A Stem Inc commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage installation. Image: Stem Inc.

Stem Inc grew revenues 246% in quarter two 2022 and ended the period with a contracted backlog of US$727 million.

The California-based company provides lithium-ion battery storage solutions optimised and controlled by its AI-enabled software platform Athena, mostly to commercial and industrial (C&I) customers.

It booked revenues of US$67 million in Q2, up 246% from US$19 million in Q2 2021, and up 63% Q1.

The GAAP gross margin was 12%, up from (1)% a year earlier and its net loss fell two-thirds, from US$100 million to US$32 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss grew to US$11 million from US$8 million in Q2 2021.

It booked US$226 million of orders during the quarter, a four-fold increase year-on-year. That meant that Stem Inc finished the period with a contracted backlog of US$727 million, up 29% from the US$565 million it finished Q1 with, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

“We executed at a high level in the second quarter, with revenue above the top end of our guidance range for the second straight quarter, and margins and adjusted EBITDA in-line with our expectations,” CEO John Carrington said.

The company is reiterating its full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance of US$350-425 million and US$(60)-(20) million, respectively.

Stem Inc also finished Q2 with a 12-month pipeline of US$5.6 billion, up from US$5.2 billion in the previous quarter, it claimed. The pipeline represents uncontracted, potential hardware and software revenue from opportunities that are currently being pursued by our direct salesforce and channel partners, based on project timelines, and does not guarantee meaningful revenue or profitability.

Carrington added: “Our AI-driven software delivers improved economic optimisation and asset management solutions to our renewable energy customers. We were proud that AlsoEnergy was ranked #1 by Guidehouse Insights in its Solar and Storage Monitoring and Control Vendors report, a testimony to our technology leadership.

The company acquired solar asset management software company Also Energy Holdings in December 2021, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time.

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Lake Cressbrook, Queensland. Image: Flickr user Allan Henderson.

Bechtel has been selected to work on design and planning of a large-scale pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) project in Queensland, Australia that will also include battery storage.

The US engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company has been appointed by project partners BE Power and GE Renewable Energy for the Big-T project at Lake Cressbrook, southeast Queensland.

The project will include a 10-hour duration 400MW PHES (4,000MWh) paired with a 200MW/200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

With Queensland targeting 50% renewable energy generation by 2030, the plant is expected to provide considerable support to the integration of that energy onto the grid and a final investment decision on it is expected late next year, Bechtel said. Along with supporting and investing in large-scale batteries, the state’s government recently also offered up A$48 million (US$33.37 million) funding into feasibility studies for PHES.

The company has signed a service agreement that will see it advance the design of Big-T, see where cost savings can be made on contractors and construction, advise on contract structuring, and engage with the supply chain. On the latter point, Bechtel will seek to maximise local content usage and indigenous participation.

If the project does go ahead, Bechtel will be its EPC contractor.

BE Power’s managing director noted that Bechtel has a long history of working with hydropower projects, and the EPC has partnered with GE Renewable Energy before.

Australia’s energy storage sector has seen a rise in lithium-ion battery storage at grid-scale in recent years, but at the same time, the country’s first new PHES plant since the mid-1980s is under construction at Kidston, also in Queensland, and a number of other PHES plants, from relatively small, such as a 30MWh plant under construction in Western Australia to those the scale of Kidston and Big-T, are in development. On the island of Tasmania, a plan is underway to use pumped hydro, batteries and wind and solar PV to turn the region into the “Battery of the Nation” through a proposed state government-backed project of that name.

In terms of global projects, two recently completed PHES facilities have garnered headlines this year: Iberdrola’s 40GWh ‘Tâmega Gigabattery’ in northern Portugal, and Nant de Drance, a 20GWh facility in Switzerland in which the main shareholder is utility Alpiq. Both were announced as coming online in July.

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Wallerawang Power Station, pictured in 2007. The plant was retired from 2014 and demolished last year. Image: Wikimedia user Amitch.

The Department of Planning and Environment in New South Wales, Australia, has given development approval to a proposed 500MW/1,000MWh battery storage project at the site of a retired coal plant.

Developer Greenspot announced this morning that it had been handed the favourable decision on its Wallerawang 9 Battery project, which it has been developing for construction at the site of Wallerawang coal power plant in Lithgow.

The coal-fired power station was retired by its owner EnergyAustralia in 2014 and its chimney stacks finally demolished last November. Its removal took two 500MW generators of dirty but dispatchable power off the local network.

Greenspot’s battery facility would have an approved dispatch capability of 500MW, helping to integrate variable renewable energy from solar PV and wind and contributing stability services to the grid.

Retired or retiring coal – and other fossil fuel – generation sites connected to the grid are considered useful real estate for siting battery plants as they can make use of valuable existing infrastructure including grid interconnection points, logistical access and water as well as data networks.

Various other coal plant sites around Australia are being redeveloped into battery storage and sometimes solar-plus-storage sites instead, including Eraring, Australia’s largest single power plant site, which owner Origin Energy wants to replace with a mix of batteries, virtual power plant (VPP) and gas peakers.

Eraring is also in New South Wales and as part of the transition plan, in March this year the state government launched a tender for contracts to work on the 700MW/1,400MWh Waratah Super Battery which would in part take its place.

Wallerawang 9 Battery would also be close to the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Hub, which the New South Wales government is supporting, to bring an additional 3GW of wind and solar generation into the region by the middle of this decade.

The project, expected to require about AU$400 million (US$279 million) investment, is therefore in an important strategic location, the developer said.

Approval was waved through under the state government’s Priority Assessment Program that determined the battery energy storage system (BESS) project could be categorised as a State Significant Development Project and should be accelerated in the public interest.

Greenspot specialises in real estate investments to rehabilitate fossil fuel sites and repurpose them to benefit their local communities and the company said it plans to create a multi-use precinct around the Wallerawang site.

The BESS would connect to the same 330kV substation as another project of the same size proposed by developer Neoen. The France-headquartered company already has two of Australia’s biggest battery storage assets in its portfolio and wants to construct its Great Western Battery at a site nearby. The Great Western Battery has also been designated as a State Significant Development Project too.       

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The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has notified Revolve Renewable Power Corp. that its right of way/variance land application for the 250 MW Parker Solar and Storage Project, located in La Paz County, Ariz., has been approved for further processing.

The Parker Project will be located on approximately 1,530 acres of land wholly managed by the BLM nine miles southeast of Parker, Ariz. The entire project site is located in a solar variance area as identified in BLM’s Solar PEIS and Record of Decision. It has the capacity to provide electricity to an equivalent of approximately 300,000 homes.

The company will now continue through the BLM approval process, which will consist of completion of an environmental review of the project in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and all other applicable laws, regulations and policies.

The company also confirms that it has appointed Wood Group Inc., a global engineering consultancy firm, to lead the field studies required as part of the NEPA process. The biological field studies have already commenced and will be completed in the coming months. The aquatic and cultural resource assessments will be completed during Q1 2023.

“Completion of the variance approval process is a major milestone for the development of the Parker Project and is the result of some excellent work by the Revolve development team working closely with the BLM over the last 10 months,” says Steve Dalton, CEO of Revolve. “We now look forward to continuing this work with the BLM and our external consultants as the project moves into the NEPA process.”

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Manish Nayar

OYA Solar, a North American solar developer and independent power producer, has selected two engineering, procurement and construction firms (EPC) to lead the construction of 13 renewable energy projects, with expected completion dates from the fourth quarter of 2022 to mid-2023. All these projects are expected to reach permission to operate (PTO) by the end of the second quarter of 2023.

The 13 projects make up OYA’s Wave 1 pipeline and are expected to produce 124,000 MWh annually, generating clean energy for approximately 13,000 residential homes in the State of New York. These projects advance OYA’s objective of leading the energy transition through owning and developing renewable energy, and form part of its 6 GW pipeline.

“OYA Solar has transformed from a developer of solar projects to an independent power producer over the past two years,” remarks Manish Nayar, executive chairman of OYA Solar. “As our portfolio of projects continues to grow, we are excited to partner with firms that possess exceptional track records in operations and execution, to support the ongoing development of our assets.”

With these projects, as well as the others in our pipeline, OYA is committed to the development of renewable energy solutions for communities in the State of New York and across North America. OYA expects to place 38 MW from its New York portfolio in service by 2022 to provide affordable energy to communities.

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Inside enclosures at a 20MW/80MWh BESS in California which was brought online in 2015 and bought by Ormat in 2020. Image: AltaGas.

US geothermal energy company Ormat Technologies’ energy storage division achieved gross margin of 25.3% during the second quarter of this year, as revenues increased by 33.1% year-on-year.

The company develops and owns geothermal and waste heat power plants (aka recovered energy generation) but has diversified into solar PV and more recently into battery storage, entering the market via the 2017 acquisition of storage developer Viridity Energy for around US$35 million.

Its shareholders include Japanese financial services group Orix, which owns a 20% stake.  

In 2020, Ormat leadership said that broadening its revenue base by adding an energy storage division was a way to offset slow market conditions in other segments, as it acquired an 80MWh operational project in California.

In Q2 2022 the company’s energy storage revenues were US$7.5 million, compared to US$5.6 million in the same period of last year. For the half year just gone, however, revenue of US$14.1 million was a 23.4% drop from US$18.3 million in H1 2021.

Gross margin too has fallen since the first half of 2021, when it was 45.2%, to 19.8% this time out, although Q2’s 25.3% gross margin was a big increase from 6.4% in Q2 2021.

Energy storage remains a fairly small portion of Ormat Technologies’ overall business: its electricity sales revenues, the biggest portion of its income, were US$151.2 million in Q2. However company leadership has said in the past that it expects demand for energy storage to become “very big” and it wants to be in on the action as it takes off.

The company’s overall operating income was US$38.6 million for the quarter, a 34.9% increase year-on-year, while adjusted EBITDA was US$100.7 million for Q2 2022 and US$208.5 million for the half-year, corresponding to rises of 19.1% and 13.5% respectively.

“Ormat’s second quarter financial performance demonstrated healthy top-line and Adjusted EBITDA growth, driven by strong performance from our Electricity segment as well as our Energy Storage Segment,” CEO Dorn Blachar said.

Blachar added that strong performance in both segments is expected to continue for the rest of the year, with five new projects totalling 73MW brought online recently to contribute to that. In June, Energy-Storage.news reported the commissioning of Tierra Buena BESS, a 5MW/20MWh facility in California which is contracted for offtake by two Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) local utility groups.

The company’s generation portfolio of geothermal, solar PV and energy storage will grow to 1.5GW next year and it will deliver US$500 million adjusted EBITDA on a run-rate basis “towards the end of 2022,” the CEO said.

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ArcLight is buying the BESS developments alongside an operational wind porfolio.

Private equity firm ArcLight Capital Partners has agreed to acquire 185MW of operational wind farms and 80MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) developments from GlidePath Power Solutions.

ArcLight has entered into the agreement with Glidepath through its affiliate Sequitur Renewables. It will see the investment firm buy five wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia which sell power and renewable energy credits into the merchant market of grid operator PJM.

Alongside the wind farms, Sequitur is acquiring 80MWh of BESS development opportunities it described as ‘adjunct’ to the wind portfolio, though it did not provide details on the expected completion date for the projects nor whether they intend to be co-located with the wind assets.

Co-location with wind is less common than for solar due to a higher minimum project size and the greater variability in wind generation requiring more cycling of a battery, reducing its lifetime.

PJM’s area of operation includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois.

“ArcLight is excited to re-enter the wind market through the establishment of the Sequitur platform. This platform follows prior domestic wind-focused investments in Leeward Renewables, Terra-Gen Power and CPV Wind,” said Carter Ward, partner at ArcLight.

Affiliates of the investment firm recently announced development milestones associated with the other large-scale BESS projects, which it has said its portfolio of legacy thermal plants are prime locations for. With interconnection queues one of the main challenges for new BESS projects, the existing interconnection, real estate and site infrastructure at large plants is advantageous.

One of those, Generation Bridge, recently completed interconnection studies for its 335MWh Long Beach Pier S BESS project in Long Beach, California. The 540MWh Luyster Creek BESS project in New York, developed by Eastern Generation, was recently approved by regulators.

“The Sequitur acquisition and BESS development opportunities leverage ArcLight’s core expertise in power generation, renewables and energy transition,” added Dan Revers, Managing Partner at ArcLight.

Another fossil fuel plant owner, Rise Light & Power, has similar plans for New York’s biggest power plant as Energy-Storage.news recently reported.

Milbank served as legal counsel on the transaction to ArcLight. McGuire Woods served as legal counsel on the transaction to GlidePath.

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Victorian Big Battery. Image: Victoria State government.

Neoen saw its energy storage revenues triple in the first half of this year, driven by its Victorian Big Battery in Australia, where the company has established itself as a key market player.

The French renewable energy developer and independent power producer (IPP) published its latest financial results last week. It earned €99.5 million (US$101.38 million) revenue from its solar PV business division, €66.2 million from wind and €39.3 million from energy storage.

But while all three segments saw increases in revenues from the same period in the previous year, with solar PV up 17% and wind up 28%, in energy storage revenues for H1 2022 were 2.9 times higher than in H1 2021, when Neoen earned €13.4 million from the segment.

The increase in energy storage revenue was driven largely by Neoen’s Victorian Big Battery project, which came online at the beginning of this year and at 300MW/450MWh is Australia’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) facility.

The Victorian Big Battery benefitted from three separate revenue streams for different applications: participation in the National Electricity Market’s frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) market, energy arbitrage and through a capacity reserve contract through the System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

The latter is a long-term contract to provide 250MW that can enable the interconnected electricity system between the states of Victoria and New South Wales to handle more load at peak times.

Hornsdale Power Reserve also has a SIPS contract, with AEMO and transmission operator ElectraNet, together with the Victorian Big Battery marking two relatively rare examples of long-term contracted revenues for batteries in Australia, a market otherwise dominated by merchant revenue structures.

The company noted that two other battery assets in its portfolio, Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia and the 30MW Yllikkälä Power Reserve One in Finland contributed to an overall performance that meant energy storage’s contribution to Neoen’s half-year revenue total went from 8% in H1 2021 to 18% in H1 2022.

Storage adjusted EBITDA was €29.2 million for H1 2022, again a big jump from H1 2021’s €11.1 million. However, EBITDA margin was higher by percentage in the first half of last year, 83%, versus a still-very-healthy 72% in the first half of 2022.

It was a similar story to Q1 results this year, when energy storage revenues again outperformed the previous year’s equivalent period’s three times over.  

Having already put in two well-known large-scale projects in Hornsdale Power Reserve and the Victorian Big Battery, both of which use Tesla Megapack BESS units, Neoen has a few other Australia projects in development or construction.

The Capital Battery is a 100MW/200MWh BESS in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), on which construction began in late 2021, shortly before construction began on the first phase of Goyder South, a hybrid wind-solar-storage project in January.

At the beginning of the year Neoen brought online the Bulgana Green Power Hub, also in Victoria, combining a 204MW wind power plant with a 20MW/34MWh BESS. It has also proposed, and hopes to get approval for, the Great Western Battery, a 500MW/1,000MWh BESS project in New South Wales.

Other highlights for the first half of the year for the company included 92.5MW and 80MW renewables auction wins for solar projects in France and Ireland respectively and wind farm contracts and projects in Sweden, Finland and France.

Meanwhile in energy storage Neoen signed a seven-year ‘virtual battery’ contract with utility AGL for the Capital Battery and Hornsdale Power Reserve’s retrofitted advanced inverters were cleared to begin providing inertia to the grid.

Neoen revised its EBITDA guidance for it financial year – which ends on 31 December – upwards from a previously offered €360 million to €375 million to a range of between €380 million to €400 million.

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The groundbreaking ceremony at the site. Image: Conrad Energy.

Conrad Energy has launched construction of a 6MW/12MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Somerset, UK, after local opposition thwarted original plans for a new gas generator.

Conrad Energy broke ground on the project in a ceremony last week attended by the local mayor and councillors. The BESS will be a 6MW, two-hour system made up of Tesla Megapacks and, once complete in November, will help bring Conrad Energy’s total operational BESS portfolio to 200MW by the end of 2022.

Councillor Sarah Warren, deputy leader of Bath and North East Somerset Council, and cabinet member for Climate and Sustainable Travel, said: “We are very pleased to be playing host to this significant new battery storage facility from Conrad Energy and applaud the role it will play in creating the smarter and more flexible energy we need to get us to net zero 2030.”

The decision to build a BESS unit came after local outcry at Bath and North East Somerset Council’s decision to approve a gas-powered generator plant in early 2020. Plans were then put on hold by Conrad Energy later that year as a greener alternative was sought.

The company’s chief development officer Chris Shears this week told Energy-Storage.news about the reasons and process of switching the planned technology:

“As an experienced and diligent energy company which operates over 50 facilities across the UK, we fully understand the need to design and operate our projects sensitively and work together with the communities around our sites. We took the decision, in consultation with the relevant authorities, to change the technology at the Midsomer Norton site after the planning had been granted due to the increasing local concerns,” he said.

“We were able to secure import capacity for the grid connection and all parties involved through the development of the project agreed battery storage was critical to achieving net zero in the UK and an appropriate technology for the location. For us all to benefit from clean energy, we must be able to store and then distribute it during peak demand periods and also support the stability of the grid which batteries are excellent at doing. Our installation at Midsomer Norton will power the equivalent of 14,000 homes for up to two hours when exporting, so will be a resilient resource to Western Power Distribution.”

Instances of local opposition to new fossil fuel projects leading to BESS technology as a replacement are not limited to small projects like this one. A 100MW/400MWh BESS which went online in California in June last year was developed after original plans for a gas peaker plant faced local opposition, as Energy-Storage.news reported.

And whether driven by local, national or economic factors, BESS units are widely being chosen as alternatives to new fossil fuel projects. For peaker plants, BESS projects can be 30% cheaper than gas according to a recent study in Australia.

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GameChange Solar is launching a new, 6 GW tracker tube line that will start operations in the Midwest in February 2023. This state-of-the-art, highly automated facility allows GameChange to expand its U.S. tracker tube capacity to 14 GW.

“As our customers grow their business, GameChange is committed to continue to grow our substantial USA manufacturing base to allow for fast deliveries and flexibility in our supply chain,” states Derick Botha, chief commercial officer at GameChange Solar.

GameChange Solar is a supplier of fixed tilt and tracker solar racking solutions. It offers Genius Tracker, as well as its MaxSpan and Pour-In-Place racking systems.

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