Ceremonial start of construction at another Greenko pumped hydro site being marked by Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy earlier this year. Image: CMO Andhra Pradesh via Twitter.

Independent power producer (IPP) Greenko has selected global technology services company Andritz to carry out electromechanical works on a pumped hydro project in Madhya Pradesh, India.

Greenko’s Gandhi Sagar pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant is part of an integrated renewable energy hub the company is building, one of three such projects in India the IPP has in the pre-construction phase.

Andritz will supply seven reversible pump units, comprising five 240MW units and two 120MW units at the 1,440MW long-duration energy storage (LDES) facility, with the company responsible for end-to-end delivery duties.

That includes designing, manufacturing, installing and commissioning the pumps, as well as main inlet valves and associated auxiliaries. The project, to be built in a village Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district uses Gandhi Sagar, an existing reservoir, as its lower reservoir, while a new reservoir will be created on higher ground.

It’s the latest project for the legacy PHES technology which still accounts for a large majority of the world’s installed energy storage capacity and the second Greenko has appointed Andritz to work on in India.

Greenko focuses on low carbon energy and infrastructure projects and has created a business model that it claims leverages digital technologies, low-cost renewable energy and pumped hydro storage to offer dispatchable power throughout the day and night and flatten out peaks in variable renewable generation from solar PV and wind.

One of its projects, in the Indian state of Andra Pradesh, was at the time of its award through government solicitation in 2018 the lowest cost renewables-plus-storage project tendered for anywhere in the world. That project began construction earlier this year (pictured above).

It has signed deals with numerous off-takers for its platform, including steel company Arcellor Mittal, with which it is co-developing a US$600 million wind and solar project paired with a nearby PHES plant.

Andritz said it will manufacture the equipment for the Gandhi Sagar project at sites operated by its local subsidiary in India.

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The handful of major Tier 1 lithium battery suppliers like CATL, seen here exhibiting at RE+ 2022, are sold out of cells for longer than the next two years in some cases, Energy-Storage.news heard. Image: CATL.

The US energy storage market’s rapid upward growth trajectory is going to lead to further scrambles for available battery supply, leading many to consider alternative technologies to lithium-ion.

That was the view of several sources at last week’s RE+ 2022, the US’ biggest clean energy tradeshow.

Wärtsilä Energy’s head of energy storage and optimisation Andy Tang said in an interview that his division of the Finnish energy and marine power solutions provider had had an “amazing year” in 2021, before supply chain issues brought it back down to earth.

After starting 2022 brightly, like many if not all in the industry, supply chain issues hit Wärtsilä, leaving it unable to supply its integrated lithium-ion battery storage solutions at contracted prices, leading to what Tang described as a process of cascading renegotiations with customers.

“We all of a sudden found in ourselves in a position where we had no battery supply,” Tang said, in a market where lithium carbonate prices had shot up 500% in one year.

While he believes the industry as a whole did a good job of coping with the changes, with most technology providers introducing raw material indexed (RMI) pricing, it was a long process of more than six months to work through and come up with mitigation strategies and negotiate with customers.

As reported last week, Sara Kayal, head of PV integrated solutions at solar developer Lightsourcebp in a panel discussion at RE+ pointed out that the industry’s current modus operandi of relying on mostly the same battery supply chains as electric vehicles (EVs), isn’t really working out.

That is becoming one of the drivers for companies like Lightsourcebp to further examine non-lithium alternatives, Kayal said, a view echoed in an interview with Fluence’s VP of marketing and head of growth Kiran Kumaraswamy.

“In general, the volatility in lithium pricing has sparked a renewed type of interest on the non-lithium technology side,” Kumaraswamy said.   

Fluence has a team working under its CTO that evaluates promising technologies, their characteristics and how they could fit market needs. But of course, competing with the most mature and therefore most bankable advanced battery technology isn’t easy for emerging tech.

IRA could exacerbate supply chain constraints

A lot of excitement felt around the US industry right now is centred on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the positive, transformative impact it is expected to have on the clean energy industry.

In the short term however, the boost in demand – which some have forecast will lead to doubling of battery storage deployments – is likely to put more constraints on already constrained industry supply chains, according to Jamal Burki, president at another utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator, IHI Terrasun.

Burki emphasises the positives of the IRA’s expected impact but says it could create a lot of stress. IHI Terrasun to date has worked with the handful of Tier 1 battery suppliers. At the moment, these are mostly sold out for at least the next two years.

“For this thing to work, there have to be additional battery suppliers that are viable. We start to see a couple that have come in, like Gotion is one that has entered and are pledging to have actual manufacturing put in the US that is dedicated to energy storage systems, and SK has made some announcements as well,” Burki said.

However, IHI Terrasun expects it will be at least three years before additional suppliers’ batteries come onto the market in large volumes.

The company is therefore looking in the short term to see if there are battery technologies that are not as bankable or haven’t been around as long as lithium-ion that could be de-risked enough to use in the next couple of years.

‘We’re the capacity that is not prioritised’

Wärtsilä’s Andy Tang said that for a long time, he believed “lithium-ion has kind of won the war” of battery technologies. In our interview, he said he has now changed his mind.

While lithium-ion costs declined year-on-year for over a decade, Tang couldn’t see how a new technology could break into the market at scale. Today however, although raw materials prices’ sharp increase has slowed, they are still elevated above what they were and there is now more awareness in the industry about supply chain risks.

“I think we’re less than 10% of the of the lithium-ion battery market, where electric vehicles are 90%. We’re the marginal capacity, and we’re the capacity that is not prioritised. All the EV capacity is clearly prioritised, and then we’re the marginal stuff that gets sold on the end,” Tang said.

“It’s not a great place to be when you’re trying to establish a really nice, stable business, and then couple that with the fact that EV penetration has gone significantly higher than anyone actually anticipated, especially in the States.”

Price increases “have really opened the door for other technologies,” as has the lack of available lithium supply coming out of the ground and being refined. It could also be an opportunity to see if there are greener and lower carbon solutions than Li-ion, with lower toxicity at end of life.

“Even if it is maybe temporary in terms of two to three years, the price dislocation and the awareness that this has given the general community that there is a lithium shortage, [that] we are second fiddle to EVs, makes people wonder: is there something else we should be looking at?”

Both Kiran Kumaraswamy and Andy Tang were tight-lipped as to what some of the most promising alternative technologies could be. Jamal Burki said that IHI Terrasun has been in “close discussions” with an undisclosed sodium battery company.

He offers a note of caution however that any alternative technologies themselves face a big challenge in building up their own supply chains, scaled production and bankability credentials to gain market traction.

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AGL brought forward the closure date of Loy Yang (pictured), where it plans to deploy a large-scale BESS. Image: Wikimedia user Marcus Wong.

Alongside the unveiling of an energy storage deployment target, the government of Victoria announced funding support this week for two large-scale battery storage projects.

As reported by Energy-Storage.news on Tuesday (27 September), the Australian state’s government has set a target to deploy 6.3GW of short and long-duration energy storage by 2035, with an interim target of 2.6GW by 2030.

The ambitious target was welcomed by Dr Bruce Mountain, an energy economist at the Victoria Energy Policy Centre (VEPC), who said the details still need to be worked out, but that the setting of a target signified the government’s recognition of the key role of storage in the energy transition.

At the same time, State Premier Daniel Andrews and energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio announced a AU$157 million (US$102.03 million) funding package for renewables and storage projects in the state, including AU$126 million for the two battery projects.

Both projects are ‘grid-forming’, meaning they will be equipped with advanced inverters that can provide synchronous inertia to the grid – an important function in maintaining grid stability that historically has been provided by the rotating mass of large-scale centralised thermal power plants.

With more renewables coming onto the system and fossil fuels being retired, there is a growing need to supply what is sometimes called ‘synthetic inertia’ or ‘virtual inertia’ from inverter-based technologies, something the Australian Commonwealth government, via the national renewable energy agency ARENA, has also been keen to support. Australia’s most famous battery project, Hornsdale Power Reserve, was recently retrofitted with advanced inverters.

AU$119 million for Renewable Energy Zone project

The majority of that funding, AU$119 million, will go to a 125MW/250MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) and grid-forming inverter project in the state’s Murray Renewable Energy Zone.

It is one of many Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) planned by states across Australia and the money is coming from a total pot of funding for the zone worth more than half a billion dollars.

Shortly after the funding announcement, Australian renewable energy developer and energy storage investor Edify Energy said it had been signed up by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for a System Support Services contract to service the BESS.

Called Koorangie Energy Storage System (KESS), the battery system will enable the REZ to host up to 300MW of renewable energy generation. It will participate in energy and ancillary services markets, while also providing that grid-forming function.

It’s expected to go into commercial operation in 2025 for a planned lifetime of 25 years and AEMO said it selected Edify as the provider of non-network services after a competitive solicitation process that began in August 2021.

AEMO was appointed by D’Ambrosio, whose full portfolio title is Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, to procure non-network services for two other REZ projects.

“This cutting-edge technology will support our new energy storage targets – the biggest in Australia – and help with our smooth transition to renewables, saving Victorian families money on their energy bills and slash our state’s emissions for generations to come,” Lily D’Ambrosio said.

Energy Innovation Fund winner

Getting AU$7 million support, the other large-scale battery project is a 100MW/200MWh system, with the funding coming from a separate state government pot, the Victoria Energy Innovation Fund (EIF).

It is being developed by FRV Australia, the local subsidiary of Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, the renewables developer owned by Saudi Arabia’s Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, together with OMERS, an infrastructure investment group from Canada.

It builds on FRV Australia’s portfolio of close to 800MWp of solar PV projects in Australia. The company is also currently working on another much smaller utility-scale grid battery system, a 5MWh co-located BESS at Dalby solar farm in Queensland.

In 2021, OMERS bought a 49% stake in FRV Australia and at the time it was claimed that the developer’s pipeline of development opportunities in battery storage was around 1.3GWh, together with about 2.7GWdc of PV developments and 637MWdc of solar plants either in operation or under construction.

OMERS also holds stakes in US renewables developer Leeward Energy and Indian independent power producer (IPP) Azure Power Global.

The project will be built in Terang, in Victoria’s Barwon South West region, with some media reports in Australia citing its total expected cost at AU$125 million.

It’s the only battery project to win in the state’s Energy Innovation Fund Round 2, alongside two bioenergy projects and a renewable hydrogen project with a total of AU$38.2 million funding for the four. Round 1 of the EIF was limited to support for offshore wind energy, but the second was open to all technologies that support the state’s net zero by 2050 policy target.

Coal plant closure brought forward

In related news, major Australia energy generator-retailer AGL said today that it has brought forward the closure date of its Loy Yang 2,225MW coal power plant to 2035 from 2045.  

The 10-year acceleration for the retirement plan was welcomed by advocacy group Environment Victoria, but the group said it still fell well short on ambition. Environment Victoria noted that AGL shareholders had voted to adopt emissions targets that met the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The 2035 closure date was a timeline “inconsistent” with the Agreement’s aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the group said, calling for closures of all Victoria’s coal plants by 2032, based on energy transition scenarios modelled by AEMO.

In late 2021, AGL got local authority planning approval to put a 200MW/800MWh BESS at the site of Loy Yang, which has a co-located coal mine next to its power station.

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McCarthy Building Companies Inc. says it has installed the final solar module on the Arrow Canyon Solar project, a 274 MW solar and 91 MW/455 MWh battery energy storage system facility located on the Moapa River Indian Reservation in Moapa, Nev. 

Secured as the EPC contractor by EDF Renewables to construct the 1,387-acre project, McCarthy and its electrical trade partner, Bombard Electric, recently installed the last of 621,093 bifacial monocrystalline modules. The project also features 7,139 NEXTracker NX Horizon trackers.

At the height of construction and module installation, there were more than 450 team members on the job site, including 46 tribal members. When fully operational in December, Arrow Canyon will generate enough energy to meet the consumption of up to 76,000 average Nevada homes.

“After installing approximately 38.8 million pounds worth of modules, this milestone is worth celebrating with EDF Renewables and the Moapa Paiutes,” says McCarthy Project Director Chris Fletcher.  

John Bastarous, vice president of construction at EDF Renewables, comments, “Seeing module number 621,093 installed is a very exciting milestone. Constructing this size of a project takes strong partnerships that share common values of safety, quality, and teamwork. We appreciate McCarthy and Bombard for their well-coordinated efforts, in achieving such a key milestone.”

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McCrea Dunton

Sunnova Energy International Inc. says it will be deploying energy from its aggregated “Adaptive Homes” to alleviate peak capacity needs and strengthen the grid in a predominantly low- to moderate-income community within Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s (PG&E) northern California service area.

Sunnova’s aggregated portfolio of customers with solar+storage systems defers the need for PG&E to upgrade the distribution infrastructure at certain substations, cost-effectively extending the useful life of the existing grid infrastructure while accommodating for customer energy demand. PG&E’s annual Distribution Resource Plan (DRP) indicated that targeted areas of the distribution system will require increased capacity for only a handful of hours per year, and Sunnova’s distributed assets are positioned to efficiently meet that need while supporting clean energy and homeowner resiliency needs.

“Our virtual power plant capabilities can be leveraged through a targeted approach to relieve grid stress in focused areas during specific event windows within PG&E’s service area,” says McCrea Dunton, senior director, energy and grid services, at Sunnova. “Sunnova is proud to work with PG&E on one of its first deployments of behind-the-meter battery storage systems as a non-wires alternative that provides our customers with increased energy resiliency.”

Since the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) established the Distribution Investment Deferral Framework (DIDF) in 2018, the CPUC has approved over 34 MW of battery storage contracts for the state’s investor-owned utilities, with 16 MW awarded in PG&E’s service area.

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Enerflo, a business automation software platform for the solar industry, has developed an integration with Storz Power, a manufacturer of energy storage systems.

The companies say the new integration will enable solar sales reps to easily and accurately configure energy storage systems and sell Storz Power AI+ Storage Systems though Enerflo’s native solar proposal tool, Optimus.

The feature is available now to all Enerflo partners and users.

Storz Power says it is the first energy storage system manufacturer to integrate with Enerflo. With an easy-to-use interface and required certification training, sales professionals will be able to customize the right appliance-based Storz Power AI+ battery package for their solar customers, add it to the solar system, and finance the total cost – all from within Enerflo.

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Left to right: Chris Peeters, CEO Elia, Elke Temme, CEO Elli, and Stefan Kapferer, CEO 50Hertz, Elia’s German subsidiary, signing the MOU. Image: Elli / Elia Group.

Volkswagen subsidiary Elli and transmission system operator (TSO) Elia Group have partnered to explore the potential of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work on integrating EVs into the electricity system. Together with Elia’s spinout organisation re.alto, which provides data solutions in the energy space, the pair have agreed on joint activities to highlight the benefits of integrating EVs into the grid.

The first area under the scope of the MOU is price signals and incentives. This will explore the ways that price signals can enable and incentivise owners to use their EVs as decentralised energy storage capacity through V2G technology to support the electricity grid.

The second area is market design. This means exploring how to give consumers freedom of choice when it comes to their energy supplier when charging their EV, regardless of where they are charging from. Aims include the removal of barriers that prevent EV fleets and consumers from choosing their supplier, smart charging service provider and aggregator at charging stations.

The third area is ensuring that data from EVs concerning their energy storage potential is reliable and secure for the power system. The fourth covers data security and safe connectivity, which means exploring mechanisms that allow the safe transmission of data, as well as defining roles and responsibilities related to steering the charging behaviour of e-vehicles whilst ensuring connectivity remains robust.

Chris Peeters, the CEO of the Elia Group, said: “The rapid rise in electric vehicles is reinforcing the need for cooperation between the electricity and mobility sectors. We want to enable the increasing number of EV users to charge their EVs while keeping the electricity system in balance.”

“As a next step, the batteries of these cars will also be able to be used in such a way that they will contribute to the overall levels of energy comfort experienced by end users. Elli shares the same vision of the future regarding electric mobility as us and also has a strong focus on digital innovations. In the context of sector convergence, we are therefore the ideal partners to develop digital consumer services together.”

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Sonnen’s exhibit at RE+ 2022. Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media.

Battery storage player sonnen and energy-as-a-service provider Sunnova have new business models that aim to turn residential and distributed battery storage into key components of energy networks.

Both companies are using the California market as the initial launching post for offerings that they hope can be scaled up and replicated around the US.

As was seen in California during August heatwaves this year, alongside the state’s fleet of more than 3GW of utility-scale battery storage, hundreds of megawatts of distributed battery storage played a vital role in keeping lights on. Sunnova, sonnen and other providers like Sunrun and Stem are hoping to better monetise the increasing valuable resource through scalable offerings.

At the beginning of September, our sister site PV Tech reported that Sunnova has applied to operate a solar and storage-focused ‘micro-utility’ in the state. Through that, the company would install a combination of household and community-level battery systems with solar PV at newbuild residential developments, aggregated and operating as complete microgrids.

Yesterday, Sunnova then said that it wants to take the energy from what it calls ‘Adaptive Homes’ to help PG&E, one of California’s three main investor-owned utility (IOU) companies, to meet peak capacity needs. Sunnova’s virtual power plant (VPP) would also strengthen the grid, acting as a ‘non-wires alternative’ to expensive distribution network upgrades PG&E would otherwise have to make.

Sunnova will deploy its Adaptive Home technology, which enables control and monitoring of everything from solar PV and batteries to home appliances, HVAC, EV charging and more, in low to moderate income communities in Northern California within PG&E’s service area.

A week ago, sonnen, the battery storage and VPP provider owned by fossil fuel company Shell, said its new consumer battery programme could be a successor to net metering in California.

SonnenConnect uses the company’s VPP software together with its battery systems to enable participation in the CAISO semi-deregulated wholesale electricity market.  

It’s being rolled out in partnership with residential energy solutions provider Baker Electric Home Energy and the pair are targeting 1.5MWh of aggregated capacity additions during this year and 35MWh by 2025.

According to Sonnen’s US CEO Blake Richetta, the company is confident sonnenConnect could “reach the necessary scale of smart, grid interactive batteries in California required to make rolling blackout alerts, like those that we recently experienced, a worry of the past”.

Providing a holistic, more sustainable solution at lower cost

Sunnova has nearly 250,000 residential customers across the US, and presently has an attachment rate of 15% for battery storage at solar customer sites, while the rate for new installations is double that, company EVP and chief marketing and growth officer Michael Grasso tells Energy-Storage.news.

Battery storage is an important component of the Sunnova Adaptive Platform, which integrates different distributed energy resources (DERs), from EV chargers to backup generators, with load control.

The ‘micro-utility’ business model, Grasso says at the RE+ 2022 tradeshow in Anaheim, California, is a play for providing a “holistic solution” based on distributed clean energy technologies.

“Each home would have its own set of Adaptive Home technology: solar, battery storage, EV charging, load control, everything that we need to manage that home’s energy.

“In front of the meter, we’d have common resources: battery storage, solar, potentially backup generation, and we would manage all of the net metering, all of the energy flows, all the energy distribution systems in that entire community.”

One of the key advantages of that is that it reduces the need to add a new community to existing utility distribution networks, and especially in California where new residential developments spring up often miles away from towns and separated by mountains, deserts and forests.

Not having to bring “heavy wires and poles” all the way to those new communities means lower cost to utilities and ultimately to their ratepayers, Grasso says.

Combining behind-the-meter residential and front-of-the-meter batteries with the communities’ various other energy resources will enable Sunnova to “manage the energy flows back and forth as necessary”. The company’s modelling meanwhile showed that about 80% of all power consumed by a community could be provided from generation sources within it and could go even higher than that.

The “core benefits” of the micro-utility model are that it offers lower cost reliable power from green sources, and at the same time increases efficiency of distribution networks by generating power very close to where it will be consumed.

SimpliPhi exhibiting at parent company Briggs & Stratton’s stand at RE+ 2022. Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media.

Trillion-dollar resiliency

Resiliency is also a huge benefit of distributed energy resources. California is a living example of that, where utilities have been enacting Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS). Distribution feeder lines are de-energised to prevent utility wires and other infrastructure from igniting wildfires and some of these PSPS events could last days, weeks or possibly even months.

A micro-utility could prevent homeowners from losing power, Grasso says, because Sunnova could control everything that happened on each node of the community microgrid.

Catherine Von Burg, CEO of SimpliPhi Energy, the battery storage manufacturer bought last year by generator and power solutions company Briggs & Stratton, has been a vocal critic of PSPS. In a March 2021 Guest Blog for this site, Von Burg also said that relying on centralised distribution networks often ties electricity supply to a single point of vulnerability.

“The utilities are shutting off the power grid and calling it ‘Public Safety Power Shutoffs’. There’s nothing safe for the public to shut off the grid, unless people have distributed customer-sited energy storage and some sort of generation source,” Von Burg said, also speaking with Energy-Storage.news at RE+.

Homeowners are quickly seeing the value of resiliency and batteries can combine with fuel-powered generators just as well as they can with solar. That applies universally, Von Burg said, not just in California.

“The truth is, energy storage is thought of as optimising and creating efficiencies for renewables. Batteries create efficiencies for generators just as much. Especially when we think about Island communities, very remote territories in the US or overseas, clinics, hospitals, schools, communities spend enormous amounts of money on fuel to feed generators. Introduce even a small bank of batteries, the generator comes on and runs for two hours or less, charges up the battery, then they can shut it off. So, the economics are tremendous and that plays out across all markets.”

The SimpliPhi CEO noted that a recent US government report put the cost of upgrading the country’s transmission grid and generation infrastructure at more than US$3.5 trillion, to enable carbon-free electricity by 2035. Meanwhile power outages cost US businesses about US$150 billion in the past year in lost income and productivity.

And it’s not just the cost that matters, transmission upgrades can have a development cycle of up to a decade.

That puts the US in a position of facing “power outages, severe economic losses, and failing infrastructure,” Von Berg says.

“We don’t have five to 10 years to work through the regulatory issues, and we certainly don’t have as a country US$3.5 trillion to invest, and that’s as it stands now. So really, what’s the solution to creating access to power that’s reliable, and that’s resilient? It’s customer sited assets, it’s generators, batteries, rooftop solar etc.”

Not long ago, there was much talk of ‘grid defection’ in the energy industry, of residential customers essentially choosing to go off-grid and end their relationship with utilities. These days, that term isn’t heard so much, and Von Berg says that it’s critical for companies like SimpliPhi to work with utilities.

“They (utilities) could get in the game to owning distributed assets. It would be a way for them to shut off the centralised grid, and still meet their mandate and promise to customers that they will deliver reliable power.”

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The battery storage site in Eisenach. Image: Smart Power.

A 60MW/67MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Germany being developed by Smart Power with technology provided by SMA is due to be completed imminently.

The Wartburg BESS project in Eisenach, Thuringia, is due to be completed in the current quarter (Q3), developer Smart Power said on Monday (26 September). Once complete, it will provide Primary Control Reserve (PCR) services and VNE (avoided network charges) services as well as intraday trading.

Thorsten Klöpper, managing director of Smart Power, said: “The Wartburg storage facility is an essential part of a reliable and climate-friendly energy supply. The aim of the Wartburg storage facility is to stabilise the frequency in the power grid, an essential part of a reliable, climate-friendly energy supply.”

It is utilising SMA Medium Voltage Power Stations with Sunny Central Storage battery inverters. A media statement said the system was built in concrete and additional space was created on the roof for the inverters, which weigh 250 tonnes. The concrete construction is more time-consuming and expensive but offers advantages in terms of the lifespan of the project, it added. It will have an output of up to 3960 kVA at system voltages of up to 1500 VDC.

The utility-scale energy storage market in Germany has been slow in recent years but looks set to pick up in the next few, as Energy-Storage.news recently wrote in a special report for Vol.32 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry.

Smart Power’s project is similar in size to one being brought online in November by RWE, a 72MW system in Werne, while 100MW/200MWh systems are being planned in Germany by developers including Siemens, in partnership with Fluence, and local player ECO STOR, although grid access studies have not been carried out as of yet for either.

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Ingrid Capacity was founded last year. Image: Ingrid Capacity.

Recently-formed energy storage developer Ingrid Capacity is building a 70MW battery storage facility in Sweden for a H1 2024 delivery date, the largest planned in the Nordic country.

The company is planning the one-hour system for an interconnection point managed by utility E.ON, the German-headquartered company, in Karlshamn, on the southern coast. It will use lithium-ion battery cells and although the company has not firmed up its chemistry or supplier of choice, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is thought to be likely.

At 70MW/70MWh, the battery storage system is considerably larger than the biggest operational facilities in Sweden today which have a power rating of around 5MW, including Vattenfall’s 5MW/20MWh system in Uppsala and Primrock’s 5.4MW unit in Falkenberg on the eastern coast.

More, larger systems are being planned including a 10MW/11.9MWh system from Alfen but Ingrid Capacity’s is the largest publicly-announced one. The driver for these projects is a growing amount of intermittent generation on the Swedish grid, which is managed by transmission system operator (TSO) Svenska kraftnät.

Balancing services have historically been provided by the country’s large pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) portfolio but balancing needs have begun to outgrow this, creating a need for easier-to-build flexibility assets like energy storage.

“Energy storage with batteries is absolutely crucial to meeting the need for an electrified society where fossil-free energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, must make up the majority of the energy mix,” said Nicklas Bäcker, chief strategy officer at Ingrid Capacity.

He added that with the deployment of a system this size, Svenska kraftnät’s “…need to create balance in the national main grids is also facilitated. The electricity grids are stabilised by storing energy in batteries at low power consumption and then pushing to energy at power peaks, locally, regionally and nationally.”

The battery storage system will provide grid balancing services like frequency response, energy trading services on the market, and local flexibility services to help distribution system operators (DSOs) optimise the local grid.

Electricity demand is also set to grow substantially in Sweden as the country electrifies industries like transportation. Local grid operator Karlshamn Energi said the locality has no current capacity problems but expects the peak power requirement to nearly double from 22MW to 38-40MW in 2040.

Bäcker told Swedish media outlets that Ingrid Capacity plans to deploy around 2GW of energy storage in the Nordics. The company’s shareholders include property developer Engelbrekt Utveckling and investment firms Springbacka and Neptunia.

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