Gov. Kathy Hochul

Gov. Kathy Hochul is releasing $16.6 million in awards for five long duration energy storage projects that will help harness renewable energy and provide stored energy to New York’s electric grid. Gov. Hochul also announced an additional $17 million in competitive funding available for projects that advance development and demonstration of scalable innovative long duration energy storage technologies, including hydrogen. The projects will support the current Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal to install 3,000 MW of energy storage by 2030 while facilitating further development to 6,000 MW.

“Innovative, forward-thinking approaches to transforming the way energy is stored are critical to fighting climate change and transitioning to a clean energy economy,” says Gov. Hochul. “New York is making bold investments in clean energy, and this $16.6 million in awards for projects that harness renewable energy and under-utilized long duration energy storage solutions will be a game changer for meeting the state’s ambitious climate and energy goals. By advancing new and more sustainable energy storage technologies, we are ushering in a cleaner, greener future for New York.”

These awards and new funding are being made available through the Renewable Optimization and Energy Storage Innovation Program administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The awards and funding will advance renewable energy integration and reduce harmful emissions from reliance on fossil fuels

Borrego Solar Systems Inc. is receiving $2.7 million to develop, design and construct two stand-alone energy storage systems and perform field demonstrations of a six-hour zinc hybrid cathode energy storage system in New York City to help demonstrate that zinc hybrid technology is economically competitive with lithium-ion.

The additional $17 million in competitive funding will encourage further product development and demonstration projects in energy storage that are 10 to over 100 hours in duration at rated power, otherwise known as long duration energy storage. Project submissions should advance, develop or field-test hydrogen, electric, chemical, mechanical or thermal-electric storage technologies that will address cost, performance, siting and renewable integration challenges, such as grid congestion, hosting capacity constraints and lithium-ion siting in New York City. Submissions must only include innovative, long duration energy storage technologies that are yet to be commercialized. Awards will be made for the following project categories: product development, demonstration projects and federal cost-share. Proposals will be accepted through October 17, 2022. Additional details for this solicitation are available on NYSERDA’s website.

“The technologies and processes being advanced through these projects are representative of Governor Hochul’s commitment to supporting innovation that fosters product development and solutions that aid our clean energy transition,” says Doreen M. Harris, president and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and co-chair of Climate Action Council. “This type of funding support is critical to ensuring that stored renewable energy from solar or wind is available for long periods of time and can be utilized to ensure a reliable grid of the future.”

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AES Clean Energy’s Lancaster Area Battery, a 127MW/508MWh BESS which has just gone online. Image: AES Clean Energy president Leonardo Moreno via LinkedIn.

Energy stored in batteries is being dispatched in large volumes in California as record-breaking hot weather in the Western US has brought the state’s electricity sector into crisis.  

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which manages the grid and oversees electricity wholesale markets for more than 80% of California, has been issuing ‘Flex Alerts’ since August.

CAISO activates the alerts to manage the shortfall of electricity supply versus demand, asking customers to turn down their power usage and bringing as many resources as it can to ramp up supply.

For example, in Mid-August, a Flex Alert signified the first time that a network of 2,500 Tesla Powerwalls, aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) in the service territory of California investor-owned utility (IOU) Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), delivered up to 16.5MW of stored solar energy to the grid.

While in 2020, utilities enacted rolling blackouts in some areas to protect the grid and last year’s summer period also saw Flex Alerts activated, no one has been under any illusion that margins could continue to be tight. State Governor Gavin Newsom made moves to expedite battery storage deployment through cutting red tape as a State of Emergency was declared last year.  

CAISO had said prior to the summer that it expected to have 4GW of battery storage capacity available, mostly from grid-scale, four-hour duration battery energy storage systems (BESS), it hasn’t quite made it that far. However, it is thought to be close to that mark, especially with a few big systems coming online in the past few weeks, like a pair of projects from AES Corporation totaling 227MW/908MWh.

The past few days have seen that fleet in action in a big way.

On 6 September, Jill Anderson, executive VP for operations at another big utility, Southern California Edison, tweeted that it was “incredible” to see battery storage set “record after record of grid support during this intense heatwave”.

The most extreme mismatch between supply and demand generally comes between 7pm and 9pm, in the evening peak. Anderson posted a graph from CAISO showing that around 7pm on that day, well over 3,000MW of battery capacity was discharging to the grid.

“Just now we saw batteries discharging more than double last year & orders of magnitude more than what was available to the grid in 2020,” Anderson tweeted.  

The day before (5 September), CAISO had “barely made it through” without rolling blackouts and had relied heavily on battery storage as well as more than 8GW of imports, Ryan Sweezey, a principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, said in a LinkedIn post.

The state may not always be able to rely on imports today or in the future, Sweezey said, “but the storage is here to stay,” noting that while on 14 August 2020 when rolling blackouts did occur, storage discharge between a two-hour evening peak window was just 50MW, versus around 2.5GW in the same period on 5 September 2022.  

Contribution in California set to grow – and get smarter?

In fact, on CAISO’s ‘Today’s Outlook’ page on its website, users can track the status of demand, supply, emissions and prices, looking at current statuses as well as trends. It makes for fascinating, if unapologetically nerdy, viewing.

That shows that while the relative contribution of batteries may be small compared to say renewables, large hydro, natural gas and imports from other states, its role as a dispatchable resource is an important one in closing that supply-demand gap.

It’s not just large-scale batteries either, as that earlier Tesla reference showed. In 2021, smart energy storage and software provider Stem Inc said it dispatched more than 500MWh from customers’ commercial and industrial (C&I) battery systems enrolled in grid services programmes during June heatwaves. Stem’s fleet isn’t just in California, but most of it is.

At the end of August this year, residential solar PV and energy storage installer and leasing company Sunrun sent media including Energy-Storage.news a press release claiming that it was dispatching more than 80MW of stored battery capacity from customers’ homes into the CAISO grid every day.

That’s more than several of California’s fossil fuel peaker plants, and an increase of more than 60% from 2021, the company said.

Despite the increasingly important role of batteries, there are still some inefficiencies in market design to resolve that can help them contribute even more.

Cody Hill, an engineer and senior VP at energy storage developer and operator Rev Renewables noted that one of Rev Renewables’ battery projects dispatched at a time of day when day-ahead market caps rose above a threshold.

However, the more serious need for energy came later than that, by which time the 125MW system was already discharged and unable to contribute, Hill tweeted.

An article for Vol.31 of our journal PV Tech Power, published in the second quarter of this year, looked at the role large-scale battery storage plays on the grid today, with reference to key battery storage market regions like California’s CAISO, Texas’ ERCOT grid, the UK and Ireland, Western Europe and Australia.

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A battery storage project deployed for a utility in Indiana to reduce fuel consumption and running time at a fossil fuel plant. Image: FlexGen.

The US Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) has included electricity storage into its market portfolio for the first time.

MISO is responsible for overseeing the electrical grid and associated wholesale markets – in other words generation and transmission of high-voltage electricity – across all or part of 15 states of the US and the Canadian province of Manitoba.

The regional transmission organisation (RTO) and independent system operator (ISO) began including energy storage into the market resource mix for the first time at the start of this month, making an official announcement on Tuesday (6 September).

Energy storage is a resource that can support resilience and reliability of the grid as MISO transitions to remove fossil fuel generation from the grid and replace it with cleaner resources like wind and solar PV, the grid operator said.

“We are excited to see this space grow with increasing member interest and participation, particularly as we continue to adapt to the accelerating resource transition. With the introduction of Electric Storage Resources to our market portfolio, we will continue to position MISO’s grid and its members for the ‘Grid of The Future’,” MISO executive director for system operations Jessica Lucas said.

Electricity storage will now be able to participate in MISO Energy and Operating Reserves Market as supply and demand resources.

While none of the regions covered by MISO are particularly known for their adoption of energy storage to date, some companies active in the US battery storage market have spoken to Energy-Storage.news about the strong potential they see for the technology in the regions it covers.

For instance, in a 2021 interview with this site, Jeff Bishop, CEO of energy storage developer Key Capture Energy and his colleague Taylor Quarles mentioned the MISO region as one of the exciting up and coming markets in the US.

Quarles said the company had 600MW of projects in development in MISO at the time of the interview. Bishop explained that MISO territory does not have shale gas reserves under the ground for the most part, unlike another large grid territory, PJM Interconnection.

With MISO’s covered states including states like Arkansas, Indiana and the Dakotas, the market has historically been a coal-based one, along with some nuclear generation. Those are baseload sources of energy that can’t ramp up and ramp down quickly, meaning that as more wind and solar PV come onto the system, the system can’t be balanced by burning natural gas as happens in parts of PJM.

In contrast, electricity storage resources can quickly respond to grid signals that call for injection of power to the grid or withdrawal of power as they charge or discharge respectively. That means storage can be effective in reducing peak demand, managing grid congestion or providing backup power in the event of major disruptions.

Of course, coal is being retired across pretty much all US states for economic, environmental and climate-related reasons, including those in MISO, which leaves a big opportunity for batteries to fill in the capacity gaps alongside renewable energy.

Changing MISO price signals

Also in 2021, Sam Huntington, an analyst at IHS Markit, told the site that traditionally coal-focused regions of the grid in the US Midwest – where much of MISO sits – were already then seeing a lot of planned activity from utilities and developers to deploy grid-scale energy storage.

That was partly due to coal retirements, but also very much to do with the improving economics for energy storage and solar-plus-storage technologies. Huntington noted however that with much of the Midwest “oversupplied” with energy capacity, activity might not take off until coal retirements really took hold throughout this decade.

At that time, this oversupply meant MISO had not implemented strong price signals for firm energy resources, such as four-hour duration battery storage systems.

That is now changing. In April, Energy-Storage.news reported for example that a 131MW, four-hour duration (524MWh) battery energy storage system (BESS) project had been proposed by developer Open Road Renewables in Indiana.

Open Road Renewables president Cyrus Tashakkori said that MISO capacity auctions for 2022-2023 had revealed an 8GW shortfall in capacity resources in the transmission area’s central region. This led to high clearing prices for resources that ensure grid reliability, leading to the developer and others proposing large-scale battery projects to solve those reliability issues.

MISO has adopted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) definition of electric storage resources (ESRs): “…a resource capable of receiving electric energy from the grid and storing it for later injection of electricity back to the grid regardless of where the resource is located on the electrical system”.

That includes non-battery technologies too, like pumped hydro energy storage or compressed air. MISO noted that in the current state of play, with limited storage resources active on the system, the impact of changes will be limited.

However, in light of the increasing penetration of renewables and higher adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs), the changes position the system operator well to handle increased deployment and participation of energy storage in its service area in the coming decade.   

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A render of the Greenport campus where the BESS will be located. Image: Greenpower via Linkedin.

A 200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) from developer Available Power at a net-zero technology campus in Texas is expected to be online in mid-2024.

The 100MW, two-hour system is being built on land leased from the GREENPORT International Airport and Technology Center near Austin, Texas.

The lithium-ion BESS unit is in advanced development and has entered the interconnection queue of ERCOT, the grid operator covering the majority of the Lone Star State. It will provide a combination of grid stability services to ERCOT as well as participating in the wholesale electricity market.

ERCOT does not have a centralised capacity auction like the UK national grid so BESS units make money entirely from selling energy to buyers in the market, as well as grid frequency response services regulation reserve service (RRS) and a sub-set within that group called fast frequency response (RRS-FFR).

The GREENPORT campus includes a corporate campus for hosting data centres, research and development, energy demonstrations, corporate offices and government agencies that have high-security requirements.

It is also set to open a new private airport this year, the GREENPORT International Airport (GIA). Developer GREENPORT Energy, LLC, is aiming for the campus and airport to reach net-zero carbon emissions.

As part of that, it said it is developing a “biofuel-based” Combined Cycle Combustion Turbine (CCCT) thermal plant that will eventually generate 800MW of renewable energy as well as a microgrid for the entire campus.

It said Available Power’s BESS will enhance the resilience of the airport, although did not give specific details of use cases like peak shaving or backup power, and described the BESS as front-of-meter.

Available Power is a Texas-focused energy storage developer founded by president Benjamin Gregory and CEO Daniel Gregory in early 2020, after both finished stints at Shell.

The ERCOT, Texas energy storage market has been a hive of activity in recent months. A 100MW pipeline of ten projects, to be developed by FlexGen, was recently bought by investment fund SUSI Partners from SMT Energy, while gravity-based storage company Energy Vault is delivering a 200MW BESS for Jupiter Power.

And in a flurry of big portfolio deals, UBS Asset Management, Spearmint Energy and Cypress Creek Renewables acquired 600MW, 150MW and 400MW of projects, respectively. The seller to both UBS And Cypress Creek was Black Mountain Energy Storage.

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Abigail Ross Hopper

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will help the U.S. solar market grow 40% over baseline projections through 2027, equal to 62 GW of additional solar capacity, according to new forecasts in the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q3 2022 report released by Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk business.

According to Wood Mackenzie, the utility-scale sector will lead the solar industry’s growth over the next five years with 162 GW of new capacity. Cumulative solar installations across all market segments will nearly triple in size, growing from 129 GW today to 336 GW by 2027.

“This report provides an early look at how the Inflation Reduction Act is going to transform America’s energy economy, and the forecasts show a wave of clean energy and manufacturing investments that will uplift communities nationwide,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO. “With this incredible opportunity comes a responsibility to clearly address concerns over forced labor and ensure that we have ethical supply chains throughout the world.”

Despite a rosy outlook for the next five years, solar installation forecasts for 2022 have dropped to 15.7 GW, the market’s lowest total since 2019, due primarily to a Commerce Department tariff investigation. In June, the White House paused new solar tariffs for two years, providing some relief to the market. However, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect on June 21 and has resulted in detentions of solar modules, exacerbating ongoing supply chain challenges.

The report finds that the UFLPA could limit solar deployment through 2023 due to module availability constraints, delaying the near-term effectiveness of the IRA to 2024 and beyond.

“The Inflation Reduction Act has given the solar industry the most long-term certainty it has ever had,” states Michelle Davis, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report. “Ten years of investment tax credits stands in stark contrast to the one-, two- or five-year extensions that the industry has experienced in the last decade. It’s not an overstatement to say that the IRA will lead to a new era for the U.S. solar industry.”

Demand for rooftop solar is at historic highs in the face of power outages and increasing electricity prices. The residential solar segment set a record for the fifth consecutive quarter with nearly 180,000 American households installing solar in Q2. The IRA will drive an additional 7.3 GW of residential solar capacity over the next five years, and the new standalone storage tax credit across all market segments is expected to improve grid reliability.

Even as supply chain constraints slowed the market, solar accounted for 39% of all new electric generating capacity additions in the first half of 2022. The U.S. solar market now represents about 4.5% of the nation’s electricity mix.

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NeoVolta will deploy its batteries in EOS charging stations. Image: NeoVolta / EOS.

Home energy storage system provider NeoVolta will deploy its solution at up to 1,000 EOS Linx EV charging stations across the US.

The Nasdaq-listed company said it will start deploying its batteries in charging stations at selected bp-branded locations in the state of Georgia.

The initial installations are part of an expected rollout of NeoVolta batteries in 1,000 EOS Linx EV charging stations at various gas stations, convenience stores, and hotel chains across the country.  

NeoVolta will also provide intelligent power management for the EOS charging stations as part of the partnership and it said its batteries will provide clean solar energy. EOS Linx said that it combines solar energy and energy storage in its charging stations.

Integrated batteries into EV charging stations allows operators to optimise the energy consumption of the charging park to reduce grid charges or increase the share of renewable generation in the power it provides – even without on-site generation, by charging from the grid at times of high renewables generation.

“In NeoVolta, we have found the smart energy storage solution that meets our high standards for reliability and performance,” said EOS Linx CEO Blake Snider. “We are excited about our nationwide rollout with their battery in our network of EOS Charge stations.”

NeoVolta recently uplisted from the OTCQB Marketplace to the Nasdaq Capital Market but, as reported by Energy-Storage.news, raised significantly less than initially planned amidst what its CFO described as “tough capital markets”.

The firm mainly designs, develops, and manufactures residential battery energy storage systems using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells which it mainly sells through solar installers and equipment distributors. Its core product is the NV14, a 14.4kWh battery with a 7.68kW inverter, which can be expanded to 24kWh with an add-on battery.

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The cover story of PV Tech Power 32 explores how solar projects are being connected to other technologies. Image: Planet Illustration for PV Tech.

The Q3 2022 edition of our downstream solar journal, PV Tech Power, is now available to download, featuring in-depth coverage on the rise of solar-plus.

This issue’s cover story explores how PV projects are being adapted to their grid surroundings by connecting to other technologies such as battery energy storage systems, other renewables or green hydrogen.

Published ahead of the RE+ event in California later this month, PV Tech Power Volume 32 includes features on community solar in the US and how policy headwinds have impacted module procurement in the country.

As always, ‘Storage & Smart Power’, the section of the journal contributed by Energy-Storage.news returns too. Feature articles in the latest edition are:

Is the German utility-scale energy storage market set to take off?

Cameron Murray examines what’s driving growth in Germany’s large-scale battery storage market.

Bridging the gap between battery supply and energy storage demand

With the mismatch between supply and demand for lithium batteries presenting a challenge to the

global energy transition, Andy Colthorpe hears how the dynamics are playing out.

Battery safety – why it’s important and what we can do about it

Dr Kai-Philipp Kairies of ACCURE Battery Intelligence discusses how a combination of data gathered from the field and analytics embedded in software can make batteries safer to operate while maximising value.

You can download your digital copy of PV Tech Power 32 via our subscription service here.

PV Tech Premium subscribers receive every copy of PV Tech Power as part of their subscription as soon as they are published, as well as exclusive content on PV Tech, weekly briefing emails and a host of other benefits.

For more details on PV Tech Premium, including how to subscribe, click here.

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The Luna / LAB battery storage project in California. Image: AES / Fluence via Linkedin.

Utility and power company AES Corporation has brought the Lancaster Area Battery (LAB), the second portion of a combined 908MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) complex in California, online.

The LAB storage project began commercial operations on Friday last week (2 September) and is now supplying energy to the wholesale market operator by CAISO, California’s independent system operator (ISO).

The system has a power rating of 127MW and an energy capacity of 508MWh, with four hours’ duration being a requirement of participating in Resource Adequacy, the framework through which CAISO ensures utilities have procured enough energy to meet demand – and the main way BESS projects make money in the state.

LAB is adjacent to the 100MW/400MWh Luna energy storage project, which AES also brought online last week, as reported by Energy-Storage.news. Luna is notable as it was one of the first fully debt-financed standalone large-scale projects, partially achieved through the securing of its long-term revenues under a 15-year agreement with community choice aggregator Clean Power Alliance (CPA).

Lab and Luna together store energy from 18 adjacent AES solar projects.

As with most if not all of AES’ BESS projects in the US and Latin America, the BESS was delivered by system integrator Fluence. AES founded Fluence along with technology and engineering firm Siemens and both still hold a majority of the company’s shares after its IPO in late 2021.

Fluence will soon move the final part of its Cube assembly process to Utah in order to better serve its US customers. Peter Silveira, senior director of manufacturing, talked Energy-Storage.news how this would work and its broader manufacturing strategy in a recent interview.

CAISO has recently been calling on electricity consumers to reduce usage at certain critical parts of the day to avoid the risk of outages. Battery systems have been helping but, as recently reported in Bloomberg, market signals have led to them discharging too early before the evening peak, reducing their state of charge when they are most needed.

Energy storage systems are called upon to dispatch by CAISO when the wholesale power price hits US$1,000/MWh but unusually high demand on the grid on Tuesday due to record heat mean the cap was hit by mid-afternoon, meaning they were discharged earlier than CAISO may have wanted.

Batteries did manage to provide 2,700MW of power between 6pm and 7pm when it was most needed, lower than the total capacity of 3,334MW (as of 1 August) according to CAISO figures.

The BESS is made up of Fluence’s modular building block for its energy storage products, the Cube. Image: AES / Fluence via Linkedin.

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Forest Road Renewables, a climate-focused infrastructure platform within The Forest Road Co., has made a $36 million strategic investment in Pathway Power LLC, a renewable energy and battery storage developer. The funding enables Pathway Power to continue scaling its portfolio of clean energy projects built to deliver over 2 GW across North America.

Pathway Power will target a balance of solar and storage opportunities across various markets. Pathway Power’s founding management team are pioneers in renewables development having previously led BayWa r.e., where they amassed a pipeline of over 6 GW of utility scale solar and storage assets throughout North America and delivered over 1 GW to the market.

“With solar energy capacity poised to quadruple by the end of the decade, Pathway Power will build on this momentum to deliver utility-scale solar, storage, and hybrid assets to the market,” says Pathway Power Managing Partner Jam Attari. “We appreciate Forest Road’s confidence in our team and will continue to execute on our strategy of developing a portfolio that will help to drive the next stage of the renewable market’s evolution.”

“The Pathway Power partnership is the latest example of our ability to offer highly efficient, flexible, and creative capital solutions across the renewable energy ecosystem,” states Dan Rittenhouse, head of Forest Road Renewables. “We are thrilled to be a core partner in Pathway Power’s growth plans and look forward to advancing the proliferation of renewable energy alongside this experienced management team.”

Image: Mariana Proença on Unsplash

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Saxon Capital Group Inc. and Saf-Glas LLC have signed an agreement whereby Saxon Capital Group acquired exclusive worldwide rights to manufacture and sell EnergyGlass Architectural Glass products, which can be used for buildings, greenhouses, homes and more. The agreement for worldwide exclusivity gives SAF-Glas LLC’s management controlling interest of Saxon Capital. In addition, Saxon acquired certain specialized “nanotech” equipment which is used in the manufacture of EnergyGlass products.

Saxon plans to change the corporate name to Energy Glass Solar, subject to shareholder and FINRA clearance. In consideration for the exclusive worldwide license and transfer of specialized equipment, Saxon forgave $535,000 in indebtedness owing to it by Saf-Glas and issued Saf-Glas 30 million shares of Saxon, a controlling interest.

A new management group and board of directors will be announced shortly. As part of the agreement, Saxon is obligated to purchase the EnergyGlass Architectural Glass Products patented technology upon the additional raise of $10 million, at which time Saf-Glas will be issued additional shares of Saxon such that it will own 80% of the issued and outstanding shares of Saxon, after giving effect to the foregoing transactions.

EnergyGlass is an alternative energy, patented, optically clear electric producing glass technology that produces continuous energy from sunlight and diffused and ambient light. EnergyGlass is not an added cost to a building project as are other alternative renewables, based on current pricing  and after giving effect 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit. EnergyGlass can be used with glass, polycarbonate and most plastics.

The benefit of large-scale installation of EnergyGlass products is that it has the potential of transforming mid- and high-rise buildings and greenhouses into vertical solar farms. EnergyGlass products can also be used in residential homes, and both commercial and non-commercial vehicles. The installation of EnergyGlass is similar in nature to installation of normal laminated glass. It can incorporate many types of different glass and makeups inclusive of tints, Low E, insulated, SAFGLAS IR film, reflective, glass ceramic, and most other types and makeups.

As part of the agreement, Saxon has signed an additional contract with Saf-Glas whereby Saf-Glas will manufacture the EnergyGlass products for Saxon until such time as Saxon is able to fund the acquisition of the intellectual property related to the EnergyGlass architectural products.

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