as director-general of IRENA since April 2019.

Furthermore, IRENA members have agreed on the agency’s Medium-Term Strategy (MTS) for the coming five years. The new work strategy for 2023-2027 sets out a new direction for the agency focused on urgent and targeted action, unparalleled international cooperation, and continuous innovation.

Against the backdrop of a rapidly shrinking timeline to deliver on global climate and developments goals by 2030, this MTS is the last full five-year cycle before 2030 that outlines IRENA’s contribution to global energy efforts.

It focuses on systemic changes in energy and beyond with greater focus on access and equality, on interaction between renewables and energy security and resilience and an additional pillar on regional and country level work.

“We must build a new energy system with the tools and systems of the future, not the past,” says La Camera. “Just as we innovate to improve technologies, we must innovate to reimagine international cooperation for the new energy era.”

“A renewables-based transition is a vehicle for climate-proof energy systems, improved energy security, reduced inequality and long-overdue universal access,” adds La Camera. “I am deeply humbled to have been appointed for a new term as director-general. I will continue to work tirelessly to realize IRENA’s new global mission.”

Read the full Medium-Term Strategy 2023-2027 here.

Wärtsilä’s second solar-plus-storage Hawaii project for IPP Clearway goes online

The project on the island of O‘ahu, Hawaii. Image: Clearway Energy Group.

Independent power producer (IPP) Clearway Energy Group has brought a 36MW solar PV plus 144MWh battery energy (BESS) storage system project online in O’ahu, Hawaii, delivered by energy technology firm Wärtsilä.

Clearway announced the commercial operation of the project on Kamehameha Schools’ lands in Waiawa in Central O‘ahu last week (12 January).

Wärtsilä provided its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) based GridSolv Quantum BESS solution, which is controlled by its energy management system (EMS), the GEMS Digital Energy Platform. Gridsolv uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Construction firm Moss meanwhile oversaw the building of the site.

It is the second of two solar-plus-storage projects totalling 75MW of PV and 75MW/300MWh of battery energy storage, with Wärtsilä bringing the first online back in August last year. The two projects are also the first large-scale ones of their kind on O’ahu, the main island in the archipelago and the home of the capital Honolulu.

Clearway said the latest project represents US$150 million of investment. All of its renewables projects on the island are connected to the grid operated by Hawaiian Electric, the main utility. The latter’s CEO Shelee Kimura commented:

“Stabilising energy costs for our customers is a priority, and projects like Waiawa Solar will feed electricity to the grid at about half the cost of oil. We appreciate Clearway’s and Kamehameha Schools’ contributions as we all work together to decarbonize our energy system, and look forward to bringing more benefits to our communities as six additional projects come online over the next two years on O‘ahu.”

The Hawaii projects are part of a 500MW/2GWh portfolio that Wärtsilä is delivering for Clearway across Hawaii and California. In the latter, Wärtsilä is building BESS units totalling 275MW/1.1GWh to adjoin the Daggett 2 and Daggett 3 projects in San Bernadino, which it will complete this year.

Hawaii, which has a population of 1.4 million, has recently emerged as a market substantially punching above its weight for energy storage deployments with several large-scale projects combining the technology with solar PV.

This includes a co-located project with a 120MWh lithium-ion BESS from US-based energy firm AES, which will deliver power to Hawaiian Electric under a power purchase agreement (PPA) at just US$0.09/kWh when it starts in April.

In October, energy project system integrator Ameresco and utility Bright Canyon Energy broke ground on a solar and storage project with a 168MWh battery system, also on O’ahu.

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.

Verbund, ECO STOR and Kyon Energy inaugurating 41MW battery storage in Bavaria, Germany

One of the two 20.7MW projects, in Iphofen, Bavaria. Image: Kyon Energy.

A pair of 20.7MW battery energy storage systems have been added to the electricity grid in Bavaria, Germany, by Austria-based utility Verbund and developers ECO STOR and Kyon Energy.

The CEOs of Verbund, ECO STOR’s parent company Agder-Energi and Kyon Energy will officially inaugurate the two projects in the municipalities of Diespeck and Iphofen on 30 January, 2023. The ceremony will also be attended by state minister Michael Strugl.

While the event is being described as a commissioning ceremony, ECO STOR’s battery storage market monitor says both lithium-ion battery systems have been in commercial operation since September/October last year.

Diespeck is a 20.7MW/20.7MWh unit while the Iphofen facility has power output and energy capacity of 20.7MW/20.1MWh.

Verbund is the project owner through its central trading platform entity VERBUND Energy4Business GmbH while ECO STOR provided the battery storage technology and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services.

Kyon Energy did early-stage project development for the sites through providing a lease contract, getting construction approval and grid access contract before passing on the project to final owner Verbund.

Kyon said that the Iphofen project uses battery cells from LG Chem while the Diespeck unit is equipped with Samsung SDI cells. Both will provide grid services, mainly primary control reserve (PCR) which involves injecting power into the grid when frequency deviates from 49.99-50.01 Hz.

They will also generate revenues from trading energy on the spot market as well as providing ‘avoided network charges (§ 18 StromNEV)’, Kyon said. Energy-Storage.news understands the latter is the ‘peak shaving’ service which is not available for battery storage projects commissioned after 2022, explained by ECO STOR’s managing director Georg Gallmetzer in an earlier interview.

Verbund is an Austria-based electric utility which ECO STOR has previously provided battery storage projects for, including one commissioned last year in Eisenach. ECO STOR is one of the main companies providing battery storage system integration in the German market, with over 100MWh deployed last year.

Kyon Energy meanwhile has developed, sold or commissioned 121MW of battery storage in the country by the end of 2022, according to head of business development & regulatory affairs Benedikt Deuchert in an interview in October.

Growth in the utility-scale energy storage sector returned to Germany in 2022 after several years of stagnancy. See all Energy-Storage.news’ coverage of the country’s energy storage market here.

Second life energy storage firms position themselves ahead of EV battery boom

A battery energy storage system using EV batteries, from Sweden-based BatteryLoop, one of the companies interviewed for the article. Image: BatteryLoop.

The boom in electric vehicles is set to see hundreds of GWh of used EV batteries hit the market over the 2030s, which can then be given a ‘second life’ in stationary energy storage. Cameron Murray interviews four companies trying to get in early ahead of the boom.

This is an extract of an article which appears in Vol.33 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

The shortage of lithium-ion battery cells continues to hamper the stationary energy storage system (ESS) industry, and the mismatch in supply and demand does not look like going away anytime soon. That means the value proposition of repurposing used electric vehicle (EV) batteries into ESS units is as clear as day.

In the article we interview four companies doing this; BatteryLoop (Sweden), Octave (Belgium), Evyon (Norway) and Moment Energy (Canada), while touching on others that have previously spoken to PVTech Power.

Supply of second life battery modules

Most battery modules which are in today’s operational second life ESS units are relatively unused. Theseinclude battery modules from test vehicles, manufacturing process breakage which means the battery is not suitable for an EV but fine for ESS, and cases of oversupply.

But the portion of systems which are made up of actual second life modules is growing. In the case of newer batteries, second life ESS companies can offer similar 10-year warranties to regular ESS ones. For used batteries bespoke warranty or service agreements may need to be formulated, although sophisticated monitoring and control algorithms can mean similar warranties to first life are possible.

Customers and use cases

With the size of the systems that these companies offer generally in the few hundreds of kWh, their main deployments to-date have been in the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment. All four mention a focus on deploying systems to optimise PV and EV charging as well as the obvious behind-the-meter C&I use cases like peak shaving. But all four companies are also moving into the grid-connected or grid-scale market in different ways.

Drivers of demand for second life energy storage

For second life ESS solutions specifically, sustainability is a big one. Evyon’s Ralph Groen says that itis becoming more and more of a driver for C&I customers and project proposals are now scored on their supply chain circularity, from 1-10.

BatteryLoop CEO Rasmus Bergström similarly says that second life battery systems help real estate owners get more points in assessments for Leadership Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), a certification for how environmentally friendly a building is, which can then open up green financing opportunities.

The costs of second life ESS solutions are also more-or-less at parity with first life ones. “The same for NMC batteries, a bit higher when it comes to LFP,” adds Bergström.

Money raised and deployment targets

Moment Energy has a project pipeline of over 20MWh projects but, like BatteryLoop, could deploy 100MWh based on its battery volumes if it had enough manufacturing capacity, CEO Edward Chiang says. It has raised US$9 million in seed funding and an additional US$7-15 million in funding is on its way by the end of the year.

An energy storage system developed by Octave, based in Belgium. Image: Octave.

Evyon has raised over €10 million to-date and has secured access to 40MWh of battery modules for delivery to customers during 2023, Groen says. Octave for its part is targeting 7MWh of deployments over the next 12 months.

Bergström wouldn’t disclose BatteryLoop’s near-term deployment targets, only saying that the order book is 10 times larger than a year ago. The company is part of big recycling firm Stena.

All to play for as huge opportunity looms

The second life market looks set to boom in the coming years as EV uptake grows. But it is still taking shape so it will be fascinating to see what roles OEMs, battery recycling firms and system integrators carve out for themselves in the space.

A few weeks later comes the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas, also put on by Solar Media. 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.

Risen Energy Begins Mass Producing HJT Hyper-ion Solar Modules

Solar module manufacturer Risen Energy is beginning to mass-produce industrializing heterojunction (HJT) Hyper-ion solar modules. Risen Energy also revealed plans to increase the production capacity of the HJT Hyper-ion solar cell and module to 5 GW by the first half of 2023, and then triple it to 15 GW in the following six months.

Song Yifeng, Risen Energy’s product director, introduced the company’s plan to mass-produce the HJT technology and emphasized the focus on reshaping the n-type HJT product ecosystem while reducing costs and carbon footprint as the core of the development plan.

Risen Energy has also launched targeted development projects for special packaging materials, special water-blocking process design and anti-attenuation solutions, which have paved the way for mass production of the HJT Hyper-ion module. In addition, Risen Energy’s patented technology, Hyper-link, allows for the interconnection of ultra-thin cells with low silver consumption, reducing costs while ensuring power output and product reliability.

The power output of Risen Energy’s HJT Hyper-ion module reaches 710 Wp, with an efficiency exceeding 22.5%, which has been certified by TUV SÜD. It also features an extremely stable temperature coefficient and a high bifaciality of up to 85% ±5%, capable of maintaining its power output above 90% after 30 years of use. The module is backed by Risen Energy’s 100μm ultra-thin cell technology and low-temperature process, resulting in a carbon footprint value (CFP) lower than 400kg eq CO2/kWc.

LG Energy Solution, Hanwha in US energy storage battery partnership

Rendering of a large-scale solar-plus-storage project using LG ES battery equipment. Image: LG ES / RWE

LG Energy Solution and Hanwha, two of the major players in global battery and renewable energy technology, aim to establish battery storage-specific manufacturing facilities in the US.

The two South Korean companies have formed a partnership to take on the US battery energy storage system (BESS) market. The market has seen significant growth in the past few years that is expected to accelerate rapidly with the country’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentivising both deployment and manufacturing of energy storage.

“We have decided to collaborate with LG Energy Solution, which has several large-scale manufacturing facilities being constructed in US, to target the US energy storage system (ESS) market boasting fast growth thanks to green energy policies,” Hanwha Group said.

“Our aim is to maximise synergy at home and abroad by promoting partnerships in various fields, such as supplying battery manufacturing equipment and developing special-purpose batteries.”

LG Energy Solution (LG ES) has a considerable share of the US market already, supplying battery cells, racks, and complete systems to some of the country’s largest utility-scale BESS projects as well as the residential segment. The LG Group company went publicly listed through an IPO last January.

Last year it made a move to expand further downstream with the establishment of its own system integrator subsidiary, LG Energy Solution Vertech, and the acquisition of a former market-leading system integrator, NEC Energy Solutions.

LG claimed that vertically integrating system integrator and battery cell supply capabilities streamlines the former process and gives customers assurances on a currently constrained global supply chain.

Meanwhile Hanwha Group is currently active in the market through its ownership of Germany-headquartered Qcells, the solar PV manufacturer which also has a range of home batteries and complete home energy management system (EMS) solutions. Qcells bought up US energy storage software and EMS specialist Geli in 2020.

Qcells targets battery storage EPC business’ growth

Qcells made its first investment into a grid-scale battery storage project in 2021, acquiring and later selling on the 190MW/380MWh BESS now under construction in Texas’ ERCOT market after securing US$150 million financing.

In September last year it announced three standalone BESS projects in New York totalling 12MW/48MWh with community solar PV and storage developer Summit Ridge Energy.

Last week, Qcells committed to what was claimed to be the US’ biggest private sector investment in clean energy manufacturing. The company announced the construction of 8.4GW of solar ingot, wafer, cell, and module annual manufacturing capacity in Georgia by 2024, with the southern US state already attracting major electric vehicle (EV) and EV battery makers’ investments in the past few years.

With that push and the latest announcement made yesterday, the companies aim to capture the full benefits of the IRA’s incentives, which reward domestic production and deployment of clean energy equipment.

The pair will also work to develop energy storage system products for the commercial and industrial (C&I) and utility markets. For Hanwha, the deal will mean assurances on cell supply and competitiveness on pricing as Qcells targets ramping up of its solar PV and energy storage engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) business in the US.

Other Hanwha companies, such as those active in the aviation and EV industries will also benefit from the partnership with LG ES, the group said.

The news came just a couple of days after LG ES and Japanese carmaker Honda announced a joint venture (JV) to establish around 40GWh of lithium-ion electric vehicle battery production facilities in Fayette County, Ohio by 2025.