Gov. Kathy Hochul

Gov. Kathy Hochul has released New York’s sixth competitive solicitation calling for 2,000 MW or more of new large-scale renewable energy projects. The projects will have the capacity to power at least 600,000 New York homes and maintain the predictable pace of state-contracted opportunities for private renewable energy developers. Once selected, the development of these projects is expected to spur nearly $3 billion in clean energy investments and create over 2,000 family-sustaining jobs in the green economy. Bringing more clean energy onto the grid accelerates progress toward achieving New York’s goal to obtain 70% of electricity statewide from renewable sources by 2030.

“Renewable energy is the backbone of New York’s sweeping approach to cleaning our electric grid and offers the industry a reliable path to join in our clean energy transition for the benefit of all New Yorkers,” states Gov. Hochul. “The strong public-private partnerships formed to build these projects will allow us not only to drastically lower emissions in our fight against climate change but will result in thousands of new green jobs, billions of dollars in economic growth, and an injection of private investment into local communities.”

New York is contracting with over 120 new large-scale land-based renewable energy facilities including solar farms, onshore wind farms, and hydroelectric facilities – some of which have been paired with energy storage. The projects selected through this solicitation are expected to generate approximately 4.5 million MWh of renewable electricity per year.

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) expects to notify the awarded developers in the spring of 2023. Payments under these awards will not commence until projects have obtained all required permits and approvals and become operational to power New York.  

“Coming off a historic award group earlier this year, New York is moving ahead with full force as we look to build more large-scale renewable energy projects across the state in our march towards the state’s renewable energy goal and beyond,” says Doreen M. Harris, NYSERDA’s president and CEO. “Gov. Hochul is committed to ensuring local communities have a voice in the development of these projects, and NYSERDA looks forward to working with the selected developers and host municipalities to ensure these projects are advanced responsibly and bring forward substantial community and economic benefits.”

Notable provisions in this solicitation include delivering job creation and benefits to disadvantaged communities by favorably evaluating projects that can tangibly advance benefits for these historically underserved communities, and strongly encouraging workforce development commitments and partnerships with labor and trade organizations.

It sets a minimum U.S. iron and steel purchase requirement to encourage the utilization of domestic steel in the construction of solar and wind facilities and requiring developers to provide opportunities for U.S.-based steel suppliers to participate in the renewable energy industry, in keeping with the intent of the New York Buy American Act.

The solicitation requires that workers associated with the construction of any awarded facility be paid the applicable prevailing wage to ensure construction quality and ensure family-sustaining jobs for New Yorkers. It encourages and preferentially evaluates developers that commit to utilizing New York State Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses (SDVOBs). It also incentivizes proposers to avoid development on the highest-quality agricultural lands and commit to co-utilization measures to support continued agricultural operations as well as funding to support regional agricultural operations.

The solicitation ensures that communities that will host successfully awarded projects are fully involved in the development process, and that proposers demonstrate a commitment to frequent and active community engagement. It continues to encourage proposals that cost-effectively pair renewable energy with energy storage technologies, including preferential evaluation of proposals that site storage facilities in primarily fossil-served regions of the state to combat the acute impacts of pollution that disadvantaged communities have disproportionately borne. 

Eligible projects include any large-scale renewable project that can be certified as a Tier 1 renewable technology and entered operation after January 1, 2015. Participating projects not yet in operation must show evidence that they are capable of reaching commercial operation May 2025, with the option to extend to May 2028.

Interested proposers can apply on NYSERDA’s Tier 1 Solicitations webpage. Step One Eligibility Applications are due on November 16, 2022, by 3:00 p.m. ET.

Read more about the solicitation and additional comments by officials here.

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Fluence’s Kiran Kuraswamy (right) and American Clean Power Association VP for energy storage Jason Burwen celebrating the Inflation Reduction Act on the White House lawn last week. Image: Jason Burwen via LinkedIn

The US’ Inflation Reduction Act legislation is an unexpected “huge shot in the arm” for the energy storage industry and may have doubled the addressable domestic market almost overnight.

Energy-Storage.news spoke with senior figures from battery storage system integrators Fluence and Wartsila Energy at the RE+ 2022 clean energy trade show in Anaheim, California, who discussed the landmark climate legislation and other topics.

Fluence’s VP of growth and head of commercial Kiran Kuraswamy said people at the show were “beaming with confidence” due to the surprise passing of the act’s US$369 billion in climate and energy security funding.

The introduction of the investment tax credit (ITC) subsidy for standalone energy storage means that for the first time, batteries don’t have to be paired directly onsite with solar PV generation to avail of around a 30% reduction in the upfront cost of their project equipment.

Not only is that an obvious financial boost, but today the majority of energy storage projects proposed or in interconnection queues in the US are paired with solar PV in order to qualify for the ITC. As we heard a few weeks ago from energy industry lawyer Morten Lund at Stoel Rives, it will mean battery storage projects can now be sited where they make the most sense, rather than arbitrarily needing to be built at solar farms.

Decoupling the solar and storage “development pathways” will also reduce project timelines, Kuraswamy said.

“Previously, if you did renewables-plus-storage, you would think about development from the perspective of getting land and getting permits and going through interconnection [processes] in a combined fashion to avail the ITCs,” Kuraswamy told Energy-Storage.news in an interview at the California show.

Getting interconnection on a crowded grid does remain one of the biggest development hurdles and headaches Kuraswamy said, but it is a “different dynamic to solve” and the industry will have to see what the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act really will be on deployment over the next 18 to 24 months.

Kuraswamy said Fluence also expects that the IRA’s supportive policies will drive as much as a doubling in demand for energy storage in the US by 2030.

While the details of how it will all be implemented remain to be sorted out, the legislation has “unlocked 10 years of certainty” for the marketplace, he said.

‘Coordinated policy approach to support domestic manufacturing’

Wartilsa’s head of energy storage and optimisation Andy Tang was among those surprised by the IRA and how quickly it was passed, after its predecessor Build Back Better act floundered and failed following opposition from Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema.

The bill had gone through “all of a sudden,” with Manchin coming to agreement on its terms with House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“All of a sudden, we went away on Friday, and it was dead, and we woke up on Monday, and had the approval from Manchin,” Tang told Energy-Storage.news.

“I was actually very, very, very happy to see that. It’s a huge shot in the arm for the US industry.”

Tang said the act’s support will turbocharge an industry already setting deployment records in almost every quarter over the next couple of years.

It also sends good “motivation” to the energy storage industry supply chain, with the IRA’s tax credit rules including adders for domestically sourced and produced content. That could be another vital boost at a time when the battery storage industry struggles to compete with the electric vehicle (EV) sector for supply of battery cells, for example.

While the IRA is a carrot incentivising domestic manufacturing and materials processing, the US’ Section 301 tariffs on imported Chinese goods including lithium batteries, are the stick.  

“You do have some suppliers that are waiting for the details of the letter of the law. And I think that’s a bit of a mistake to wait too long on what the detail is. You have to look at the IRA in a dual context: the IRA is one component and the other component is the so-called Section 301 tariffs,” Tang said.

“These are the tariffs that are lobbied against specific Chinese goods. List 4A is the current list for batteries right now. And the section 301 tariffs were put in place against Chinese goods in 2018 under the previous [presidential] administration, it actually had and continues to enjoy bipartisan support; one of the few things where there is bipartisan support in the US, and 2023 is when they are up for renewal. I think conventional wisdom is that they’re not going away.”

While those tariff levels are set at 7.5% for batteries – the lower end of a scale that goes up to 25% — they are expected to step up in the coming years, which would obviously impact manufacturers and their energy storage industry customers further and further.

“I actually think that what we have here is a really coordinated policy approach on how we build domestic manufacturing. You need to incentivise people to come onshore and do manufacturing, and you need to give them some period of years to do that. Factories take two three years to build,” Tang said.

“And then the incentive alone may not be enough. So, you need to have the threat of that stick that basically says your projects won’t be economically viable by a certain point in time.”

People are still “wrapping their heads around” what the details and letter of the act will really mean, Kuraswamy told Energy-Storage.news, but it is undoubtedly a “remarkable” step forwards, he said.

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The Moss Landing area in Monterey Bay, where the BESS project is located.

A fire at PG&E’s Tesla-supplied Elkhorn Battery energy storage system at Moss Landing, California, is considered fully controlled and road closures and shelter-in-place advisories have been lifted.

A statement from the County of Monterey authority, where the system is located, said that a fire at the plant started at 2am local time on 20 September (yesterday).

The fire was isolated to a single battery pack and led to the closure of Highway 1 from Molera to Jensen Road and local residents were advised to shelter in place with windows closed, due to the risk of hazardous materials.

A statement later that evening, 7.18 pm local time, said the incident was considered fully controlled and the North County Fire Department and Monterey County Sheriff’s Office had lifted the shelter in place advice and all road closures due to the incident, effective 6.50 pm.

The statement added that smoke could still occur and residents were being advised to remain vigilant.

CNBC quoted a captain of the fire department who said it was too early to know the cause of the incident.

PG&E commissioned the Elkhorn Battery, a 182.5MW/730MWh BESS which uses Tesla Megapacks, in April this year.

It is not to be confused with the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility, a 400MW/1,600MWh BESS which is located at the same site but is an entirely separate system owned by Vistra Energy, but also providing power to PG&E. That project came back online in July after several months offline due to an overheating incident.

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Source: BloombergNEF. Note: Map colored by which technology was most installed in 2021 alone. Depicts the percentage of nations that installed the most MW of each technology. It is based on country-level data for 136 countries but excludes countries that have not recorded any capacity additions. Solar includes small-scale PV.

The world’s wind and solar projects combined to meet more than a tenth of global electricity demand for the first time in 2022, according to research company BloombergNEF (BNEF). At the same time, overall electricity demand, production from coal-fired power plants and emissions all surged in 2021 as the global economy regained its footing following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“New spikes in coal generation are a troubling sign for the economy, our health and the fight against climate change,” says Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions, and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. “This report should be a rallying cry to leaders around the world that the transition to clean energy requires bigger and bolder actions, including actions that empower nations that have contributed the least to climate change – but bear many of its worst consequences – to make progress tackling it.”

With nearly 3,000 TWh of electricity produced, wind and solar accounted for a combined 10.5% of global 2021 generation, BNEF found in its annual Power Transition Trends report. Wind’s contribution to the global total rose to 6.8% while solar climbed to 3.7%. A decade ago, these two technologies combined accounted for well under 1% of total electricity production. In all, 39% of all power produced globally in 2021 was carbon free. Hydro and nuclear projects met just over one quarter of the world’s electricity needs.

Every year since 2017, wind and solar have accounted for the majority of new power-generating capacity added to global grids. In 2021, they hit a record three-quarters of the 364 GW of new capacity built. Including hydro, nuclear and others, zero-carbon power accounted for 85% of all new capacity added.

“Renewables are now the default choice for most countries looking to add or even replace power-generating capacity,” states Luiza Demôro, head of energy transitions at BloombergNEF. “This is no longer due to mandates or subsidies, but simply because these technologies are more often the most cost-competitive.”

Solar continued to expand at a particularly fierce pace in 2021, both in terms of new capacity additions and new markets. Solar was half of all global capacity added, at 182 GW. Its contribution to global grids topped 1,000 TWh for the first time. Solar has also become essentially ubiquitous. In nearly half of all countries tracked by BNEF where some capacity was added, solar was the top choice in terms of volume. At least 112 countries now have at least one MW of solar capacity installed.

Despite the incredible inroads renewables have made, the Power Transition Trends report paints a stark picture of the enormous work that remains for the power system to address its role in climate change. As the global economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, electricity demand surged 5.6% year-on-year, putting new strains on existing infrastructure and fossil fuel supply chains.

Lower-than-expected production from hydro plants and higher natural gas prices also helped put coal-fired power back in the spotlight in more markets. Production from coal plants set records by jumping 8.5% from 2020-2021 (up 750 TWh on a net basis), to 9,600 TWh. Over 85% of that generation came from 10 countries, with China, India and the U.S. alone accounting for 72%.

Meanwhile, countries continued to complete constructions of new coal plants in 2021, and coal still accounts for the single largest share of global capacity at 27%. One small bright spot: the speed at which new coal is being added to the grid is slowing. Just 13 GW of new coal-fired capacity was completed in 2021, down from 31 GW in 2020 and 83 GW in 2012.

Nonetheless, the result was a commensurate 7% spike in global CO2 emissions from the power sector in 2021 compared to 2020. Power-sector emissions set a new high at 13,600 mega tons of CO2, BNEF estimates.

“It was a year of highs and highs, for the best and worst reasons,” comments Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BNEF. “Renewables grew very fast, but coal’s comeback and the fact that countries – including those that have pledged to achieve net-zero emissions – continue building coal is really disconcerting.” BNEF’s Power Transition Trends report was produced in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and will be officially released at the United Nations Climate Action: Race to Zero and Resilience Forum in New York today. Read the full report here.

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The solar and storage project will eliminate the need for costly infrastructure upgrades. Image: Nexamp / National Grid.

US community solar and storage provider Nexamp is providing a co-located facility as a non-wires alternative to a substation in New York state.

The Watertown Renewables at the Coffeen substation in Watertown project pairs an 8.4MW solar PV array with a 31MWh battery energy storage system. The BESS is made up of 10 Tesla Megapack units, the EV giant’s utility-scale product.

The substation is run by the US subsidiary of the UK’s National Grid and the project will eliminate the need for additional transmission lines or substation upgrades. The project has been engineered to allow National Grid to call on the system for up to 5.7MW/29MWh up to 25 times per year, either from the BESS or the solar PV.

The project will also serve local residents through Nexamp’s community solar programme, allowing them to save on energy bills while delivering renewable energy to the grid. It is expected to be completed early next year.

“This project is significant because it represents a number of important firsts,” explained Chris Clark, chief development officer, Nexamp. “It is our first NWA (non-wires alternative) project and is the result of a lot of hard work and collaboration between Nexamp and National Grid.”

The company said it has dozens of other solar and storage projects in operation across the Northeast and elsewhere in the US. It recently completed two energy storage projects co-located with existing solar PV in Massachusetts, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

Energy-Storage.news also recently interviewed the company’s VP for energy storage, Mark Frigo.

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SunPower, a residential solar technology and energy services provider, has expanded its portfolio of energy storage products with the launch of a 19.5 kWh and 39 kWh SunVault. These new battery configurations offer increased energy density and maximize space within the battery as compared to previous versions of SunVault, providing the ability to store more energy into a single box. For customers, this means they can purchase more energy storage for less money and fit it in less wall space, with the option to build a larger system as the home’s energy needs evolve. SunPower has also made design upgrades that can make SunVault faster and easier to install.

“Every homeowner has unique energy storage needs – some want the peace of mind that they can power essentials during a blackout like a refrigerator and WiFi, while others want the flexibility to also charge an EV or run their air conditioning,” says Nate Coleman, chief products officer at SunPower. “With these new storage sizes and higher power output through multiple inverters, SunVault’s modular configuration allows customers to get the storage size they need today with the reassurance that they can grow their system as their home energy requirements change.”

Homeowners can manage their SunVault energy storage with the mySunPower app to see how much energy is available during peak-demand to reserve for an outage or lower energy costs by using stored energy. Further, all SunVault energy storage systems are backed by a 10-year warranty, regardless of how much the battery is charged and drained over time.

With this launch, SunVault is now available in five configurations: 13 kWh, 19.5 kWh, 26 kWh, 39 kWh and 52 kWh. Some of these options include multiple inverters. SunVault configurations with multiple inverters and storage capacity of 26 kWh and more have the potential to power the whole home, so customers don’t have to choose between comfort and essential loads during an outage.

The new SunVault sizes will be available beginning early 2023.

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Ojjo, a provider of next-generation solar foundations, has closed a $40 million Series C funding round led by NGP ETP, the energy transition investing platform of NGP, with Ajax Strategies also participating. In addition, James Wallis, partner at NGP, has joined Ojjo’s board of directors.

The new funding will accelerate Ojjo’s growth and execution on its 9 GW active project pipeline. Ojjo’s patented Earth Truss System offers a fast and efficient means of securing ground mount solar systems. The company’s system has been contracted or constructed in over 1.6 GW of solar projects to date, including on the nation’s largest standalone solar and storage project, Gemini Solar. Ojjo has previously raised a total of $27 million across two prior funding rounds, with participation from Cthulhu Ventures and other investors.

“We’re thrilled to welcome our investors, NGP ETP and Ajax, who have long shared Ojjo’s vision for accelerating the growing and vibrant solar industry,” says Mike Miskovsky, chairman and CEO of Ojjo. “For too long, our industry has had to make do with pile foundations that were never designed for solar applications – often resulting in avoidable project costs and labor inefficiencies. As we enter the era of TW-scale solar, our industry will increasingly require optimized, solar-specific mounting and installation hardware. This investment is the critical next step to scaling Ojjo’s innovative technology and speeding the nation’s transition to solar.”

“Solar foundations represent a major untapped opportunity in the industry. We believe that Ojjo’s experienced team is perfectly positioned to deliver innovation, automation, and cost savings at a time when the industry needs it most,” states James Wallis, partner at NGP. “NGP’s extensive portfolio and deep expertise – spanning both traditional oil and gas as well as energy transition segments – allowed us to quickly recognize the benefits of Ojjo’s structural design and drilling-process innovations, resulting in dramatic reductions in pre-drill and remediation requirements. We are excited to offer our financial support and strategic guidance as Ojjo continues to expand and bring value to this market.”

“We’ve been early supporters of Ojjo’s team and technology, and our follow-on investment was a natural fit for our shared vision of delivering revolutionary solutions to solve climate change,” comments Matt Rogers, Ajax’s operating partner. “The timing couldn’t be better for solar innovations such as Ojjo with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which enables consistent growth over the next decade for domestic renewable energy production. Ojjo has all the necessary capabilities to help the industry scale to take full advantage of this unique and timely opportunity.”

“Ojjo’s Earth Truss systems have been proven in the field on hundreds of megawatts of projects, in a variety of soil conditions. It’s clear the industry is hungry for technologies that can deliver project-level cost savings relative to today’s commodity offerings,” mentions Helena Kimball, president of Ojjo. “We have worked hard to establish the supply chain sophistication, drilling machine fleet uptime, and the field support to ensure our EPC customers have rewarding experiences installing Ojjo foundations. We are grateful to our investors for recognizing Ojjo’s advantage, and for providing us the financial stability to scale well into the future.”

Ojjo provides its Earth Truss hardware, field engineering services and automated Truss Driver machines to solar developers, EPCs and their foundation subcontractors. In addition, Ojjo has partnered with solar tracker manufacturers to develop streamlined, fully compatible hardware, further reducing steel componentry and overall system costs.

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Greg Shambo

Borrego, an EPC and O&M provider for large-scale solar and energy storage projects in the United States, has launched a new O&M customer portal. The web-based application gives operations and maintenance customers immediately actionable insights into project data, cases, reports and service contracts in one central location. The customer portal is available to all Borrego O&M customers, with access and training provided during the project onboarding process.

It provides Borrego customers with instant visibility into day-to-day service status across all of their projects. The portal features project data, in-depth reporting, service contracts, historical service details, and information on cases and work orders, including whether Borrego is waiting for customer permission to move forward with work.

“Having access to project-level O&M service details and status 24/7 will enable asset owners to be more productive and ensure high availability, particularly in the case of portfolio customers managing dozens or even hundreds of projects,” states Greg Shambo, VP of sales and business development for O&M for Borrego. “Customers trust Borrego O&M to provide real-time transparency and communication, and the customer portal takes that relationship to another level.”

The portal’s open API platform works with existing customer systems. Data from Salesforce.com and other software services can be integrated into a single place and customers can add portal data into other programs. The system architecture enables further expansion of the portal with rapid development cycles.

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Image: Gotion via Twitter.

US solar and storage EPC and O&M company Borrego has entered into a master supply agreement (MSA) with Gotion High-Tech for the latter’s DC block battery energy storage equipment, starting in 2023.

The MSA will provide Borrego with gigawatt-hours of secure, fixed-price volume capacity of Gotion’s product, available for customer delivery starting next year, the company said.

Borrego is a pure-play engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and operation & maintenance (O&M) provider for solar PV and energy storage, having recently sold its project development arm to investment firm ECP (which then re-named the business New Leaf Energy).

A press release described Gotion as a “global tier-one vertically integrated stationary and EV battery and storage system manufacturer”.

Its energy storage modular solution uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells, which is growing in popularity for stationary energy storage thanks to better safety features and – before the spike in lithium carbonate prices – lower cost than nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries.

John duPont, vice president of business development and operations at Borrego said: “We have a multi-gigawatt-hour vendor pipeline of storage products at fixed pricing available for utility and distributed generation projects requiring delivery in 2023-2025.”

“This locked-in capacity will help our customers avoid expected supply chain constraints when the Inflation Reduction Act kicks in.”

Industry observers expect the Inflation Reduction Act, recently passed by US president Joe Biden, to boost both the upstream and downstream energy storage sectors domestically.

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Karl Miller

Jingoli Power has launched a new solar engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) division as part of its renewable energy services portfolio. Jingoli Power LLC is a professional services provider for complex electric utility construction projects and a subsidiary of Joseph Jingoli and Son, Inc, a 100-year-old privately held New Jersey-based construction firm.

Jingoli Power’s EPC Solar unit is currently supporting the execution of two U.S. EPC projects with Lightsource bp and plans to take on utility-scale solar projects up to 500 MW. The Jingoli team is a mix of engineers, trade supervisors, project managers, military veterans and utility line workers. The company’s core leadership team has worked together for over 15 years.

“Our team is optimally positioned to deliver on the growing demand for competitive and reliable utility-scale solar development,” states Karl Miller, CEO of Jingoli Power. “Our crews are eager to be part of helping to build the grid of the future.”

In communities where it has active solar projects, Jingoli Power will also provide job training and apprenticeships to residents and teens interested in STEM careers through its Competitive Edge program, which is designed to ensure a project’s investment dollars remain in the community to build a stronger local economy and workforce. Through Competitive Edge, Jingoli Power also recruits minority- and women-owned subcontractors, offers incentives for subcontractors to hire a diverse local employee base, and prioritizes purchasing from community-based suppliers.

“Not only can we help power our way to a clean energy future, but we can do so in an equitable and inclusive way to open up new job opportunities and career paths to new sources of talent and innovation,” adds Miller. “It’s an incredibly exciting and rewarding time to be in the electric construction industry.”

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