A battery energy storage system from Invinity Energy Systems. Image: Invinity Energy Systems.

Flow battery companies Redflow and Invinity Energy Systems are targeting the US market through partnerships with third parties.

Redflow

Australia-based Redflow, which produces a battery storage solution using zinc-bromine technology, has signed a master service agreement (MSA) with global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services firm Black & Veatch.

The MSA means that Redflow is now on Black & Veatch’s list of approved suppliers, streamlining the procurement of its zinc-bromine energy storage batteries.

Redflow said the agreement, announced 17 August, will open doors for the deployment of its product in the US and other markets. Black & Veatch has installed more than 2,500MWh of battery storage projects to-date.

Commenting on the MSA, Redflow CEO Tim Harris said: “It significantly advances Redflow’s strategy of building a strong network of EPC partnerships that will underpin accelerated deployment of our energy storage batteries globally.

“Redflow and Black & Veatch have already been collaborating on a variety of exciting project opportunities in the US that are in Redflow’s pipeline.”

As Energy-Storage.news reported recently, Redflow recently temporarily halted trading of its shares on the ASX to complete a capital raise which it later revealed was worth AU$5 million (US$3.44 million).

Invinity Energy Systems

A day before Redflow’s announcement, vanadium redox flow battery company Invinity Energy Systems announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with U.S. Vanadium, a company producing vanadium products including electrolyte for flow batteries, to create a joint venture (JV) targeting the US market.

The JV will focus on building and selling vanadium flow batteries in the US market and the MOU outlines its principal terms, namely being a 50:50 entity combining Invinity’s flow battery expertise with USV’s domestically produced supply of vanadium electrolyte.

“No company has installed more flow battery units than Invinity and we believe no company can currently match the capability U.S. Vanadium has to produce ultra-high-purity vanadium and vanadium electrolyte,” said Mark Smith, CEO of U.S. Vanadium.

A press release said the JV expects to benefit from recent incentives for energy storage and that the recent Inflation Reduction Act legislation has placed a further emphasis on US manufacturing, in line with the intended purpose of the JV.

The Act, passed last week, has given flow batteries their best chance ever at displacing lithium-ion as the dominant battery chemistry for stationary energy storage, or at least joining lithium at the top table, according to energy sector lawyer Morten Lund, a partner at US firm Stoel Rives. Read our long-form piece on the topic published today.

U.S. Vanadium has already recently partnered with another vanadium flow battery group, CellCube, to expand the production capacity at its Hot Springs facility, off the back of a large order by the Austria-based firm. CellCube later then set up a US subsidiary to target the market.

Invinity last week announced it had energised a 1.8MWh system at a green hydrogen project on Orkney Island, Scotland, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

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The green hydrogen complex as a manufacturing facility in Gujarat, India. Image: Larsen & Toubro.

Green hydrogen projects emphasising the role the technology could play in the energy storage space have progressed in the Netherlands and India, the latter using battery storage directly paired with an electrolyser unit.

Construction and engineering firm Bilfinger is supporting Dutch natural gas infrastructure and transport group Gasunie with a large green H2 storage project in Zuidwending, it revealed last week (16 August).

The HyStock project will store hydrogen produced from renewables-powered electrolysers in four underground salt caverns with space for a total of 26 million kg.

A press release said that the stored hydrogen would offset future imbalances in supply and demand of ‘green energy’ and, in a line further down, imbalances in supply and demand of ‘green hydrogen’.

This leaves open the question of whether it will experiment with converting the hydrogen back to electricity, a potential use case for renewably-generated hydrogen projects that is generally agreed to be far too inefficient to be cost-effective.

The main use case for green hydrogen projects in development today is as a feedstock for various industrial processes, followed by transportation and blending with natural gas for conventional gas power plants.

Bilfinger will deliver engineering for the entire plant, which is expected to be fully operational by 2026.

“Hydrogen is the most promising technology for the storage of renewable energy. We areproud to contribute to Gasunie’s HyStock project with our expertise and experience,” said Thomas Schulz, Group CEO at Bilfinger.

Meanwhile, Indian engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has commissioned a smaller facility combining green hydrogen electrolysers, a solar PV array and a battery energy storage system (BESS) at its manufacturing facility in Hazira, Gujarat. The hydrogen will be blended into the natural gas used by the facility.

The project combines 380kW of alkaline electrolysers powered by a 990kW rooftop solar plant and a 500kWh BESS. An additional 420kW of electrolysers using PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) technology and an expansion of the solar plant to 1.6MW are part of future expansion plans.

A press release said the first phase of the project has been installed, tested, and commissioned and that green hydrogen is now being produced, as of 20 August.

These complexes are the latest in a steady stream of green hydrogen projects to have moved forward in the last few months.

Vanadium battery company Invinity Energy Systems energised one of its battery systems at a green hydrogen facility in Scotland last week, while another project using salt caverns for large-scale storage of the gas, in Germany, won EU funding a month earlier.

That came shortly after Utah project ACES Delta, which claims to be the largest green hydrogen storage project in the world, took another step forward with the selection of its automation software provider, Emerson.

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Four states of vanadium electrolyte as used in VRFBs: V2, V3, V4 and V5. Image: Invinity Energy Systems.

The signing of the Inflation Reduction Act by US president Joe Biden has been considered a major step forward for clean energy and flow batteries could be one of the technologies to benefit from it.

Biden’s signature passed the act into law on 16 August. Many in the energy storage industry and wider clean energy space have welcomed the legislation and its US$369 billion commitment to mitigating the climate crisis and establishing better energy security through low-cost renewable energy.

With the introduction of an investment tax credit (ITC) incentive for standalone energy storage, the act will reduce the capital cost of equipment for such projects by roughly 30%. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also incentivises domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies.

While for many the immediate thought is of the likely boost to lithium-ion battery storage deployments, flow batteries could also see an upside, commentators have told Energy-Storage.news.

“The stars are aligning to give flow batteries their best chance right now,” energy sector lawyer Morten Lund, a partner at US firm Stoel Rives, says.

“Flow batteries are just basically better for utility purposes [than lithium-ion]. The real issue has always been cost.”

It’s a “superior technology” in terms of performance, reliability and longevity, Lund says, while inferior round-trip efficiency to lithium – flow batteries are generally at about 75% versus 90%+ for lithium, as a ballpark figure – matters less if the capital cost goes down.

Flow batteries do not suffer degradation in the same way lithium batteries do. They have fast response times, but don’t come with the same concerns over use for heavy cycling or deep discharge applications, in other words, the “operational limitations,” of lithium.

US multinational technology company Honeywell has launched a flow battery developed using a proprietary electrolyte chemistry that it is preparing to unleash onto the market, enabling up to 12 hours of storage duration.

One of its devices is set to be tested out by utility holding company Duke Energy with a view to rolling the technology out at scale.

Long-duration energy storage technologies such as flow batteries will answer “upcoming energy storage needs beyond the current technologies available on the market,” claims Honeywell’s offering management director for flow batteries and green hydrogen, Maya Nair.

“Currently, the storage market relies on lithium-ion batteries, but we have created a new, non-flammable flow battery technology to help meet the demand for sustainable energy storage while resolving the safety, longevity and environmental concerns of utilities,” Nair says.

“This type of innovation, which answers upcoming energy storage needs beyond the current technologies available on the market, combined with legislation like the IRA, will ultimately be required for the market to achieve its potential.”

‘Superior technology’

There are lots of alternatives to lithium-ion that are vying for attention and investment in addition to flow batteries. There are also various alternative sub-chemistry lithium batteries that don’t use cobalt which might become increasingly popular, given cobalt’s relative scarcity and sometimes problematic nature of sourcing the metal.

In the short term, all of those lithium-ion based batteries are however still subject to ongoing supply chain constraints within the lithium value chain, Lund notes.

Lund says he expects “everybody will benefit to some extent” from the IRA legislation, including zinc batteries and other types of energy storage.

But where flow batteries in particular fit in really well into the market is that they offer a way out of contractual deadlocks faced by developers negotiating long-term energy storage contracts with utilities.

“It’s not just superior technology from an engineer perspective, it’s superior from a lawyer perspective too,” Lund says.

The complexity or difficulty of making contractual arrangements that separate risk from decision-making for privately-owned batteries is holding back US energy storage development. If a developer owns a battery asset, they will essentially hand over the keys to a utility for the utility to use as it sees fit, delivering a possible range of different grid services.

The owner of the battery then has no real visibility into how the usage profile of their customer will impact battery health or battery system lifetime. Lund likens this to giving the keys to a brand-new car to a drunk teenager. You still own the car but have to pay for any damage to it.  

“We tried to draft these contracts that essentially monetise the cost of the utilities’ behaviours with our battery. And we can’t because we don’t have sufficient information. We know it’s bad to do a deep discharge, but not how to convert that into dollars,” Lund says.

“With flow batteries, all of that goes away.”

The lawyer has seen numerous battery storage transactions fail because developer and utility couldn’t reach an agreement on the allocation of financial risk and operational risk. Meanwhile the lithium battery industry has been introducing extensive and more specific warranties to try to “shuffle around this unknown risk” of what their batteries will look like after 10 years of use for a range of as-yet unknown applications.

Sumitomo Electric’s 2MW/8MWh system in California is currently the US’ biggest flow battery energy storage project in operation. Image: Sumitomo / SDGE.

Meeting a long-term need for long-duration energy storage

Honeywell claims that its new non-flammable flow battery – which uses a non-vanadium electrolyte – can answer the “safety, longevity and environmental concerns of utilities,” while helping meet demand for sustainable energy storage.

Another flow battery provider in the US, Stryten Energy, welcomed the IRA’s passing with a statement that the tax credits, available for a 10-year runway, will help the company’s customers “incorporate medium and long-duration energy storage such as vanadium redox flow batteries (VFRBs) into their operations more economically than before,” according to CEO Tim Vargo.

“Leveraging domestic VFRB technology and other long-term energy storage solutions will enable reliable access to clean power and help the US achieve energy security as it transitions to a clean energy economy.”

It’s certainly known that a push for long-duration energy storage technologies is a stated aim of the US Department of Energy (DOE). US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm just a week or two ago visited the Oregon factory of iron electrolyte flow battery provider ESS Inc.

While there, Granholm described the work ESS Inc is doing as “amazing” and said that achieving the goal of enabling long-duration energy storage at scale is one of the things that keeps her awake at night.

The occasion of that visit was to highlight the impact of a previous piece of legislation, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which will unlock several billion dollars’ funding for innovation and manufacturing in the US, with ESS Inc among those likely to benefit.

Another flow battery company, Invinity Energy Systems, said last week that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, in combination with the Inflation Reduction Act, create a “strongly supportive climate” for investment into energy tech like flow batteries.

Anglo-American company Invinity announced a new joint venture (JV) with vanadium product company US Vanadium the day before Biden signed the act. The pair have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which covers a 50:50 owned JV.

US Vanadium will supply vanadium electrolyte processed from high-purity vanadium sourced in Arkansas, while Invinity will focus on creating VRFB systems that the JV will build and sell.

Morten Lund says we can’t yet know exactly what the impact of the standalone ITC and other provisions from the IRA legislation will be in boosting flow battery prospects in the US. The lawyer says that although national and Federal-level policies are important and the incentives wholly welcomed, the ITC for solar PV really just “supercharged” a market already driven to deploy by Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) across various states.

Lund believes that in the same way, energy storage deployment in the US will be boosted by the standalone ITC but would see far more uplift if policies that mandate it are introduced in more than just the 10 states that currently have some form of storage policy target.

If higher demand for storage, continuing high lithium prices and recognition of the technological plus points converge in the right way, the stars really could align for flow batteries.

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Image: Lexie Hain, Lightsource bp

Led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office, Innovative Solar Practices Integrated with Rural Economies and Ecosystems (InSPIRE) has completed its second, three-year phase of research into the synergies between solar energy and agriculture.

It is hard to find a flock of sheep nestled under an array of solar panels. Lexie Hain, a farmer in the Finger Lakes region of New York and director of agrivoltaics for Lightsource bp, grazes sheep underneath solar photovoltaic (PV) installations. Her flocks keep the plants under the rows of PV panels trimmed, saving the installation’s owner the cost of mowing. And Hain’s sheep get to eat for free (and may even be paid for it). This concept—of using PV installations to both create renewable energy and provide space for local agriculture or native habitats—is known as “agrivoltaics.”

“Sheep are late risers. You won’t hear them when you enter the site for an early morning walk. What you hear first are insects: crickets, little frogs. It feels alive to you,” says Hain. “The flock loves to lie under the panels, so finding them often involves an element of surprise.”

Both solar developers and those in the local community who care for the land – whether as farmland, rangeland or native habitats – can benefit from agrivoltaics. And when all sides understand how they can benefit each other, low-impact solar development becomes easier.

In its first phase, InSPIRE tried to quantify the benefits of agrivoltaics and record some early best practices in the emerging field. The project adopts a big-tent approach to agrivoltaics, welcoming any dual use of solar-occupied land that provides ecological or agricultural benefits. That could mean grazing cattle or sheep, growing crops, cultivating pollinator-friendly native plants, or providing ecosystem services and restoring degraded soil.

For InSPIRE’s second phase, NREL and dozens of partnering organizations carried out agrivoltaics field research across the nation to study what makes an agrivoltaics project successful.

“Through our work, which spans multiple regions, configurations, and agricultural activities, we’ve seen so many initial promising results,” states Jordan Macknick, NREL’s lead energy-water-land analyst and principal investigator for the InSPIRE project. “Now, our challenge is to figure out how to scale up and replicate these successes.”

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Invinity flow battery modules at the site, visited by local Member of Scottish Parliament Michael Matheson (right). Image: Invinity Energy Systems.

A 1.8MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has been installed and energised at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) test site in Scotland’s Orkney Isles.

The energy storage technology will be combined with generation from tidal power to produce continuous supply of green hydrogen at the facility on the Orkney Island of Eday, about 24km north of the Scottish mainland in the UK.

As reported by Current as the project was announced in November 2020, tidal power is predictable, but its generation profile is highly variable between two high tides and two low tides each day. That makes smoothing its output a very heavy-duty cycling application for batteries.

Technology provider Invinity’s flow batteries, capable of more rugged performance and thousands of duty cycles without degradation, are being trialled to see if they will be a more suitable fit for the project than lithium-ion, which is considered to have technical limitations in that regard.

To read the full version of this story visit Current.

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Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck charging on the driveway of a solar home. Image: Duke Energy.

This edition of news in brief focuses on recent developments in the US distributed energy resources (DER) market.

Ford truck’s V2G capabilities tested by Duke Energy

US utility holding company Duke Energy is launching a test and evaluation programme for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, starting with Ford’s new F-150 Lightning electric truck.

Vehicles with large lithium-ion batteries could be used to power homes during grid outages and could also be made available to provide grid services to utilities.

With the launch of the F-150, Ford has already partnered with residential solar and storage installer Sunrun to market the EV as a home backup source.

Now, Duke Energy will try out the trucks themselves, as well as Ford’s charging equipment and bidirectional charging infrastructure for their capabilities in providing power to the grid during peak times as well as behind-the-meter applications like integration of onsite solar generation and serving as backup.

The testing in real-world use cases will also assess how such usage can impact the F-150’s batteries over time.

Generac home batteries to provide capacity for Arizona utilities

Generac Grid Services has signed a multi-year contract with utility company Arizona Public Service (APS) to provide energy stored in customers’ battery systems to the grid.

Parent company Generac Power Systems is best known for its gensets and portable power supply equipment but has diversified into battery storage, launching its own Generac PWRCell range, including a new AC-coupled solution.

It has positioned the Generac Grid Services subsidiary to capitalise on opportunities for distributed energy resources (DERs) to provide services to aid the stability of electricity networks.

The company’s Concerto distributed energy resources management (DERM) platform will enable home or commercial behind-the-meter batteries to provide capacity to APS, as well as grid services like voltage control.

APS is encouraging its own customers to install smart energy technologies with a new Distributed Demand-Side Resources (DDSR) Aggregation Tariff. Generac was the only company bidding to be involved that could respond to the utility’s call for resources that could provide a wide range of services, the company claimed.

Aggregation of residential battery systems under the APS contract will begin in January 2023, for a five-year term.

PG&E appoints microgrid controls partner

Microgrid monitoring and controls provider New Sun Road has been picked by California investor-owned utility (IOU) Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

New Sun Road’s Stellar Microgrid OS will be used to control and monitor PG&E’s fleet of hybrid renewable energy standalone power systems remotely.

Customers and communities in some of PG&E’s service area are vulnerable to wildfires and designated high-threat fire districts (HTFD). There are also customers in rural and remote areas to whom sending electricity along long distribution line infrastructure – often passing through HFTD areas – can be an expensive endeavour.

Instead, standalone power systems can form a sort of localised grid network to ensure customers’ lights stay on, while enabling greater uptake of renewable energy generated onsite or nearby.

Systems use a combination of solar PV, battery storage and propane-fuelled backup. New Sun Road’s tech will be installed at up to 30 systems by 2026, with PG&E looking to scale up its microgrid programme further.

“New Sun Road’s Stellar platform will manage PG&E’s fleet of standalone systems, ensuring maximised solar usage and high reliability. Stellar remotely operates systems in over 23 countries, and we’re proud that our technology will now enable more resilient clean energy in California,” New Sun Road CEO and co-founder Jalel Sager said.

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Fluence’s sixth generation GridStack BESS units at a customer site. Image: Fluence.

Fluence saw a 14% fall in revenue in the third quarter of its financial year, driven largely by ongoing logistics issues the company said are now easing.

The global energy storage system integrator saw revenues of US$239 million in the three months to June 30, 2022, the third quarter of its 2022 fiscal year (FY2022), down 14% year-on-year. Its Q2 FY2022 revenue had been US$343 million, as reported by Energy-Storage.news in May. 
The company said the most recent quarter’s revenue performance was in line with expectations given the recent COVID-19 related lockdowns in China.
Fluence managed to improve gross margins by -4% to -2% while increasing liquidity by US$39 million to end the period with US$762 million in cash. It is reaffirming full-year revenue guidance of US$1.1 billion, the lower end of a forecasted US$1.1 billion to US$1.3 billion. Its backlog of orders stands at US$2.1 billion, while it anticipates Q4 revenues of around US$345 million.
CEO Manuel Perez Dubuc made his final appearance in the company’s earnings call to explain results as he prepares to make way for incoming new chief exec Julian Nebreda.
Dubuc said Fluence is making “strong progress mitigating operational headwinds”. Its improved gross margin position was achieved despite those “expected challenges,” which included delays and increased shipping costs. In some instances, suppliers had invoked force majeure clauses and the integrator was compelled to also do so with its customers.
“I’m pleased to report we are seeing shipping rates plateau and in some cases, regress,” the CEO said, adding that good relationships with multiple shipping partners meant that Fluence is able to negotiate better terms and more optionality.
That was a welcome reprieve from the more challenging conditions faced over the previous six months, according to Dubuc. Meanwhile, the company is seeing increased battery production volumes from its suppliers.
Assuming those dynamics continue, Fluence expects force majeure issues to be resolved by Q1 FY2023 and battery suppliers have been locked in for the 2022-2023 timeframe, as the company negotiates deals to do the same for 2024-2025.
Other impacts from COVID19, such as site closures and other onsite disruptions have been “effectively remediated,” Dubuc said. Meanwhile, certain unanticipated costs had been incurred with installation and commissioning related to “balance of plant and transformer challenges on a few specific projects,” which the company is dedicating time and resources to remediating, he said.  
Its order intake during the quarter fell 9% year-on-year to 311MW while energy storage services orders plummeted by 90% to 81MW. Digital contracts fared better, growing 40% to 804MW. CFO Dennis Fehr said however that the lower order intake corresponds to Q1 and Q2 having been particularly strong, while Q3 was “decent,” or “average”, as he described it.
Indeed, even with price increases applied during FY2022, the company’s order intake of 1,493MW for the first nine months of the fiscal year already exceeds a total of 1,311MW of energy storage orders logged for the whole of FY2021, Fehr pointed out.
The company’s share price opened up at US$17.26 on the morning of Tuesday, 17 August, the day after the results were released, but slid 7% over the morning to a low of US$16.57 before rebounding to US$17.56 by close of trading on 18 August. 
Key takeaways from Fluence earnings call 
Inflation Reduction Act
Fluence expects “significant upside” from the new Inflation Reduction Act legislation in the US. Foremost is the 30% investment tax credit (ITC) incentive for standalone energy storage which will drive customer demand. In addition, Fluence has already shifted its contract manufacturing into US locations and is finalising its own Utah production facility, which CFO Fehr said could be ramped up to 14GWh in a matter of years.
With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also including incentives for domestic manufacturing of batteries and other equipment used in low-emissions energy projects, Fluence leadership said they and their partners would be positioned well to benefit. However, further, more detailed examination of the Act’s provisions will be needed to quantify that upside.
According to remarks from an interview with Fluence senior director of manufacturing Peter Silveira  reported by Energy-Storage.news yesterday, the company believes one immediate consequence will be the growth of cell manufacturing capacity within the US.
Raw Materials Index pricing
Fluence has moved to include Raw Material Index (RMI) pricing on its contracts, as have others in the industry. This has meant that some legacy contracts are being renegotiated and repriced based on those changing prices, on which Dubuc said progress is being made. Looking ahead, RMI pricing has become an accepted fact of the industry today for new contracts, the CEO claimed.
Three priorities for new Fluence CEO
New CEO Julian Nebreda is not yet officially part of the management team but offered up three key priorities for his leadership to focus on.
The first is to transform a set of challenging supply chain circumstances into a competitive advantage, the second to create and communicate a clear product roadmap strategy and the third is to focus resources and create the structure to enable further growth of Fluence Digital, the arm of the company which deploys software to optimise and manage both energy storage and renewable energy assets.
Diversification of suppliers and technologies
Finalising assembly in the US will also help to avoid supply chain issues encountered in other locations, the company claimed.
Among those issues is that “substandard” components had been received from certain suppliers, and chief product officer Rebecca Boll said that a new facility in Pennsylvania, US, will be used to test out equipment from a range of sources, particularly batteries and inverters.
Boll said overall diversification of supplier base continues, with 30% of battery supply to come from outside China in 2023, from European and Korean manufacturers primarily.  
Lithium battery price rises, driven by raw materials costs, also provide an impetus to diversify the company’s technology base and Dubuc referred to Fluence’s partnership with solid state battery company QuantumScape offering a potential lower cost pathway, while the company is also looking closely at sodium-ion chemistry batteries.
India’s potential
As has been widely reported by this site and others, India’s energy storage market is growing and is expected to pick up pace significantly. Fluence’s joint venture (JV) with listed Indian renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) ReNew Power will give it a “first mover advantage” there, the CEO said, while the company has also opened up a global technology centre in the country. Fluence expects to see total market demand for stationary storage reach 27GW by 2030 in India.
Energy storage as transmission
Another area where Fluence is claiming first mover advantage is in energy storage-as-transmission. The future driver of industry bottlenecks won’t be battery supply, it will be transmission, Dubuc said. It’s a relatively untapped area of growth along with data centres, and transmission segment projects could offer higher margins relative to other applications.
The CEO cited examples of projects in Chile and in Europe where Fluence is positioning itself as one of the few, if not the only, energy storage provider offering batteries as a “transmission booster”, easing congestion on the grid and freeing up network operators from making costly investments in new wires, poles and other infrastructure. 
Additional reporting by Cameron Murray. 
Earnings call transcript by Seeking Alpha. 

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Susan Stone

Window and door manufacturer Andersen Corp. and transparent solar technology company Ubiquitous Energy are jointly developing energy-generating window and door products for residential and light commercial buildings. The products will leverage Ubiquitous Energy’s UE Power technology, a patented and visibly transparent photovoltaic glass coating that harnesses solar power to generate electricity, while remaining almost indistinguishable from traditional windows.

“By combining Andersen’s expertise in crafting innovative window and door products that deliver quality, design aesthetic and energy efficiency with the unique properties of UE Power technology, our vision is to develop products that go beyond energy efficiency to energy generation,” says Brandon Berg, senior vice president, research, development and innovation at Andersen Corp. “This is a powerful opportunity to leverage our industry leadership, product development expertise and manufacturing capabilities to help bring innovative new products to the marketplace that will improve the homeowner experience and make the world a better place.”

The companies began their relationship with an investment from Andersen in Ubiquitous Energy’s Series B financing in 2021. Ubiquitous Energy is actively raising funding to accelerate commercialization efforts, including funding for a U.S.-based manufacturing facility that will supply the first transparent solar window and door units to Andersen and other partners and customers.

“We are excited to continue to deepen our relationship with Andersen to together create the first UE Power window and door products for residential and light commercial buildings,” comments Susan Stone, CEO of Ubiquitous Energy. “Our companies have a shared goal of changing the way the world uses solar power and positively impacting the environment in a big way without compromising aesthetics or function.”

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The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has released a roadmap with near- and long-term steps to dramatically scale America’s solar manufacturing sector now that the Solar Energy Manufacturing for America Act (SEMA) has passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The new whitepaper, Catalyzing American Solar Manufacturing, outlines how the solar and storage industry can capitalize on this policy support and build a manufacturing base that is cost-competitive, ensures sufficient demand and supports a strong, diverse workforce. It also provides a snapshot of the current market landscape as well as analysis of how SEMA and other provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act can help scale domestic production.

“For the first time, the United States has industrial policy in place that will usher in a new era of clean energy manufacturing,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO. “This roadmap is a blueprint for strategically growing America’s clean energy supply chain and supporting the companies that have committed to U.S. production once the reconciliation package becomes law. If we follow the recommendations in the paper, we can grow the U.S. solar manufacturing workforce and put the solar and storage industry on a path to secure, sustainable and equitable growth for decades to come.”

Global instability and supply chain challenges over the last few years underscore the importance of domestic production and the need to reach SEIA’s goal of 50 GW U.S. solar manufacturing capacity by 2030. New production capacity can dramatically reduce shipping and import costs, which will insulate the U.S. solar and storage industry from global supply disruption and help secure the safety and reliability of the electric grid.

Once SEMA is in place, the roadmap recommends that manufacturers consider demand and timing for their products and focus their attention on downstream production first. This includes expanding domestic module manufacturing first so there is existing demand for domestic cells, ingots and wafers once these products become available. The paper emphasizes that domestic manufacturing can grow in the near-term as the IRA dramatically scales up demand for solar and storage products, but that capacity must be scaled up over a period of several years.

Thoughtful industrial policies and a long-term strategy for domestic manufacturing are key to strengthening America’s energy security and creating hundreds of thousands of high-quality manufacturing jobs.

This roadmap is the first report in a series of papers that will focus on emerging opportunities and challenges for the solar and storage industry. The next report will focus on building a robust U.S. manufacturing base for energy storage equipment.

Read the roadmap whitepaper here.

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