Stan Pinegar

Duke Energy Indiana’s solar energy facility at Toray Resin Co.’s Shelbyville campus is now in service. The new facility is capable of generating up to 900 kW of electricity to help power the plastics manufacturer’s operations while offsetting carbon emissions. The solar project is the first to come from a Duke Energy pilot program that aims to make it easier for businesses, schools and nonprofits to incorporate clean, renewable energy sources into their energy mix.

“We’re excited to partner with Toray Resin on this renewable energy venture,” says Stan Pinegar, president of Duke Energy Indiana. “This unique leasing arrangement will help power the company’s manufacturing operations in a sustainable and cost-effective way, while also demonstrating how our neighbors, businesses and communities can come together to make meaningful progress toward a cleaner energy future.” 

Under the program, Duke Energy will own, operate and maintain the Blue River Solar Facility on Toray Resin’s Shelbyville campus for a monthly service fee. The program provides Toray Resin with the advantages of clean energy to help power their operations, while minimizing upfront costs and maintenance obligations.

“Toray Resin Company and our parent, Toray Industries, intend to be a leader in the future use of renewable energy by jointly developing affordable, reliable and cleaner energy,” comments Dennis Godwin, president of Toray Resin Company. “This joint agreement with Duke Energy Indiana further advances Toray’s commitment to reduce our carbon footprint by investing in renewable power solutions like solar that are reliable, scalable, cost-efficient, sustainable and directly support our core business strategy.”

Construction on the 8-acre, ground-mounted solar project began in October 2021 and was completed in late August 2022. The facility consists of 2,487 solar panels that are each 6-feet tall, 3½-feet wide and 1½-inches thick. The solar array is located on the east side of Toray Resin’s campus, between Mausoleum Road and Boomer Way.

Under Duke Energy’s solar services pilot program, eligible Indiana customers can lease an on-site solar system for a period of up to 20 years. Duke Energy installs, operates, owns and maintains the system, while customers receive all of the kWh and solar renewable energy credit (SREC) output. Initial program capacity is limited to a total of 10 MW for eligible commercial and industrial customers within the Duke Energy Indiana service territory.

Continue reading

Another Cypress Creek Renewables project, the Dunn Solar Project in Harnett County, N.C.

Cypress Creek Renewables has closed on $216 million in financing for its Zier Solar and Storage project. The project, located in Kinney County, Texas, is a 208 MW solar farm with a 40 MW/80 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). Once completed, the project will add installed renewable energy capacity and battery storage to the Texas grid. Construction commenced concurrent with the financial closing.

Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (NORD/LB) acted as coordinating lead arranger (CLA), lender and LC issuing bank alongside Rabobank, National Bank of Canada and the North American Development Bank as joint lead arrangers. Together they have provided a construction-to-term loan, tax equity bridge loan and letter of credit facilities.

“It has been wonderful partnering with these lenders on another successful financing as we work together toward a more sustainable future,” says Sarah Slusser, CEO of Cypress Creek Renewables. “We can’t wait to get this project constructed and producing renewable energy that will improve the resiliency and reliability of the Texas grid.”

Cypress Creek has close to 2 GW of solar developed to date in Texas. The Zier Solar and Storage Project is the first solar plus storage project developed by Cypress Creek in Texas and will produce enough energy in its first year to power more than 30,000 homes.

“We are delighted to have partnered with Cypress Creek Renewables in this financing – the fourth NORD/LB has been entrusted with as CLA on their behalf in the last 12 months. Cypress Creek Renewables has quickly become a force to be reckoned with in the U.S. renewables space, and we are honored to play a part in their success,” states Nicolai Dillow, head of structured finance originations for NORD/LB’s New York branch.

Continue reading

Workers fitting out iM3NY’s recently opened lithium battery factory in Endicott, New York. Image: iM3NY via Twitter.

New Energy New York, a consortium working to accelerate battery tech and manufacturing, has been awarded US$63.7 million through the US Department of Commerce.

US President Joe Biden last week announced the 21 winners of US$1 billion total funding through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge. Funding of between US$25 million to US$65 million is being disbursed to each project, with local governments also contributing significant funding.

Projects are spread across the country and cover areas including biotechnology, agricultural, manufacturing, clean energy technologies and more.

Winners were selected from a list of 60 finalists chosen from 529 applicants, in a programme funded by Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Its five overarching aims are to restore US competitiveness, empower local leadership, support underserved communities, invest in workers as well as in technologies and accelerate economic transformation in the country.

New Energy New York’s work to advance development of lithium-ion batteries was highlighted by Department of Commerce as falling under that first theme, by helping to create a domestic supply chain for advanced energy storage, supporting the national energy transition away from fossil fuels.

The consortium is doing this under the leadership of experts at State University of New York (SUNY) Binghampton and with participation from three other academic institutions, non-profit technology and clean energy groups including New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium (NY-BEST) and four government organisations including New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA).

It wants to establish a national hub for battery innovation, manufacturing and workforce development in Upstate New York. The coalition has engaged more than 50 companies so far, works with local authorities in eight counties in the region and projects that if successful it will create positive economic impact worth more than US$2 billion.

The Southern Tier region of Upstate New York was once a thriving industrial hub but has become deindustrialised in recent decades. It is hoped that the opening of a lithium-ion battery factory serving both electric vehicle (EV) and energy storage system (ESS) markets is a signal that things are changing back in the region’s favour.

That factory, in the village of Endicott, was officially announced as open last month. While it is currently at the quality assurance stage of production, iM3NY, the company behind it, hopes to be able to ramp it up to 1.8GWh annual production capacity in near future and to 38GWh annual production capacity by 2030.

The region also already has NY-BEST’s battery test and innovation centre, as well as the facilities of Li-Cycle, a lithium-ion battery recycling specialist.

New Energy New York plans to use some of the Department of Commerce Build Back Better Regional Challenge money to build the Battery-NY Center, which will provide testing, certification and scale-up capacity to new technologies and companies.

“We just made the largest ever federal investment in clean energy and batteries in the Inflation Reduction Act, electric vehicles are booming, and now Binghamton can seize this opportunity to grow the beating heart of this emerging battery industry right here in Upstate New York,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Senator, said.

Other winners in related fields include the Western New York Advanced Manufacturing consortium which will receive US$25 million to invest in growing advanced manufacturing capabilities in the eastern side of Buffalo in Upstate New York, a distressed region.

In cleantech there is also H2theFuture, which is led by the Greater New Orleans Development Foundation, which aims to innovate in cost reduction for green hydrogen technologies and will receive US$50 million.

Finally the other clean energy winner is the Appalachian Climate Technology Coalition (ACT Now), which will get US$62.8 million to help revitalise communities in southern West Virginia’s historically coal-dependent regions, by creating a clean energy hub and jobs to go with it.  

Continue reading

The pair are exploring green hydrogen storage opportunities off the coast of Ireland.

State-owned electricity company ESB and geoenergy company dCarbonX, partially owned by gas infrastructure company Snam, have signed a joint venture (JV) to explore green hydrogen storage opportunities off the coast of Ireland.

The pair have already been working together on assessing and developing offshore green hydrogen subsurface storage in Ireland’s waters since the second quarter of 2021.

dCarbonX is 29%-held by Snam, the Italy-based gas energy infrastructure company which runs a pipeline network of approximately 41,000km across Europe, managing 3.5% of the world’s gas storage capacity.

They believe there is significant potential to develop large-scale storage capacity off the Irish coast and intend to actively explore opportunities, the companies said in a media statement. The JV will focus on three specific green hydrogen storage opportunities based around proposed decarbonisation clusters.

The first is the Poolpeg generating station on an artificial peninsula east of the capital Dublin, where green hydrogen could help decarbonise heavy transport, shipping, industry and power generation.

The second is the Moneypoint power station, which ESB is already turning into a green energy hub with a synchronous compensator and a 1,400MW offshore wind farm around the River Shannon Estuary.

The third is Project Kestrel, a project to re-develop decommissioned gas reservoirs at Kinsale Head field, 50km off the southern coast of County Cork. That was announced in August 2021 and, if approved, could potentially store up to 3TWh of green hydrogen and hydrogen carriers.

Tony O’Reilly, dCarbonX CEO, said: “Working with the backing of our shareholder Snam, dCarbonX has already begun the assessment of suitable offshore reservoirs that can support the storage of hydrogen and hydrogen carriers. We look forward to progressing these opportunities with ESB.”

Green hydrogen and green hydrogen storage projects are primarily being explored as a way to decarbonise heavy industries including fertiliser production. The next two areas with the most economic viability are for transportation and blending into natural gas power plants.

Power-to-X-to-power applications, where green hydrogen is stored for conversion back to electricity, are generally thought to be too uneconomical due to low round-trip efficiency.

Large projects in development which Energy-Storage.news has recently reported on include a 26 million KG project in Netherlands and a 300GWh project in Utah, US.

Continue reading

The EU’s executive arm has approved the €341 million plan.

The EU has approved a plan by the government in Greece to put €341 million (US$339.5 million) towards a 900MW energy storage pipeline, under its state aid rules.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has approved the Greek state’s measure to fund the construction and operation of grid-connected energy storage systems totalling 900MW.

The projects will be selected through a competitive bidding process, with contracts awarded by end-2023 and projects completed by end-2025.

The state aid, which will total €341 million, will be in the form of an investment grant to the projects during construction followed by annual support during the first 10 years of operations. The funding equates to €380,000/MW.

It will partly be funded by Greece’s portion of the EU-wide Recovery and Resilience Plan, the program to mitigate the negative economic effects of the Covid pandemic.

The competitive tender will determine the annual support for each project, and will be adjusted through a clawback mechanism if the energy storage units garner excess market revenues.

The Commission approved the state aid for the projects because it found that the storage projects ‘..would not be carried out without public support’. Greece is targeting cumulative energy storage deployments of 3GW by 2030, after it recently doubled its target.

“Increasing available electricity storage capacity in the system is key to make grids more flexible and better prepared for a future in which renewables form the backbone of the decarbonised electricity mix,” said Commission executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, .

“The Greek aid measure we have approved today, which will be partly funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility, will contribute to the development of competitive markets for electricity system services, while helping Greece meet its emission reduction targets.”

New EU guidelines on state aid were brought in from January 2022, which aim to create a flexible enabling framework to help member states provide the necessary support to reach the objectives of December 2019’s Green Deal, when the EU declared its objective to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050.

Greece has a number of interesting market drivers for energy storage, according to renewable energy consultancy Clean Horizon’s Corentin Baschet in an interview with Energy-Storage.news, including strong government support.

Continue reading

Cell testing. Customers should request independently verified test data from vendors, DNV said. Image: DNV.

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries from manufacturers CATL and Narada are among those ranked highest performance for stationary energy storage applications in DNV’s new ‘Battery Scorecard’.

The performance assessment group published the fourth edition of the annual scorecard report last week. DNV looks at topics such as who the world’s biggest battery providers are, how batteries degrade, what their useful lifetime is and how safe batteries are. DNV also evaluates 19 battery cell types through a testing programme.

Cells are therefore evaluated through a number of categories and for their performance in applications including grid support services requiring less than two hours of storage duration, four-hour solar shifting and high-power vehicles.

DNV also looks at calendar fade, optimisation of battery management system (BMS) and safety from the perspective of thermal runaway and off-gas protection.

While many manufacturers which took part preferred to remain anonymous, both CATL and Narada allowed for their names to be publicly disclosed, which must have been all the sweeter as theirs were in the top three performers among LFP cells for stationary storage applications in both

Continue reading

Renewables are the cheapest form of new energy in India. Image: SECI

Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) is seeking 2,250MW of so-called ‘Round-the-Clock’ (RTC) energy from renewable sources in a third tender round of its type.

SECI, a national government organisation administered by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), issued a Request for Selection (RFS) document last week on 2 September.

Renewable energy developers that can supply dispatchable energy from renewables complemented with “power from any other source or storage” will be eligible to submit projects into a competitive bidding process. Projects must connect to the Interstate Transmission System (ISTS).

Winning projects will be awarded contracts on a ‘build, own, operate’ basis, with SECI entering into 25-year power purchase agreements (PPAs) to buy the generated or stored power and then sell it onto MPSEZ Utilities, a subsidiary of power transmission company Adani Transmission.

Only new renewable energy projects will be considered, including projects under construction or in commissioning phase, meaning existing renewable energy facilities are excluded, including capacity additions or technology enhancement retrofits. However, for non-renewable sources to be paired with wind or solar, ‘spare capacity’ at existing plants will be eligible.

The tender comes in recognition that cost declines and increased competitiveness have made solar PV and wind cheaper new sources of energy than thermal fossil fuels in India. However, balancing the grid and integrating variable generation from wind or PV presents a challenge that tenders like this are designed to mitigate.

With SECI appointed a nodal agency of the country’s National Solar Mission policy, the corporation is tasked with holding the tender, aimed at helping create standardised contracts, awarded through tariff-based competitive bidding guidelines. The Ministry of Power issued those guidelines in 2020, as the first RTC tender was held.

SECI hosts an online pre-bid meeting on 13 September at 11am IST, and a last date for bid submissions is set for 10 October at 6pm IST. Reverse e-auction bidding will open three days later, 13 October.

A sample standard PPA agreement and a power sale agreement have been posted by SECI which can be seen here along with other documents and details.

The tender comes as India, targeting 500GW of non-fossil fuel energy including 450GW of solar and wind by 2030 – having already passed the 150GW mark – seeks resources like energy storage to firm power supplies. The India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) projects a need for more than 160GWh of storage in the country by 2030 to be able to meet that target.

As noted by Energy-Storage.news, tenders by government entities like SECI have a big role to play, especially at this early stage of seeding the market for energy storage. Last week the winner of SECI’s first 1,000MWh pilot tender for standalone energy storage was revealed, with a further 3,000MWh expected to be tendered for soon.

Elsewhere, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN), a power trading subsidiary of state-owned power producer NTPC, last week floated the idea of a RTC procurement of its own, seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from prospective bidders.  

Watch Energy-Storage.news’ recent webinar with Clean Horizon, where business models for energy storage in India were discussed, and SECI general manager Dr Bharath Reddy talked about the role the corporation plays in Indian solar and energy storage market acceleration.

Continue reading

Fluence Gridstack BESS units at the Luna project site, posted to LinkedIn by AES Clean Energy president Leonardo Moreno. Image: Leonardo Moreno via LinkedIn.

Luna Battery Storage, a 100MW/400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project in California which was the subject of a “landmark” debt finance deal, is now online and serving community choice aggregator Clean Power Alliance (CPA).

CPA has contracted for 100MW of flexible energy storage capacity for a 15-year term with AES Corporation, which owns the project and developed it through subsidiary sPower – which was later merged into the parent company, becoming AES Clean Energy.

CPA said last week that it is now receiving the clean energy capacity from the system in the City of Lancaster, Los Angeles County.

“This resource will capture renewable energy during the day when solar is plentiful and send clean energy back to the grid during periods of peak energy demand,” CPA VP of power supply Natasha Keefer said.

“The Luna Battery Storage Project is a critical resource and CPA is proud to bring it online in time to meet California’s grid reliability needs this summer.”

As regular readers of Energy-Storage.news will note, California has been pushing to deploy battery storage as one of a number of tools to help the state integrate higher shares of renewable energy and secure stability of the electric grid as it does so, as legacy thermal generation comes off the system.

Grid and wholesale market operator CAISO has targeted cumulative deployments of 4GW in its service area – covering roughly 80% of the state’s electricity customers – by the end of summer 2022. That effort continues, although recent months have seen some slowdown in deployment.

California community choice aggregators (CCAs) like CPA have become prolific in procuring energy storage resources over the past couple of years, and Luna marks CPA’s third standalone battery storage project to date in the state.

One, Johanna Energy Storage System, in Santa Anna, Orange County, is a 20MW/80MWh BESS which came online in October 2021 through developer Hecate Energy’s joint venture (JV) with investor InfraRed Capital Partners, constructed by Mitsubishi Power and with inverter and power conversion equipment supplied by Ingeteam.

The other covers a portion of battery capacity at Edwards Sanborn, a project under construction in Kern County, by developer Terra-Gen and EPC partner Mortenson, which also went online in late 2021. When fully complete, with 760MW of solar PV and 2,445MWh of battery storage, Edwards Sanborn looks set to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, solar-plus-storage projects in the world so far.

CPA is among many offtakers for that project and as with Luna Battery Storage, has signed a long-term contract for 100MW of battery storage from it. Meanwhile the group, which has about three million customers in California, has also contracted for renewable energy from various solar-plus-storage projects too. That includes EDF Renewables’ Desert Quartzite project, pairing 300MW of solar PV with 600MWh of batteries.

At Luna, global system integrator and battery storage solutions manufacturer Fluence supplied its Gridstack sixth generation BESS solution. AES is one of Fluence’s main shareholders.

Back in February 2021, SPower closed a US$152.4 million non-recourse debt finance deal for the project. At that time, Energy-Storage.news was told by Frank Beckers, a partner at clean energy advisory and consulting firm Apricum that it was something of a “landmark deal,” which demonstrated “the ability to tap on sizeable Project Finance debt funding for a standalone utility-scale battery storage project,” thanks to long-term revenues having been secured through the Energy Storage Agreement with CPA.    

Continue reading

Arevon’s 100MW/400MWh Saticoy battery energy storage system (BESS) project in California. Image: Arevon.

Renewable energy company Arevon has secured a US$400 million loan facility from two banks for its solar and energy storage pipeline in the Midwest, Southeast and California.

The company will receive a green loan fund credit facility from Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) and KeyBank N.A, it announced last week (30 August). The money will go towards the development of a 6GW pipeline of solar PV and energy storage assets.

The two-year facility has a hybrid borrowing basis, made up of uncalled capital with an additional net asset value component.

“The scale of this capital reaffirms Arevon’s place in the finance community as one of the fastest-growing renewable independent power producers in the country. Complex financial engineering and access to facilities like this are a key part of our competitive advantage,” said Brian Callaway, Arevon CFO.

The company provides commercial, financial, performance asset management, and construction services for nearly 10GW of renewable energy assets.

Major energy storage projects it is delivering in California include the Vikings Energy Farm, a 150MW PV array paired with 150MW/600MWh of battery storage, and nine large-scale standalone battery storage projects comprising the Falcon Portfolio.

One major project is already operational; the 100MW/400MWh Saticoy battery storage project (pictured) went online in mid-2021 after local opposition to a gas peaker plant.

Continue reading

A large-scale solar-plus-storage plant in California, US, recently brought online through Canadian Solar’s US subsidiary Recurrent Energy. Image: Recurrent Energy.

Canadian Solar was behind the company Zapaleri that received a successful bid in Chile’s July auction with 253MWp of solar PV and 1GWh battery energy storage.

While a total of 15 companies were selected for bidding, only two companies have been successful in their bids with a total of 777GWh of power supply – for an average price of US$37.38/MWh – that amounted to just 14.8% of the 5.250GWh initially auctioned.

One of them was Zapaleri, while the other successful auction bidder was Spanish developer Fotowatio Renewable Ventures through its Chilean subsidiary.

Latin American-focused energy portal Energía Estratégica revealed that Canadian Solar was behind Zapaleri ahead of the auction last July, but the developer did not make any announcement at the time. But a recent media release revealed that Canadian Solar was, in fact, behind the bid.

The solar-plus-storage project is currently in mid-stage development and is expected to start construction in 2024 and will be operational in 2026.

To read the full version of this story, visit PV Tech.

PV Tech will be taking a closer look at the future of solar in Chile in the upcoming edition of PV Tech Power (Number 32), which is due out in September. You can subscribe and access previous editions of the journal here.

Continue reading