Hornsdale Power Reserve. Image: Neoen.

Neoen has kicked off a 200MW/400MWh battery project in Australia, taking the French renewables company’s tally of large-scale energy storage projects in construction in the country to three.

The independent power producer (IPP) has issued notices to proceed to battery energy storage system (BESS) specialist NHOA and construction engineering company Elecnor for its Blyth Battery in South Australia.

Neoen’s 100MW/200MWh Capital Battery project underway in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) reached financial close in October last year and construction began on the 200MW/400MWh Western Downs Battery in Queensland just before the end of 2022.

The trio will join the company’s two existing grid-scale battery storage assets in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), the 150MW/193.5MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve and 300MW/450MWh Victorian Big Battery – the country’s biggest BESS to date – when they come online.

For the Capital Battery, that will be in the first half of this year, while the Western Downs and Blyth Battery projects are scheduled to come online in late 2024-early 2025.

Blyth Battery

Italy-headquartered battery storage integrator NHOA claimed the Blyth Battery is one of several recent projects it has been contracted for totaling 620MWh of energy storage capacity in December alone.

The company, owned by Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC), has been appointed as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor as well as operations and maintenance (O&M) provider.

Neoen has worked with Tesla as BESS provider on Hornsdale and the Victorian Big Battery but has not yet announce which company will supply battery storage equipment to Blyth. Energy-Storage.news has reached out to Neoen with an enquiry. Meanwhile, Elecnor will serve as balance of plant contractor.

Blyth Battery’s main purpose will be to deliver energy generated by Neoen’s new wind farm in Goyder, about 60km away, to mining and resources company BHP. Neoen and BHP have a 70MW power purchase agreement (PPA) in place for baseload renewable energy which will help power BHP’s Olympic Dam mines which contain copper, gold, and uranium.

Blyth is also one of the large-scale battery projects selected for funding support by the national Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which is paying for a number of BESS assets around Australia to be equipped with advanced inverter technology that enables them to provide vital grid-balancing inertia to the network.

The wind farm at Goyder is part of a mixed technology renewable energy facility that Neoen is developing. Called Goyder South Renewables Zone, it will eventually comprise 1200MW of wind power, 600MW of solar PV and 900MW of battery storage. Neoen said this week that financial close has been achieved on the first 209MW of wind.

Planning approval was granted for the renewables zone in early 2021, while a grid connection agreement was signed by Neoen with transmission company Electranet last November.

In a slightly complicated arrangement, part of the Goyder South project will deliver energy not into South Australia but into the ACT, while later phases of the zone’s construction will depend on whether new interconnectors between South Australia and New South Wales.

That looks very possible, given the Australian government’s multi-billion dollar programme of upgrading the transmission network to enable higher utilisation of renewable energy around the country.

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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NRG Systems Inc. have provided Solar Resource Monitoring (SRM) Systems to the Travers Solar Project in Alberta, Canada. The turnkey systems capture a range of site-specific parameters, including solar irradiance, module temperature and soiling conditions, as well as albedo, a vital piece in determining the solar energy potential available to the backside of the plant’s bifacial solar modules. Together, the data collected by NRG’s SRM Systems play a critical role in determining the Travers Solar Project’s performance ratio.

The 465 MW Travers Solar Project – the largest utility-scale PV plant ever installed in Canada – was developed by Calgary-based Greengate Power Corporation, with PCL leading construction of the 3,300-acre facility. U.S.-based Ulteig, who selected NRG’s technology for the plant’s resource monitoring needs, is overseeing SCADA engineering and integration.

“We have worked extensively with the NRG team and their solar resource measurement solutions,” says Mike Crawford, Ulteig’s senior market development manager of renewables. “Their systems offer a unique combination of flexibility and repeatability, allowing for project-specific customization within a framework that is easily replicated across a single plant or multiple plants. This has been an especially important feature for the Travers project, given the project had strict requirements and contains more than one-million PV modules across the 3,300 acres. Having reliable meteorological stations distributed across the site is critical to the project’s performance, and we can count on NRG to deliver.”

“It is exciting for NRG to be a part of the Travers Solar Project for many reasons,” adds Gregory Erdmann, NRG’s vice president of global sales. “In addition to the sheer magnitude of its impact, the project is technically complex, making it a challenge NRG is perfectly suited to take on. Thanks to a collaborative team effort between NRG and Ulteig, we have been able to deliver SRM Systems satisfying some of the most demanding requirements we have seen.”

“Successfully deploying our solutions and playing a role in providing enough electricity to power 150,000 homes and offsetting more than 472,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually is directly in line with NRG’s mission,” continues Erdmann. “We are proud that our SRM Systems will play a pivotal role in ensuring this remarkable site is achieving its peak performance potential for years to come.” 

The Travers Solar Project is fully operational.

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Mike Judd

Stryten Energy LLC, a U.S.-based energy storage solutions provider, has made several executive leadership changes and appointments to support the company’s long-term strategy for growth. 

CEO Tim Vargo will transition to chairman of the board for Stryten Energy, before the end of the company’s fiscal year, March 31, 2023. Mike Judd, president and COO, will be promoted to CEO and president, also effective before the end of the company’s fiscal year.

Petar Oklobdzija joins the company as executive vice president and CFO, effective February 1, 2023. He will lead the company’s finance, accounting, treasury, information technology and strategic sourcing functions. Dan Autey joined the company as executive vice president of commercial. He is responsible for leading commercial strategies across the Stryten Energy business.

“Mike’s appointment to CEO is the culmination of a succession plan the Stryten Energy board and I have developed over the last several years,” says Vargo. “I am confident Mike is the right leader to take the reins of the business and achieve the company’s strategy for increased profitability and growth. I look forward to ensuring a smooth transition while supporting Stryten’s vision to solve our customer’s energy challenges from my new position as chairman of the board.”

“I am proud to take on the CEO role and am excited to welcome two seasoned leaders, Petar and Dan, to our senior management team,” comments Judd. “These two industry veterans will further solidify our strong leadership team with the additional talent needed to meet the increased demand for sustainable, clean energy storage solutions. Dan’s automotive and industrial battery expertise will help strengthen our ability to serve our customers’ evolving energy needs, and Petar’s tenure in operations and finance in the automotive and battery industries will help us accelerate our growth strategy into new and existing energy storage markets.”

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Yann Brandt

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the national trade group representing the U.S. solar and storage industry, has expanded its at-large board of directors and added new members to its executive committee.

SEIA added six new at-large board members, including OMCO Solar, SolarEdge Technologies, Kinematics, Stem, Cypress Creek Renewables and GAF Energy. These companies represent multiple parts of the solar value chain, comprising project developers, manufacturers, inverter and energy storage suppliers, solar roofing providers, software service firms, and solar tracking providers.

In addition, SEIA’s board of directors has approved new elected members to the association’s executive committee. These individuals will serve a one-year term on SEIA’s executive committee in 2023: Gilbert Campbell, founder and CEO at Volt Energy; Suzanne Leta, senior director of policy and strategy at SunPower; Frank DeRosa, vice president of policy and government affairs at Avantus; and Meghan Nutting, executive vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Sunnova.

“As the solar and storage industry navigates a new era of legislative, trade and regulatory policy, we need strong advocates to tackle challenges and facilitate the transition to an equitable clean energy economy,” says SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. “The growth of our board mirrors the growth of the solar and storage industry itself. More than 50 industry-leading companies now serve on SEIA’s board, and those companies are critical to accelerating clean energy growth in the United States.”

At its Q4 meeting, SEIA’s board of directors also approved the election of FlexGen’s Yann Brandt as the first-ever chair of its Energy Storage Division. SEIA added the Energy Storage Division to its membership offerings in 2019 as part of its Solar+ Decade mission to foster rapid deployment of energy storage and solar plus storage.

See the full roster of SEIA’s at-large and elected board of directors here.

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Solar Integrated Roofing Corp., an integrated, single-source solutions provider of solar power, roofing and EV charging systems, has acquired and retires its outstanding Class C Preferred Stock associated with the 2021 Enerev acquisition. Concurrent with the completion of this transaction, Enerev founder Trent Crane has been promoted to regional VP of sales. In this role, Crane will oversee all sales activities for SIRC in California, including SIRC’s direct and indirect sales and customer service teams.

“This transaction not only helps to simplify and clean up our capital structure ahead of a planned 2023 Nasdaq listing of our common stock, it will allow us to unlock the full profit potential of our 2021 acquisition of Enerev,” says George B. Holmes, chairman and CEO of Solar Integrated Roofing Corp. “As we seek to more fully realize operational synergies across our family of companies, Trent’s leadership of our California presence will prove to be an invaluable asset as we expand our operations and optimize profitability.”

“The California solar market represents an incredible opportunity that necessitated the combination of our resources in the region.” adds Crane. “I believe that with the unrivaled sales, customer service and installation capabilities we bring to California, we are positioned for significant growth in the years ahead.”

The Class C Preferred shares were issued to the sole owner of Enerev when SIRC acquired the company in 2021 and entitled its holder to an annual dividend of 49% of the net profit of Enerev. SIRC is now entitled to retain 100% of Enerev’s net profit. SIRC issued 8,000,000 shares of its common stock to redeem the Series C Preferred Stock.

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The microgrid will provide energy to the city of Calistoga, in California’s Nappa Valley. Image: John Morgan / Wikicommons.

California utility PG&E is developing a long-duration energy storage microgrid combining batteries and green hydrogen, in partnership with Energy Vault, the company known for its gravity-based solution.

The two companies are partnering to deploy and operate what they called a utility-scale battery plus green hydrogen long-duration energy storage system or ‘BH-ESS’.

It will have a minimum of 293MWh of dispatchable energy and will power the downtown (central) and surrounding area of the city of Calistoga including critical facilities such as fire and police stations. The city is located in Napa Valley, California.

The system is designed to provide 48 hours of duration during planned outages and Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPSs), which grid operator CAISO uses when wildfire risks force it to turn powerlines off.

This will enable the city to move away from using diesel generators, the typical solution used during grid outages. The system will have grid forming and black start capabilities.

Construction is expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2023 with commercial operation by the end of the second quarter of 2024. Energy Vault said it will be the first of its kind and the largest utility-scale green hydrogen project in the United States.

The project was submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for review and approval just before the turn of the year, and a final resolution has been asked for by 15 May 2023.

Energy Vault will own, operate and maintain the energy storage system and provide dispatchable power to PG&E, one of three investor-owned utilities in the state, under a 10.5-year rolling agreement. The system may be expanded to 700MWh in future.

The Switzerland-based firm, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year, will use its proprietary Energy Management System (EMS) to control the system’s dispatch including the battery system, hydrogen tanks and fuel cells while PG&E will use and upgrade its existing distribution infrastructure to accommodate the project.

Energy Vault described the services it will provide as “Distributed Generation-Enabled Microgrid Services”. It said this “…involves using grid-forming generation and storage resources, potentially in combination with demand-side resources, to provide energy, fault current contribution and to regulate voltage and frequency within the utility’s established parameters to enable the islanding of the Calistoga microgrid during planned outages.”

Robert Piconi, chairman and chief executive officer, Energy Vault commented: “We are setting a new benchmark for what can be achieved with an innovative design that integrates the most advanced energy storage mediums in order to deliver a fully renewable green hydrogen battery energy storage system.”

He later added: “Our engineers designed this innovative hybrid energy storage system leveraging Energy Vault’s technology-neutral integration platform and energy management software. This project represents another key customer validation of our strategy and our unmatched, industry-leading ability to bring the most innovative short, long and ultra-long duration energy storage technologies to our customers with proprietary gravity, green hydrogen and hybrid battery solutions as we deliver on our mission of enabling a renewable world.”

The company is known for its gravity-based energy storage solution but has been expanding into conventional battery energy storage systems for some time now, through its Energy Vault Solutions (EVS) segment. Its latest announced battery storage deal was one in Nevada for NV Energy.

Then in November it added green hydrogen to its portfolio of solutions whilst continuing to build projects using its gravity-based technology in China and Texas, the latter for Enel Green Power, a partnership first announced in mid-2021.

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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Jeffrey Peck

iSun Inc., a solar energy and clean mobility infrastructure company, has agreed to sell a 7 MW solar asset valued at approximately $4.8 million in connection with the execution of an $11.6 million EPC contract.

This successfully transitions the 7 MW asset from iSun’s 1.3 GW development pipeline to EPC backlog.

“When we acquired Oakwood Construction’s IP assets in 2021, we positioned iSun to provide turnkey development and engineering services,” says Jeffrey Peck, chairman and CE of iSun. “We added meaningful value at each stage of the solar assets’ life cycle for our new partner.”

“We executed substantially all of the development, engineering and technical work and as a result, we have now contracted to sell this asset to a leading investment firm and execute EPC contracts to complete the installation,” continues Peck. “We pride ourselves on our years of experience that have positioned the Company to handle all the many challenges involved in creating more valuable long-term assets for customers.”

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Spain’s climate makes it a great place for solar PV farms. Naturgy is one of those to have developed projects in the country. Image: Naturgy.

A Madrid-headquartered developer has proposed a solar-plus-storage system in Spain with a 100MW/200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

A request for environmental impact study, construction and grid connection for the project in Cuenca, Castilla La Mancha, has been submitted to relevant authorities by the firm – WIND GENERATION CASTILLA LA MANCHA, SL – according to the Spanish government’s state bulletin service.

The project, called GECAMA HYBRID PLANT, would comprise 434,928 bifacial PV modules connected to a substation via 1,000 250kWac string inverters equating to a maxiumum power output of 250.08MWp and 250MWac.

The BESS component would be made up of 80 battery containers and 20 power converters totalling 100MW of power and 200MWh of energy storage, a two-hour system.

Both the solar and storage portions would be connected to a newly-built substation via 33kV interconnection lines, which would be managed by Generación Eólica Castilla la Mancha SL,

The bulletin said the BESS would be used for the commercialisation of the generated energy. The plan is also to hybridise the solar and storage plant with the nearby GECAMA EÓLICO Park PV farm, which is being developed by developer Israeli Enlight Renewable Energy with a total power output of 300MW.

Spain has had a target of 20GW of energy storage deployment by 2030, rising to 30GW by 2050, since 2019. See all Energy-Storage.news coverage of the market 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.

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Crimson Energy Storage, the 1,400MWh project in California brought online by Canadian Solar’s development subsidiary in October. Image: Recurrent Energy.

Vertically integrated PV company Canadian Solar will supply 550MWh of battery storage equipment for developer Pulse Clean Energy’s UK projects.

It will mark one of the first major deployments for SolBank, a battery energy storage system (BESS) product launched by Canadian Solar subsidiary CSI Energy Storage in September last year.

The deal also deepens an existing relationship between Canadian Solar and Pulse Clean Energy. The developer was formerly known as Green Frog Power before being bought and rebranded by public sector institutional investor Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO).

As reported by our UK sister site Solar Power Portal in February last year, on rebranding Pulse Clean Energy announced that it was targeting a development pipeline in excess of 1GW in the country. The company said at the time that it had purchased nine diesel generation sites for repurposing to host BESS projects instead.

Three months later, Pulse and Canadian Solar inked a 100MWh engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) deal for four battery projects, as well as 10-year service agreements for the assets. The deal signalled Canadian Solar’s first entry into the UK’s booming BESS market.

Announcing CSI Energy Storage’s new 550MWh deal with Pulse, Canadian Solar did not specify how many projects the capacity represents, nor their combined output in megawatts, simply that the SolBank equipment will be used in “various” utility-scale projects in the developer’s now 2,000MWh pipeline in the UK.

The technology company has also agreed to perform commissioning services on the projects, as well as providing long-term warranties and performance guarantees.

SolBank containerised units individually have a capacity of up to 2.8MWh, using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells, liquid cooling and humidity control as well as active balancing battery management system (BMS).

At the time of its launch, Canadian Solar said its annual production capacity for battery storage at its factory in Jiangsu, China, is presently at 2.5GWh, but set to be ramped up to 10GWh by 2030.

It marks the latest entry by a major vertically integrated solar company into BESS production, with others including Trina Solar, which launched its Elementa grid-scale BESS solution into the market through its Trina Storage subsidiary, also using liquid cooled LFP technology.

In November, CSI received an order from UBS Asset Management for up to 2.6GWh of BESS for projects in North America.

The company also has a battery storage development arm in the US, called Recurrent Energy. During last year Canadian Solar brought online one of the US’ biggest standalone BESS assets so far, the 350MW/1,400MWh Crimson Energy Storage project in California.

Crimson was featured in our recent retrospective look at 2022’s biggest projects, financing and offtake deals as the biggest BESS project to come online in the year that was covered by this site.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 8th 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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Justin Lemmon, co-founder and Head of International Operations of Lohum, Gordon Gassman, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Energy. Image: Business Wire.

Mercedes-Benz Energy, part of the large automotive OEM, has expanded its range of second life energy storage partnerships into India through a 50MWh per annum module supply deal with local firm Lohum.

The two companies announced a strategic partnership with a 50MWh per annum multi-year supply agreement yesterday (4 January). It is Mercedes-Benz Energy’s (MBE) first partner for second life energy storage applications in Asia.

MBE will supply multiple second life module variants to Lohum, a company which claims to be India’s largest producer of sustainable lithium-ion battery raw materials through recycling, repurposing and refining. Part of this is developing second life energy storage applications which Lohum also claims makes it the only integrated battery recyling and re-use company in the world.

However, the fact that Swedish recycling firm Stena also owns the second life energy storage solution firm BatteryLoop makes that claim hard to justify without further explanation. Energy-Storage.news has asked the company to clarify. BatteryLoop also has a supply deal with MBE and will update this article when a response is received.

The company does offer a buy-back guarantee to its second life energy storage customers, taking the modules at the end of their second life and recycling them at its hydromet plant.

Lohum designs its second life products for the stationary and ‘non-auto mobility’ storage markets in India. The latter includes E-bikes, other two-wheelers and three-wheelers like rickshaws. For stationary applications its applications range from 6kWh to 1MWh.

“Lohum is thinking about 2nd life in a very different way than most companies,” said Gordon Gassman, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Energy.

“Theirs is a truly long-term focus with a keen understanding that one of the biggest challenges for 2nd life is the unpredictability of feedstock supply and composition. Lohum is developing expertise and applications across multiple module variants to create a long-term supply funnel. This flexibility and model unlocks value for both parties and defines the innovation and reliability we seek in strategic partnerships.”

Mercedes-Benz entered the stationary energy storage system (ESS) market in 2016 but its interest in the sector appeared to fizzle out in the following years. However, the company made a return to the sector through MBE in April 2022 when it announced the partnership with BatteryLoop, mentioned earlier, and it is now one of the leading automotive OEMs when it comes to working with companies on second life energy storage solutions.

See all Energy-Storage.news coverage of the second life energy storage market here.

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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