ESS Inc Energy Warehouse unit for large commercial and industrial applications. Image: ESS Inc via Twitter.

Recently announced deals and partnerships in the California and Australia markets are a taste of the future ahead, ESS Inc has claimed.

The US company is the world’s only manufacturer of flow batteries that use an all-iron and saltwater electrolyte. It just published its Q3 2022 financial results, having been publicly listed in late 2021.

ESS Inc is currently on the path to commercialise its products, aimed at the long-duration energy storage market for applications of between about six and 14 hours. It only began recognising revenues in the second quarter of this year, and said prior to its listing that profitability would likely be at least a couple of years away.

In Q2, it recognised US$686,000 revenues from three units sold and installed of its 400kWh Energy Warehouse commercial and industrial (C&I) storage solution. In Q3, it recognised US$189,000 revenue from one unit shipped.

The third quarter revenue figure is significant, ESS Inc CEO Eric Dresselhuys said, because the company has been working hard to reduce the time between producing and shipping Energy Warehouse or the larger Energy Center units and recognising revenues.

In this case, revenues were recognised within the three-month period the order was placed and the client, installer Terrasol and its customer Sycamore International, have made a follow-on order for a second unit at the site.

Also significant is that ESS Inc expects to exceed its targeted 750MWh of annual production capacity from its existing production lines in Pennsylvania, which are currently being fitted out with semi-automated and then fully automated battery module lines by the end of this year. Dresselhuys claimed the company could ship around 20 more units before the end of 2022.

CFO Amir Moftakhir said that ESS Inc wants to speed up the revenue recognition process further, while also implementing cost reduction measures.

While the company ended Q3 with an adjusted EBITDA of -US$24 million, there is expected to be “ample liquidity to run the business” and ESS Inc should finish the year with more than US$120 million in cash and cash equivalents.

‘Unprecedented catalyst to the market’

As reported by Energy-Storage.news, ESS Inc signed a deal with California municipal utility Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) to provide up to 200MW/2,000MWh of iron flow batteries in September.

CEO Dresselhuys noted that SMUD’s targeted net zero emissions date is 2030, 15 years earlier than the state of California’s target date. With SMUD providing electricity to about 1.5 million customers, other utilities will quickly realise the value of long-duration energy storage (LDES) and follow its example, Dresselhuys said on a call to explain financial results.

Also during the quarter, ESS Inc cemented a deal for its batteries to be shipped and sold in Australia, before the technology is then licensed for manufacturing and sale locally. Partner Energy Storage Industries Asia-Pacific (ESI) will distribute and manufacture Energy Warehouse units for the Australia, New Zealand and Oceania markets.

Starting with delivery of 70 units this year and next, ESI, will then build its own iron flow battery factory in Queensland by 2024.

Dresselhuys said that as regions with high renewable energy penetration, Australia and California are a little ahead of the adoption curve for energy storage, but that other markets around the world will start to look similar.

Together with the SMUD deal, the ESI partnership creates “a meaningful base of business” for ESS Inc, the CEO said.

Within the US market, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is expected to have a “transformative impact,” Dresselhuys said. Customers should be able to avail of a 30% baseline investment tax credit (ITC), paired with a 10% bonus for using American-made ESS Inc batteries.

If sited in an economic or energy development zone, projects could get up to 50% credit and coupled with local grants could add up to savings approaching two-thirds the cost in some instances.     

ESS Inc products will also be eligible for production tax credits (PTC) of about US$45/kWh shipped. Dresselhuys called the combination of incentives an “unprecedented catalyst to our market”.

In a recent interview with this site at the RE+ 2022 trade show in California, ESS Inc’s senior VP for business development and sales Hugh McDermott said demand for flow batteries is reaching an inflection point.

“There’s no major market, anywhere in the world, where there’s not major players that have reached out and want to know more about what long duration storages are, about our technology and our capability,” McDermott said.

ESS Inc announced another California deal a few days ago: the company will provide a 75kW/500kWh Energy Warehouse to an ‘ecocampus’ owned by municipal water company Burbank Water and Power. It will be paired with a 265kW solar PV array on the facility’s rooftop.

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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Attendees at the inauguration and grant-giving ceremony last week, including Tribe chairman John Christman (fifth from left). Image: Invinity Energy Systems.

Invinity Energy Systems and Eos Energy Enterprises are providing long duration energy storage systems to the ‘biggest renewables microgrid project in the US’, being developed for the Viejas Tribe of Kumeyaay Indians in Southern California.

That claim is from Invinity CEO Larry Zulch, Viejas Tribe Chairman John Christman and Allen Cadreau, CEO of the developer behind the project, Indian Energy, in an exclusive interview with Energy-Storage.news.

Eos’ zinc batteries the second of three non-lithium technologies

Eos Energy Enterprises has been revealed as the supplier of a zinc-hybrid cathode battery storage system totalling 3MW/35MWh for the 60MWh microgrid project which received a US$31 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC) last week. Eos’ order is worth US$13.5 million.

The microgrid project will also include 15MW solar PV and will provide power to the Viejas Casino and Resort, located on the lands of and owned by the Tribe, described as the economic ‘lifeblood’ of the Tribe by Christman.

It will provide renewable backup power to the community through critical services at the site during outages, and allow the tribe to shift electricity use away from the statewide grid and reduce costs by load shifting the solar production. It is expected to come online in H1 2023 and will be optimised using Indian Energy’s in-house software platform.

Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) company Invinity Energy Systems is providing a 3MW/10MWh unit, its largest to-date and the largest flow battery in North America, as reported last week. The remaining 15MWh of the energy storage has not been contracted yet, Indian Energy CEO Allen Cadreau told Energy-Storage.news, but is it not planned to be lithium-ion.

A ‘perfect storm’ leads to largest renewable microgrid in US

Speaking about the origins and development of the project, Christman said: “This was essentially a perfect storm, where the speed of how we were able to partner with Indian Energy was mind-boggling. I’ve never seen so many government agencies move so quickly.”

“Indian Energy proposed a microgrid project a while back, which we were really in need of at the time due to numerous SDG&E (a utility) power shutoffs. We wanted to be able to power the community without portable power generators. People in the community have also constantly been asking when we are going to go into solar to go green. That partnership went into a flywheel project at first before morphing into this solar microgrid.”

He added that the microgrid project would help the local community adopt the additional energy infrastructure needed to decarbonise, citing EV chargepoints as an example.

“We have a need to contract with known good long duration energy storage, and enrolling the banks to be able to bank these technologies is a struggle right now. Indian Energy’s vision along with the Viejas is to come together and prove these technologies through the RICU at MCAS Miramar,” added Cadreau, referring to Indian Energy’s advanced energy storage testing facility to validate long duration technologies at the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar.

“As the Tribe is located at the end of a power line the quality can also be an issue, which can have huge impact on the local economy. The microgrid platform is designed to be able to dynamically load follow.”

Asked why Indian Energy opted for non-lithium technologies, Cadreau added: “Lithium-ion is wonderful but it’s just not utility scale capable. We knew from the beginning that it was not going to be capable of doing the heavy lifting we want it to.”

Zulch agreed that the project would provide a testing ground for scaling up Invinity’s technology up to grid-scale, but also that it could demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of large-scale microgrids more widely.

“It creates an alternative vision for future energy delivery in California, one which at its core has microgrids in areas like the Native tribes’ where there’s an ability to think differently,” he said.

The CEC’s grant is the first of some US$380 million that California will put towards long duration energy storage technologies in the state, starting with US$140 million in fiscal year 2022-23. Christina Snider, Tribal Affairs Secretary to Governor Gavin Newsom who announced the funding, said the Viejas grant was most likely the largest awarded to a tribe in the US, ever.

Christman and Cadreau both agreed the project would have gone ahead without the CEC’s funding but at a smaller scale. Cadreau conceded that, although as a whole the project had been ‘seamless’, the gap between the different bridge loans needed up until now was ‘a bit of a struggle’.

“Building the biggest renewable energy microgrid is always going to have its difficulties but we don’t accomplish things by being conservative, we accomplish them by setting big targets,” Zulch said.

Christman added: “This is exciting. We want to get this up and running by next year, when we’ll hopefully be able to report that we are a successful operation that is off of the grid, though there’s a lot of working parts with this obviously.”

Invinity Energy Systems also provided one of its battery units for the largest existing hybrid battery energy storage system in the world, the Energy Superhub Oxford in the UK, which you can read more about here.

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UK-based Connected Energy, one of the biggest second life BESS companies with projects such as this one in Belgium, mainly gets its batteries from Renault. Image: Connected Energy.

Nissan, Renault and Mercedes-Benz are at the forefront of providing EV batteries for companies developing second life battery energy storage systems (BESS), but the market for such batteries is still thinly-traded. 

That has become clear from interviews conducted by Energy-Storage.news for an upcoming feature on the second life BESS market for PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly journal on the downstream solar and storage sector. 

Nissan and Renault are emerging as leaders in providing second life batteries to companies that specialise in repurposing them into stationary storage systems. 

Mercedes-Benz, through subsidiary Mercedes-Benz Energy (MBE), is also active in working with outside companies but is mainly providing test vehicles or off-the-factory-line modules rather than ones that have actually been on the road. 

“MBE is at the forefront in providing quality-assured batteries,” said a source in the second life BESS market. 

Nearly all automotive groups with developed product lines of EVs are working on ways to incorporate used batteries into second life BESS units to some extent. But those outside these three have tended to keep these under wraps, in-house, or have limited their publicly announced moves to single, large-scale projects.

Unsurprisingly, the marketplace for buying and selling used EV batteries from third parties today is small, with pricing still determined by the market for new batteries. 

“Right now the price dynamics are obscure because there are only a few companies buying and selling them so it’s not a liquid market,” another source said. 

“We see a price range of €60-70/kWh (US$59.88 – US$69.86/kWh) for lower quality modules and €140-€160/kWh for higher quality ones. Compare that to around €200/kWh for new modules, although that is in light of a decades-long fall from €1,000 to €100 which was reversed last year.”

“Obviously the price of second life shouldn’t be influenced by current lithium or new battery shortages but it’s still influenced, because sellers know what they can charge.”

It should be said that providing used EV batteries to companies developing second life BESS products is far from the only solution, or even the most sustainable. Battery packs can also be reused for other vehicles, sold direct-to-consumers or put into the recycling chain. 

Piotr Grudzień, Innovation Consultant for Bax & Company wrote a lengthy guest blog for Energy-Storage.news on the topic, specifically covering Europe, back in June this year. 

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Sean Gallagher

The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has filed responses to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s request for public comments on the clean energy tax provisions of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As part of its ongoing efforts to support implementation of the IRA, SEIA is working with its members to provide industry insight and expertise to help Treasury and other federal agencies clarify pieces of the legislation.

“The clean energy tax credit provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act are designed to create jobs and speed our energy transition in a just and equitable fashion over the next decade, making effective and durable implementation a critical part of our clean energy future,” says Sean Gallagher, vice president of state and regulatory affairs at SEIA. “SEIA’s regulatory and policy experts are deeply involved in the public comment process and continue to work hard to identify gaps and formulate policy recommendations that will help clean energy companies and the administration maximize the benefits of this law.”

There are several important tax provisions in the IRA that require more clarity, including domestic content specifications and whether companies can apply existing “Buy America” domestic content regulations to solar and storage facilities. SEIA is also seeking a fair and open application process for the low-income community allocated tax credits that includes all market segments and contains strong consumer protection measures for low-income households.

SEIA also is encouraging Treasury to use transparent, easy to understand prevailing wage rates and to make reasonable accommodations on apprenticeship programs, such as defined geographic areas where employers should seek out apprenticeship programs.

The solar and storage industry and other stakeholders are responding to relevant requests for information and proposed rules about the IRA, and anticipates requests from the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, among others.

“Collaboration will be a key part of this process, and we’re calling on federal agencies to work with industry at every stage of implementation and move expeditiously to provide guidance,” Gallagher adds.

SEIA is currently reviewing EPA’s recent request for information on its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and plans to comment on this program and future requests from DOE and other agencies.

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Will Anderson

Complete Solar and Solaria have completed their previously announced merger, forming Complete Solaria Inc. to deliver end-to-end residential solar solutions.

“We are thrilled to announce the completion of the merger between Complete Solar and Solaria. This merger redefines residential solar with breakthrough technology, services, and operational excellence, to empower sales and installation partners to scale up and increase the adoption of residential solar,” says Will Anderson, who will lead the combined company as CEO. “Our customers and partners can expect the same high level of attention we have always provided and more. Complete Solaria’s combined assets and vertically integrated business model are positioned to deliver a unique end-to-end experience for homeowners, offering premium, beautiful solar products, best-in-class technology, access to financing, and superior project fulfilment and service.”

“I’m extremely excited about what the combination of Complete Solar and Solaria will be able to achieve,” states Tony Alvarez, the company’s president. “Solaria’s dealers and distributors will benefit from access to Complete Solar’s sales partners and digital platform, and Complete Solar’s partners will benefit from the ability to offer the industry’s leading premium solar panel. We couldn’t be happier to join with Complete Solar and make progress toward our shared vision of a clean energy future.”

The combination of these two companies establishes Complete Solaria as a full system operator with an offering with technology, financing and project fulfilment that will enable the company to sell more product across more geographies in the United States and Europe.

On a pro forma combined basis, Complete Solaria generated $80 million in revenue in 2020, which is projected to increase to over $120 million in 2022, and more than double to approximately $285 million in 2023, with the expectation of achieving breakeven EBITDA in the second half of 2023.

The completion of the merger between Complete Solar and Solaria satisfies one of the conditions to closing of the previously announced business combination between Complete Solaria and Freedom Acquisition I Corp., which is expected to close in the first half of 2023, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions. The business combination with Freedom is supported by strategic relationships, including financial backing from the Carlyle Group and T.J. Rodgers, which were both investors in Solaria. Freedom, led by Tidjane Thiam, Adam Gishen and Edward Zeng, will also retain a stake in the combined company following the closing.

The business combination with Freedom is expected to provide gross proceeds of $376 million, prior to any potential redemptions and payment of transaction expenses, which includes $346 million of cash held in Freedom’s trust account and promissory notes from certain investors. Under the terms of the business combination agreement, all shareholders of Freedom who do not exercise their redemption rights will roll their equity holdings into the new combined company.

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A blackout at an airport can have global ramifications. Image: Rawpixel.com.

Developer On.Energy is deploying 39MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS) at airports across Latin America (LATAM), Energy-Storage.news can reveal.

The Miami-based company is deploying the units at 11 undisclosed airports across Latin America. The energy storage systems will provide the airports with improved grid reliability in the event of blackouts, reduce their annual emissions and reduce their utility bills by up to 25%.

“When any airport in the world loses power, it causes a global chain reaction impacting millions of airport operators, airline staff, as well as vendors and passengers. Latin American airports are rapidly adopting BESS to support energy reliability, while also improving efficiency, reducing operational costs, and supporting national decarbonisation goals,” said Jose Manuel Diaz, On.Energy’s president for South and Central America.

The firm has offices in the US, Mexico and Peru. The 39MWh deployments add to five airport BESS systems that are already operational or in the final stages of commissioning.

The projects are being deployed through a collaboration with Skysense, a company which develops airport security monitoring software, mainly for rogue drones.

On.Energy raised US$100 million from UK fund SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust plc (SEEIT) in August for its US and Canada energy storage project deployments.

The firm has to date mostly delivered commercial & industrial-sited (C&I) BESS projects, with around 100MWh in operation or construction and a pipeline of 3.8GWh across the Americas.

Its country manager for Mexico David Fernandes discussed the Mexican market in an interview with Energy-Storage.news in January last year.

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Kathryn Meyer

Primergy Solar Management LLC, a developer, owner and operator of utility scale solar, distributed solar and energy storage, has submitted its initial permit application to La Plata County, Colo., for the proposed 155 MW AC Hesperus Solar Project. The proposed project is located eight miles from Durango and is expected to deliver enough zero-emission electricity to power up to 56,000 homes annually.

“This is the first step in our journey to bring solar energy to the community around Hesperus, and we are grateful for the feedback we have already received from community members, La Plata County, and the State of Colorado,” states Kathryn Meyer, director of development at Primergy. “We look forward to working with our partners, landowners, and neighbors throughout the permitting process, and as we continue to develop and grow meaningful partnerships together.”

The Hesperus Solar Project is proposed to be located on approximately 1,900 acres in La Plata County on the Western Slope. The project includes 1,600 acres of private property, and 320 state-owned acres located on Fort Lewis College’s Old Fort at Hesperus Campus. The College and Primergy have entered into a solar energy planning lease to evaluate the suitability of those 320 acres for hosting a portion of the project. If approved, Hesperus Solar is expected to be operational as soon as the end of 2025.

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A diagram of the two projects. Image: RWE.

Global energy firm RWE has finalised its investment decision for two battery energy storage systems (BESS) totalling 220MW, in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany.

The BESS units will be installed at RWE power plants in Neurath and Hamm, both in the western state which borders the Netherlands and Belgium, using a total of 690 lithium-ion battery system blocks.

The new systems will contribute to the stabilisation of the German electricity grid and will be ‘networked virtually’ with the adjacent power plants, allowing optimisation of the assets.

The system at Hamm will total 140MW of power while Neurath will be an 80MW system, while a press release said the systems will have a duration of “over an hour”. A similar duo of projects which RWE is set to bring online this month have a duration of 1.14 hours (112MW/128MWh).

RWE is undertaking the project design, modelling, system integration and commissioning in-house, and expects to start construction next year for a 2024 commissioning date. The projects amount to €140 million (US$129 million) of investment.

Roger Miesen, CEO of RWE Generation, said: “This investment decision paves the way for a future-looking project that will set new standards in terms of size as well as intelligent networking. Our new battery storage system will optimise the utilisation of our German power plant fleet, and in tandem they will provide balancing energy.”

It is the latest in a series of high-profile announcements on large battery storage projects in the German market, which has marked a turnaround after the country installed just 32MW of grid-scale (1MW-plus) projects last year.

Around 200MW is set to have come online over the course of 2022 and projects like RWE’s and Fluence’s 250MW Grid Booster for transmission system operator TransnetBW are set to massively expand the country’s pool of flexibility resources to help it hit renewables targets.

RWE currently operates 150MW/160MWh of battery storage and is developing 800MW/1,800MWh of projects worldwide, with ambitions to have built 3GW by 2030. Recently commissioned units include a 60MW system in Ireland (covered by sister site Solar Power Portal) and a 40MW solar-plus-storage battery system in Georgia, US.

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A project in the UK that Fotowatio recently invested in. Image: Harmony Energy.

Investor Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) has acquired a 600MW portfolio of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in development in Greece.

The Madrid-based renewables investor has acquired the set of projects from local developer Wootis SA.

The BESS units are ‘well advanced’ in their development, a press release said, and will come online over the next 12-18 months, between Q3 2023 and Q2 2024. FRV claimed it is the largest portfolio of battery storage systems in the country.

Wootis specialises in the management and monitoring of renewable energy assets, as well as operation and maintenance (O&M) services. The two companies will collaborate on developments in addition to the transacted portfolio.

Fady Jameel, deputy president and vice chairman of FRV’s parent company Abdul Latif Jameel, the Saudi conglomerate, said: “Greece has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to achieving its target of doubling the country’s green energy capacity by 2030, which we are excited to take part in with this project.”

Energy-Storage.news reported on the EU country’s doubling of its energy storage deployment target from 1.5GW to 3GW by 2030 back in April this year. Several announcements involving large project portfolios since then have indicated it is likely to easily achieve this goal.

In September, the EU approved state aid to the tune of €341 million for a 900MW pipeline of energy storage projects, to be sourced from Greece’s portion of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the EU-wide economic programme to mitigate the negative effects of the Covid pandemic.

That pipeline refers mainly to grid-connected utility-scale projects while a recent announcement from Nanotech will see it aim to deploy over 1GWh of commercial and industrial-sited units in Greece, highlighting its many islands as good potential locations.

The Greek energy storage market was highlighted as a strong opportunity by two UK companies interviewed by Energy-Storage.news recently – investor Gore Street Capital and battery insurtech firm Altelium.

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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