An aerial view of the project in Tuscany, Italy. Image: Business Wire.

Utility and power generation company Enel Group and Brenmiller Energy have inaugurated a thermal energy storage system in Italy using the latter’s proprietary bGen technology.

Israel-based Brenmiller’s energy storage unit has been deployed at a power plant in Santa Barbara, Tuscany, and will help the plant to use renewable energy, by enabling reduced start-up times and greater speed in load variations.

The system charges by heating rocks using steam from the facility, and discharges by releasing the accumulated heat to heat pressurised water and generate steam for electricity. It can store up to 24MWh of heat energy at 550°C for five hours.

“Our TES (thermal energy storage) system at Enel’s Santa Barbara power plant in Tuscany is the first-ever system of its kind to provide utility-scale thermal energy storage and offers commercial and industrial users a viable path towards decarbonisation,” said Avi Brenmiller, Chairman and CEO of Brenmiller Energy.

The partnership between Enel and Brenmiller was first announced in 2018, when the pair announced they were exploring the possibility of deploying a 60MWh system at an Enel site, covered by Energy-Storage.news at the time.

Enel also announced at the time it was exploring a deployment with another thermal energy storage firm, EnergyNest, but no concrete project has been revealed since then. Since then, EnergyNest raised €110 million to commercialise its thermal battery technology.

The Israeli Innovation Authority provided €1 million in financing to Brenmiller for the project with Enel. The unit deloyed is much larger in scale than the last project that Brenmiller announced, a 1MWh system in Brazil for water infrastructure firm Fortlev which it revealed in August.

The firm expects to have an annual production capacity of 4,000MWh by the end of 2023 from its facility in Dimona, Israel.

Brenmiller is one of several firms to have made progress in launching grid-scale energy storage systems using heat-based technologies. Others include EnergyNest, MGA Thermal, Malta Inc and Kyoto Group. Click here to read more about developments in the thermal energy storage sector.

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New Zealand’s first megawatt-scale Tesla BESS, inaugurated in 2016. Image: Vector Energy

Development approvals have been granted for New Zealand’s biggest planned battery energy storage system (BESS) to date.

The 100MW battery storage project is in development by electricity generator and retailer Meridian Energy at Ruākākā on New Zealand’s North Island. The site is adjacent to Marsden Point, a former oil refinery.

Meridian said last week (3 November) that it has received resource consent for the project from the Whangārei District Council and Northland Regional Council authorities. It marks the first stage of Ruākākā Energy Park, with Meridian hoping to also build a 125MW solar PV plant at the site later.

Meridian aims to have the BESS commissioned during 2024. The company’s head of renewable development Helen Knott said the help it will give to the grid will reduce volatility of supply and demand, and therefore contribute to bringing down electricity prices.

“We’ve seen our electricity system come under occasional strain with supply issues that have led to price instability. The battery storage will help to reduce these events by smoothing the distribution of supply and demand,” Knott said.

The system will charge with cheap energy during off-peak hours and send it back to the grid at times of high demand. It will also enable more power generated on New Zealand’s South Island to be utilised in the north.

In helping increase the utilisation of renewable energy, the facility could also enable fossil fuel resource retirements on the North Island, Knott said.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news in March, New Zealand’s biggest publicly announced battery storage project is a 35MW system currently under construction by electricity distribution company WEL Networks and developer Infratec.

Also on the North Island, that project is nearing its expected completion date in December this year, with BESS technology provided by Saft and power conversion systems (PCS) by Power Electronics NZ.

The country’s first megawatt-scale battery storage system is thought to have been a 1MW/2.3MWh project completed in 2016 using the Tesla Powerpack, Tesla’s first iteration of an industrial and grid-scale BESS solution. However the first BESS to be connected to the high-voltage transmission grid in New Zealand came two years after that.

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Construction at Neoen’s 100MW Capital Battery project. Image: Neoen via Twitter.

French independent power producer (IPP) Neoen has reported a 46% increase in revenues for the first nine months of 2022 versus the same period last year.

The company said revenues from its solar PV business were 20% higher from January to September this year, its wind revenues up 50% and its energy storage revenues have multiplied 2.7 times over compared to the same period of last year.

In the opening nine months of 2021, Neoen netted €23.8 million (US$23.66 million) from energy storage and €65.4 million this year. Solar revenues went up from €123 million to €147.5 million and wind from €94.3 million to €141.1 million.

In reporting its latest quarterly figures, Neoen said its nine-month unaudited revenue total was €354.6 million, a 46% increase on the 2021 equivalent period. It has also beaten 2021’s full-year total of €333.6 million. Q3 2022 revenues were also 68% higher than Q3 2021’s.

The company is revising its EBITDA target range up from a previously offered €380 million to €400 million to between €390 million and €410 million.

Earlier in the year, Neoen had said that the strong revenue uplift in its energy storage segment had been largely driven by the Victorian Big Battery (VBB), at 300MW/450MWh the largest battery energy storage system (BESS) in Australia.

The VBB participates in merchant opportunities in the National Electricity Market (NEM) frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) markets, as well as performing energy arbitrage. It also has a long-term contract in place to provide capacity reserve to the grid under the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO’s) System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS).

The BESS was commissioned in December 2021 and since then, it earned a significant chunk of its Q1 revenue from its capacity reserve contract as it helped open up capacity on interconnectors between Victoria and New South Wales in summer peaks. Then in Q2 and Q3, as Australian energy pricing remained volatile, FCAS and arbitrage contributed a bigger share of revenues.

Neoen also pointed to positive performance from its Hornsdale Power Reserve BESS in South Australia and another large-scale BESS project in Finland. Energy storage revenues for the quarter were 26 million, again a significant increase on 10.5 million for Q3 2021, while the company noted that in the nine-month period, storage accounted for 18% of total revenues, as opposed to 10% in 9M 2021.

However, at the moment, of 2GW of clean energy projects Neoen is constructing around the world, only a relatively small portion is new BESS capacity. The 100MW/200MWh Capital Battery near Canberra, Australia, is the biggest.

As it stands, 12% of Neoen’s 5.6GW total capacity in construction or operation is battery storage, versus 49% solar and 39% wind. During 2021 it commissioned 898MW total wind, solar and storage capacity, of which 300MW was the Victorian Big Battery, its only completed BESS project in the year.

This year so far it has only completed 12MW of BESS at two equally sized projects in El Salvador, with the Capital Battery scheduled for completion next year.

Australia continues to be an important energy storage market for Neoen – last week the company announced a deal with mining and resources company BHP to supply 70MW of renewable energy to BHP’s Olympic Dam copper, gold, and uranium extraction site.

Energy from Neoen’s Goyder South Stage 1 wind farm project in South Australia will be supplied as “baseload” energy, firmed up using Neoen’s planned 300MW Blyth Battery project nearby. It should be sufficient to meet 50% of the Olympic Dam facilities from July 2025 and planning approval for the battery storage system was given in April.

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GameChange Solar’s high power producing MaxDensity east-west tilt racking system is debuting at $.039 per watt in the United States and $.029 globally for a typical 105 mph wind load with moderate soil corrosions. The system is capable of handling up to 120 mph wind and 10 psf snow loads. Posts and galvanization can be upsized to survive extreme soil corrosion for additional costs.

MaxDensity has much fewer part types than a typical fixed tilt racking system, making it faster than conventional fixed tilt structures. There is no heavy equipment such as pile drivers required, only handheld tools are needed. In addition, the MaxDensity system offers owners higher power production than any other fixed tilt structure or tracker systems by packing far more modules onto a site.

“MaxDensity is an important new addition to our product offerings,” states Derick Botha, chief commercial officer at GameChange Solar. “MaxDensity offers unprecedented value to customers and is a significant innovation to the benefit of the solar industry by both driving structure and overall plant costs substantially lower, and also by significantly increasing the amount of energy generated. We hope to see a rapid adoption rate for this new system.”

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Ben Tillar

Greenbacker Capital Management has partnered, through an affiliated investment vehicle, on a to-be-constructed 200 MW Ac / 240 MW DC solar plant in Iron County, Utah, with rPlus Energies LLC, a preeminent utility-scale renewable energy developer.

The Appaloosa Solar 1 project is now the second largest renewable energy project in the overall Greenbacker fleet, in terms of clean power–generation capacity. The asset that previously held that title recently entered commercial operation in neighboring Carbon County: the 80 MW AC / 104 MW DC Graphite Solar (Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company’s largest operational solar energy project to date).

Appaloosa reunites many of Greenbacker’s project partners involved with Graphite, which was developed, built and commissioned by rPlus. Sundt Renewables is again providing engineering, procurement and construction services. Like Graphite, Appaloosa has a long-term power purchase agreement in place with utility PacifiCorp on behalf of Meta. The contract was developed under Rocky Mountain Power’s Schedule 34 green energy tariff, which allows large customers to purchase renewable energy generated on their behalf.

“Building durable partnerships is critical to building the future of energy,” says Ben Tillar, VP of investments at Greenbacker. “We’re excited to continue collaborating with these industry experts on utility-scale solar plants like Appaloosa, which will support green jobs, diversify the region’s energy infrastructure, and help Utah run on cost-effective renewable power.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Greenbacker again,” comments Luigi Resta, president and CEO of rPlus Energies. “They have proven to be great partners that share similar feelings of responsibility and deep respect to the communities we are developing in.”

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A Stem Inc commercial and industrial battery storage project. Image: Stem Inc/CleanCapital.

Stem Inc has posted record quarterly revenues for Q3 2022, with the AI-driven energy storage company claiming it could begin recording positive EBITDA figures in the second half of next year.

In its latest financial results, published yesterday, the company reported US$99.5 million revenues for the period ending 30 September.

That was more than 150% higher than the US$39.8 million recorded in the same period of 2021 and 49% more than the US$67 million revenue it recorded in Q2 this year.  

Over the first nine months of this year, Stem Inc earned US$207.5 million revenues, already smashing the 2021 full-year total of US$127 million.

The company’s storage assets under management grew from 1.4GWh to 2.4GWh from Q3 2021 to Q3 2022, and its contracted backlog is worth US$817.2 million, up from US$727 million as of the end of Q2 2022.

The acquisition of solar PV monitoring and controls software company AlsoEnergy just before the end of 2021 also contributed to company earnings, putting a 25GW portfolio of solar assets under management into Stem Inc’s hands.

Stem said higher-than-guided revenues were driven largely by higher hardware revenues in both the front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter segments, while AlsoEnergy contributed US$17 million of revenue.

Revenue guidance reaffirmed

However, the cost of scaling and commercialisation still stands in the way of Stem Inc turning a profit. The company went publicly listed in late 2020 and company leadership said in filings with the SEC that it believed it could achieve profitability during, but not likely before, 2023.

Stem Inc reaffirmed its previously-offered revenue guidance for this year in the range of US$350 million to US$425 million and raised the lower end of expected value of bookings from US$775 million to US$850 million, while the upper end remained unchanged at US$950 million.

Its EBITDA is expected to be between -US$60 million and -US$20 million, with adjusted EBITDA for the quarter -US$13 million versus -US$7 million in the third quarter of 2021. The year-on-year EBITDA decrease was explained by the company as the result of increased personnel costs and investment in growth initiatives.

Meanwhile, non-cash revaluation of warrants tied to changes in the value of underlying stock took the company to a net loss of US$34 million in the quarter, versus net income of US$116 million in the third quarter of 2021. It ended the third quarter with US$294 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments.

Stem Inc emphasised that demand that it was already seeing grow for its products and services, has already gone up further since the recent passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) climate policies.

With more than US$600 million in customer orders booking in the year-to-date and what the company described as a line of sight to finish this year with a billion-dollar-backlog, Stem Inc claimed it is positioned to be EBITDA positive by the second half of next year.

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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Steven D. Ridge

Dominion Energy has promoted Steven D. Ridge to senior vice president and CFO, succeeding James R. Chapman, who will be leaving the company for a senior finance role outside the utility industry after a transition period. Ridge will be responsible for corporate and financial planning, investor relations, tax, treasury, mergers and acquisitions, and asset management.

“At Dominion Energy, we have remarkable bench strength,” says Robert M. Blue, chair, president and CEO. “Steven Ridge is a great example of that. After nearly a decade in energy investment banking, Steven joined Dominion Energy and has spent the past eight years in leadership roles in mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy, financial management, and investor relations. During much of that time he worked closely with Jim Chapman and me, along with the rest of our senior leadership team. For the past year, he has been successfully leading our western gas operations that serve nearly 1.2 million customers. He has a wealth of experience in finance, is well-known to many of our investors, and is a strong, capable leader.”

Before his current role leading western gas operations, Ridge served as vice president of investor relations. He was an executive director in the Energy Investment Banking Group at J.P. Morgan in New York prior to joining Dominion Energy in 2014. During his nearly decade-long banking career, Ridge worked with clients in the electric and natural gas utility sectors on strategic and financing transactions.

“During his tenure, Jim has adeptly overseen a rapid transition to an asset mix largely defined by state-regulated utility operations and a capital plan aimed at decarbonization in support of public policy goals and our commitment to net zero emissions by 2050,” states Blue. “He has served the company well, and we wish him good fortune in the next chapter of his career.”

“I am very grateful for the opportunity I have had to work with the outstanding team at Dominion Energy over the past nine years, and am proud of the accomplishments we have made on behalf of this great company’s customers and shareholders,” adds Chapman.

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Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Image: Chrystia Freeland via Twitter.

Canada’s government will introduce tax incentives for clean energy technologies, including solar PV, battery storage, and hydrogen.

Announced yesterday by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland as part of Canada’s Fall Economic Statement 2022, the move has already been welcomed by renewable energy, energy storage and manufacturing trade groups.

The government proposes to introduce a refundable tax credit equivalent to 30% of the cost of capital investment into electricity generation systems, stationary electricity storage systems, low-carbon heat equipment and industrial zero-emissions vehicles and related charging or refueling equipment. Projects that do not meet requirements on local labour conditions will get a 10% reduction in the minimum tax credit rate

A higher rate of investment tax credit, 40%, will be available for hydrogen projects that meet all eligibility requirements on carbon intensity, with incentives reducing as related carbon emissions go up. As with generation and storage, meeting labour conditions will be worth 10% of the credit.

“With major investment tax credits for clean technology and clean hydrogen, we will make it more attractive for businesses to invest in Canada to produce the energy that will power a net-zero global economy,” Freeland said.

The move comes close on the heels of the US’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which introduced an investment tax credit for standalone energy storage projects, extended the existing solar PV ITC and wind production tax credits for 10 years and introduced incentives for manufacturing and hiring domestically.

Canada’s government has sought to close a competitive gap that the US’ IRA legislation’s US$369 billion of climate spending and investment looks set to open.

As with the IRA in the US, the details or the implementation of new tax credit incentives in Canada are still to be determined.

However, the Canadian government did say that electric generation systems eligible include solar PV, small modular nuclear reactors, concentrating solar power (CSP), wind, hydroelectric, tidal and wave power.

All forms of electricity storage systems that do not use fossil fuels are eligible, with the government highlighting that this includes but is not limited to: batteries, flywheels, supercapacitors, magnetic energy storage, compressed air energy storage, gravity energy storage, thermal energy storage and pumped hydro.

Also in response to the IRA, Canada wants to boost its own competitiveness and attractiveness to investment with the creation of a CA$15 billion (US$11.05 billion) ‘Canada Growth Fund’. The country’s past economic stability has been built largely on natural resources and emissions-heavy industries, but the fund is aimed at facilitating private investments into an increasingly low-carbon economy.

The government hopes that the CGF can be set up in the first half of next year, with its strategic aims including reducing emissions and helping Canada meet climate targets, and accelerating investment into technologies like low-carbon hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

Tax credits welcomed by industry

National renewable energy association CanREA welcomed the Fall Economic Statement and said the inclusion of the clean energy and hydrogen tax credits reflected recommendations it had made in its advocacy work.

“This is a positive sign that Canada’s government is taking bold action to decarbonise with investment certainty for solar energy, wind energy and energy storage,” CanREA’s VP of policy and government affairs Brandy Giannetta said.

The generation and storage ITC is expected to cost CA$6.7 billion over five years and will be available as of the first day of the 2023 budget and will then be in place until 2035, with a phase-out period from 2032.

Earlier this week, Energy-Storage.news published a Guest Blog from Justin Rangooni, executive director of trade group Energy Storage Canada.

Rangooni wrote that energy storage has a vital role to play in the future electricity system in all provinces of the country, but that policy and regulation haven’t yet caught up. With a recent report commissioned by the trade association finding that Canada needs between 8GW and 12GW of storage by 2035 to be on the right path to net zero by 2050, the need for supportive policy is urgent, he said.

The country has less than a gigawatt of installed energy storage capacity today and “policy makers and government agencies need to coordinate a revamp of the entire regulatory and legislative framework to include and accommodate energy storage,” Rangooni wrote in the blog.

Yesterday, Energy Storage Canada reacted enthusiastically to the Fall Economic Statement with the following tweet from its official account:

“We’re thrilled to see the govt’s commitment in their fall economic statement to keeping pace with the US Inflation Reduction Act with a 30% refundable ITC for all forms of #EnergyStorage. Such competitive measures are critical to ensuring Canada’s success on its path to #NetZero.”

In early October, the provincial government of Ontario began a push to procure between 1,500MW to 2,500MW of energy storage to help meet projected shortfalls in electricity at peak times, which despite happening just a few weeks ago, was perhaps the most significant energy storage policy development in Canada until yesterday’s announcement.

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Joseph DeCarolis, administrator of the U.S. Energy Information Administration

Image: United States Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Construction costs for solar photovoltaic systems continued to decrease in the United States in 2020; the capacity-weighted average fell 8% compared with 2019, according to the latest data in U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Annual Electric Generator Report on newly constructed utility-scale electric generators. By contrast, average construction costs for both wind turbines and natural gas-fired generators increased compared with 2019, by 8% for wind and 4% for natural gas.

These three technologies – solar, wind and natural gas – accounted for over 95% of the capacity added to the U.S. electric grid in 2020. Investment in new electric generating capacity in 2020 increased by 40% compared with 2019 to $46.3 billion dollars.

Average solar construction costs across all solar panel types fell 8% to $1,655 per kW in 2020. The decrease was primarily driven by a 17% drop in the construction cost for cadmium telluride tracking panels, which fell to $1,631 per kW, their lowest capacity weighted average cost since 2014.

The average construction cost for crystalline silicon fixed-tilt panels fell by 13%, although they were still the most expensive of the major solar technologies, at $1,957 per kW.

The majority of solar panels installed in the United States are crystalline silicon tracking panels. Unlike fixed-tilt systems, solar tracking systems move to follow the sun as it moves across the sky, allowing for greater electricity production. A majority of tracking panels in the United States are single-axis tracking systems. In 2020, crystalline silicon tracking systems accounted for 61% of the utility-scale solar capacity added to the U.S. power grid. Construction costs for these systems increased by 6% in 2020, settling at $1,587 per kW.

The average construction cost for onshore wind turbines rose 8% in 2020 from $1,391 per kW in 2019 to $1,498 per kW.

The two largest wind-farm size groups accounted for 95% of the wind capacity added to the U.S. power grid in 2020. The average construction cost for the largest wind farms—those with more than 200 megawatts (MW) of capacity – increased by 11% to $1,393 per kW. Wind farms ranging from 100 MW to 200 MW were the only group to decrease in average construction costs in 2020, from $1,615 per kW in 2019 to $1,531 per kW in 2020, down 5.2%.

Wind farms with 1 MW to 100 MW of capacity had an average construction cost increase of 53% to $2,530 per kW in 2020. The average construction cost for natural gas-fired generating plants rose 4% from 2019 to 2020.

The majority of natural gas electric-generating capacity installed in 2020 came from combined-cycle facilities. The average combined-cycle generator construction cost increased by 22% in 2020 to $1,155 per kW, up from $948 per kW in 2019.

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The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued three additional notices requesting public input on key climate and clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The trio of notices follows an initial set of notices requesting comment the Department issued in October.

These notices are part of Treasury’s ongoing efforts to engage a broad spectrum of taxpayers and stakeholders to inform its work implementing the Inflation Reduction Act. Nearly three-quarters of the bill’s $369 billion climate change investment – $270 billion – is delivered through tax incentives, putting the department at the forefront of this landmark legislation.

In addition to these notices requesting public comment, the department has also been hosting a series of roundtable discussions with key stakeholder groups representing thousands of companies, millions of workers, and trillions of dollars in investment assets, as well as climate and environmental justice advocates, labor unions, community-based organizations, and other key actors that are critical to the success of the Inflation Reduction Act.

And last week, the department announced it will host Tribal Consultations in late November and a consultation with Alaskan Native Corporations (ANC) in early December on key provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that affect Indian Tribal governments and ANCs.

The notices issued today seek comment from the public on tax incentives related to: (1) commercial clean vehicles and alternative fuel vehicle refueling property, (2) carbon capture, and (3) clean hydrogen and clean fuel production. Those interested in providing feedback should follow the instructions in the Notices and reply as soon as possible, ideally by December 3, 2022.

Additional background on the Treasury Department’s work to implement the Inflation Reduction Act:

August 16, 2022: Treasury Releases Initial Information on Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Under Newly Enacted Inflation Reduction Act

October 5, 2022: Treasury Seeks Public Input on Implementing the Inflation Reduction Act’s Clean Energy Tax Incentives

FACT SHEET: Treasury, IRS Open Public Comment on Implementing the Inflation Reduction Act’s Clean Energy Tax Incentives

October 26, 2022: READOUT: Stakeholder Roundtable on Clean Power Generation and the Inflation Reduction Act

October 27, 2022: READOUT: Stakeholder Roundtable on Climate Impact, Equity, and the Inflation Reduction Act

FACT SHEET: Four ways the Inflation Reduction Act’s Tax Incentives Will Support Building an Equitable Clean Energy Economy

October 31, 2022: READOUT: Stakeholder Roundtable on Investor Perspectives on Climate Change, Clean Energy, and the Inflation Reduction ActImage: “Solar Panel” by redplanet89 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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