Longroad Energy’s Sun Streams 2, a 200MWdc solar project located in Maricopa County, Arizona. Image: Longroad.

US developer, owner and asset manager Longroad Energy has secured a US$500 million equity investment to support its business model shift from a “develop to sale” strategy to the ownership of renewable energy projects in the US.

Moreover, it will further accelerate its portfolio growth from 1.5GW of owned assets to more than 8.5GW of solar, wind and energy storage in the next five years.

The investment was led by MEAG, acting as asset management arm for insurer Munich Re and two existing funds NZ Super Fund and Infratil.

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Revenues from operational assets have surged over the last year, as system strains have pushed up ancillary service values. Image: Gore Street. Image: Gore Street.

UK battery storage player Gore Street saw its net income increase by 191% over the year to 31 March 2022, whilst the EBITDA of its operational portfolio surged 704%.

The London Stock Exchange-listed battery energy storage fund saw its income grow to £42.5 million (US$51.71 million) for the last financial year from £14.6 million as of 31 March 2021, and its EBITDA to £23.3 million from £2.9 million.

Its operational portfolio grew over the period, increasing from 380MW as of March 2021 to 628.54MW as of 31 March 2022. It had 12 assets producing income over the last year, with a total capacity of 231.7MW, just a one project increase from the previous year when it had a capacity of 209.7MW.

This is expected to continue to expand at pace over the coming year, with 37% of Gore Street’s portfolio operational and 63% at the construction/pre-construction stage.

All of the company’s operating assets performed strongly it stated, with the average revenue per MW for its British assets over 68% higher than the 2021 fiscal year average and 18.3% higher than internally forecasted for the period.  

“Our active asset management approach continues to optimise Capex of the portfolio’s assets, which increases both performance and profitability, providing greater returns for shareholders,” said CEO of Gore Street Capital, the investment adviser to the company, Alex O’Cinneide.

“Additionally, the company has had great success to date with keeping construction on time and within budget, even in this period of supply chain challenges; as well as carefully designing each asset to be optimised for maximum efficiency once operational.”

During the 2021/22 period, Gore Street completed its first acquisition in mainland Europe with a 22MW operational asset in Germany, as well as acquiring two assets in Britain: Stony (79.9 MW) and Enderby (57MW).

Additionally, it secured the rights to expand one of its assets in the Republic of Ireland, with an additional 90MW to be added to its Kilmannock project. Along with a 50MW expansion grant for its Porterstown asset, this will take the company’s total portfolio size in the country to 210MW.

Since the end of the period it has continued to expand its portfolio, including acquiring a portfolio of eight energy storage assets in Texas, its first in the US. It is currently reviewing a range of opportunities in Britain, Ireland, Western Europe, North America and Australia it noted, with a total pipeline of c.1.7GW or 3.6GWh.

During the FY 2021/22 period, Gore Street raised £208.6 million in two oversubscribed issuances, increasing its issued share capital from 143.9 million shares to 345.0 million shares.

“We … successfully raised, through oversubscribed fundraises, £135 million in April 2021 and a further £73.6 million in October 2021, with an additional £150 million raised post-period end,” continued O’Cinneide.

“The substantial increase of investible capital has given the company additional headroom to continue our strategy of expanding into other geographies, with our first acquisition in Germany, during the period, and in the United States post-reporting period, which add a layer of geographical and revenue diversity to our already highly diverse portfolio of energy storage assets, de-risking Gore Street further for our shareholders.”

Gore Street’s net asset value (NAV) increased 154% to £369.6 million from £145.1 million in the previous year. Its NAV per share grew by 6% to 107.1p from 100.0p, bringing its NAV total return to 13%.

Its total share returns for the period were 11% since 31 March 2021 and 37% since inception.

This story first appeared on Solar Power Portal.

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The Biden-Harris administration, through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is releasing $26 million to fund projects that will demonstrate that America’s electricity grid can reliably run with a mix of solar, wind, energy storage and other clean distributed energy resources. Funded by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Solar and Wind Grid Services and Reliability Demonstration Program will show how clean energy resources can address key reliability challenges facing the grid by developing and testing tools and plant functions that allow the grid to stay online amid disturbances and restart if it goes down. The demonstration projects will provide data to underscore how President Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2030 can be achieved while supporting grid reliability.

“Americans do not have to choose between a clean grid and a reliable one as we move forward towards our goals of a net-zero economy by 2050,” says U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Thanks to funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, DOE is proving that transitioning to solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources can keep the lights on without service interruptions, while creating good paying jobs.”

The U.S. electricity grid was originally built to deliver power from just a few large fossil fuel power plants to homes and businesses, but today’s grid has a mix of traditional and renewable energy sources. DOE investments have led to the development of new tools that enable grid operators to manage this increasingly complex network. Now those tools need to be demonstrated at a broader scale to increase their adoption and build trust as grid operators face a growing number of disruptions, such as cyberattacks, extreme weather events, and wildfires. To achieve a clean power sector, clean energy sources such as solar and wind generation and energy storage must prove that they are able to support the grid during normal as well as emergency situations. 

The Solar and Wind Grid Services and Reliability Demonstration Program will fund up to 10 projects that demonstrate how large-scale solar, wind and energy storage can support the power grid by automatically adjusting to changing demand and disruptions. Projects, which require testing at a plant of at least 10 MW in size from a mix of solar, wind or other generation or storage technology, will also demonstrate how a clean energy grid prevents blackouts by quickly identifying and responding to faults.

Academic institutions, private companies, nonprofits, state and local governments, and tribal nations are encouraged to apply and form diverse teams that include representation from entities such as historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions, and community-based organizations.

Through DOE’s new Building a Better Grid Initiative DOE, is deploying more than $20 billion in federal financing tools, including through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s new $2.5 billion Transmission Facilitation Program, $3 billion expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, and more than $10 billion in grants for states, Tribes, and utilities to enhance grid resilience and prevent power outages, and through existing tools, including the more than $3 billion Western Area Power Administration Transmission Infrastructure Program, and a number of loan guarantee programs through the Loan Programs Office.

Image: Andreas Gücklhorn on Unsplash

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Carmichael Roberts

Terabase Energy has received a $44 million Series B financing co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Prelude Ventures with additional participation by SJF Ventures and other existing investors. The round brings Terabase’s total funding to $52 million and will be used to support the company’s mission to reduce the cost and increase the scalability of solar by building a digital and robotic automation platform for the development, construction and operation of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plants.

“In recent years, the solar industry has been focused on technological improvements of solar panels and other hardware components while the means and methods of engineering and construction have been largely unchanged,” says Carmichael Roberts of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “The way the industry designs and builds large scale projects needs to be rethought if we are to reach the very rapid growth required to meet net-zero goals. To enable the TW-scale deployment of solar needed to decarbonize, we believe a breakthrough is needed to transform how PV power plants are built. Terabase’s solution has tremendous potential to reduce costs and accelerate the deployment of large scale solar, and we look forward to working with them on that mission.”

Terabase has built a digital platform for managing the full project life cycle of utility-scale solar and combined it with a construction automation system to transform the way solar power plants are deployed. Terabase’s automated field-factory, capable of 24/7 operations, can significantly compress construction schedules and reduce costs while ensuring higher build quality. The robotics-assisted workflow will also improve worker health and safety by eliminating manual lifting of heavy panels and steel components under often difficult outdoor weather conditions.

“This investment is validation of our vision for rapidly deploying solar at the TW scale,” states Matt Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Terabase Energy. “It took 50 years for the world to build the first TW of solar, but we need at least 50 additional TW built as quickly as possible to meet global decarbonization targets. This round of funding will allow us to continue to expand our team and make the investments necessary to achieve our mission.”

Terabase is working alongside project developers, owners, and engineering and construction firms to support the design, optimization and deployment of large-scale solar projects around the world. The new round of financing will enable full commercial deployment of the company’s integrated solution in 2023; it comes shortly after Terabase announced its first commercial project, a large deployment of robotics in solar plant construction.

“Terabase’s software and automation platform allows for developers and EPCs to effectively design and manage their projects from the point of land acquisition to rapid and high-quality construction through automation,” adds Tim Woodward, managing director of Prelude Ventures. “This is an essential solution for solar to get to Gigawatt-scale projects around the world.”

“Our only hope to truly solve the climate crisis is to deploy clean technologies at a much larger scale to reach different areas of the economy than before,” concludes Sheldon Kimber, CEO of Intersect Power, a Terabase customer. “The Terabase platform is an exciting innovation to deploy more solar faster and we are delighted to be a Terabase partner.”

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Image: fdecomite.

Austin-based potassium-ion battery startup Group1 says its technology has comparable energy density to lithium iron phosphate (LFP), and that it is aiming for a large-scale launch of its product by 2027.

The company launched last week and is seeking to commercialise potassium-ion batteries using its Prussian White cathode (KPW) cathode material, which would be a world-first.

Group1 CEO Alex Girau has since responded to questions from Energy-Storage.news, based on comments from Max Reid, research analyst in Wood Mackenzie’s Battery & Raw Materials Service segment who described potassium-ion battery technology as ‘promising but still immature’. See Girau’s full response further down.

In his comments, Reid said a lower capacity and energy density than nickel-manganese-cobalt, the most common lithium-ion battery chemistry today, made Group1’s KPW cathode material more suitable for the energy storage system (ESS) sector than for EVs.

He then pointed out that KPW has several benefits, including a long cycle life, the ability to use existing graphite anode production, much more abundant underlying materials and the potential to be cheaper than LFP or NMC once scaled.

“Yet, all cathodes need to be of very high quality. The lithium-ion industry has been built over 30 years now, so producers are experienced and been through the slog of scaling up. In the potassium space there are no scaled cathode producers and this will be a hurdle to the size of potassium-ion’s impact,” he cautioned, estimating production of potassium-ion batteries ‘closer to 2030’.

Group1 CEO Alex Girau responds

What is your response to the suggestion that the Prussian white cathode material’s capacity is at 60% of lithium-ion’s (120 mAh/g vs 200 mAh/g for NMC)?

In order to make a proper comparison we have to take into account KPW cathode operating voltage.

As more and more EVs are being powered by LiFePO4 (aka LFP – lithium iron phosphate), we consider LFP as our benchmark comparison in LIB (lithium-ion battery) material systems, which delivers 170mAh/g operating at 3.4V, with lower energy density but cheaper and safer than NMC.

For example, Tesla previously announced that its Q1 2022 production number had jumped to over 310,000 vehicles, and close to 150,000 of these had the LFP pack. Group1’s KPW cathode is 4V and will deliver comparable energy density to LFP, at lower cost and improved safety because it is Co/Ni/Li/O-free. It is the next-generation sustainable cathode material competitive with LFP. Both of them were invented in [Nobel Prize-winning lithium battery inventor] Dr John Goodenough’s lab.

Would you agree this makes it more suitable for the energy storage system (ESS) sector than for EVs?

Because of the energy density we mentioned before, the KPW-enabled K-ion battery has an energy density on par with LFP-based Li-ion batteries which are widely used in BYD and Tesla cars today. In addition, a K-ion battery can charge faster and has better low-temperature performance because K+ moves faster than Li+, and KPW provides a more open stable structure to facilitate that. Therefore, both ESS and EV are target markets.

Not to mention EV battery packs are moving towards mixed chemistries so that benefits from multiple chemistries can be utilised in an ad-hoc fashion (NCM/LFP, LI/Na, LiK would be superior to Li/Na).

However, due to fast charging, long cycle life, and low-temperature performance, our first EV market is heavy-duty trucks, and commercial/fleet vehicles. This enables them with batteries designed to deliver performance in this highly demanding but underserved market segment.

What about the lack of existing scaled potassium-ion cathode producers being a hurdle to the size of potassium-ion’s impact?

This is the focus of Group1: to rapidly provide KPW material at a global scale. We have ambitious growth plans and will be building cathode material plants to support industry adoption and growth. One of our co-founders Dr Kutsovsky, former CTO of Cabot Corporation, has decades of experience scaling materials production from grams in the lab to 1,000-tonnes plants and delivering to demanding industries.

In addition, the K-ion battery is the most drop-in (sic) battery technology in the market, this is mostly because graphite can be directly used as the anode. In comparison, Na-ion batteries need to develop both cathode and anode because graphite is not compatible with sodium.

As a result, we believe that the industry will be adapting KPW cathode and building KIB (potassium-ion) batteries with as little friction as switching from NCM to LFP cathodes in LIB.

“Powering Batteries Beyond Lithium. Building on the Best of Lithium” is Group1’s philosophy.

Would you agree that commercial production of potassium-ion batteries will only happen closer to 2030 (barring a major producer taking a particularly bullish approach and fast-tracking it, in which case we could see it closer to 2025)?

Our plans support large-scale cell making and qualifications by leading cell manufacturers around 2025 with large launches in 2027. This is a bullish scale, but we think very reasonable due to the combination of the product characteristics, in-house knowledge of scaling and mapping that customer/market needs, and managing timelines associated with commercialisation.

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PosiGen, a provider of renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions for low-to-moderate (LMI) income homeowners, is expanding into Massachusetts. This will be PosiGen’s sixth operational state, joining Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Mississippi and the company’s home base of Louisiana. The initial launch focuses on Western Massachusetts, with plans to expand PosiGen’s footprint across the Commonwealth over the next six to eight months.

“We are very excited to be entering the Massachusetts market,” says Tom Neyhart, PosiGen’s CEO. “Massachusetts has been committed to solar and renewables for decades and is recognized as one of the states leading the charge to decarbonization. We look forward to helping families who traditionally haven’t had access to rooftop solar, lowering their energy burden and putting real money back in their pockets through our No Credit Needed, Solar for All program. We are committed to our mission to provide meaningful savings to every family we serve.”

Since 2011, PosiGen has served over 22,000 residential customers with its lease program, which covers the full cost of installing, maintaining and ensuring the rooftop solar system, and also provides energy efficiency upgrades with no minimum credit score or minimum income requirement.

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Nomad CEO Jay Bellows at the launch event yesterday. Image: Nomad Transportable Power Systems.

Another edition of our news in brief from around the world in energy storage, this time focusing on product announcements.

KORE Power’s mobile battery system subsidiary launches range

US battery and energy storage system (ESS) manufacturer KORE Power’s Nomad Transportable Power Systems subsidiary has launched its first mobile ESS product range.

An official launch event was held yesterday in Vermont, US, at the company’s offices, where three units were unveiled: a 2MWh unit called The Traveler, a 1.3MWh unit called The Voyager and a 660kWh unit called The Rover.

Each uses lithium-ion cells made by KORE Power. Nomad was established when the manufacturer formed a joint venture (JV) in March 2021 with system integrator Northern Reliability, which KORE Power later acquired.

KORE Power CEO and co-founder Lindsay Gorrill described the Nomad value proposition as “safe, efficient, plug-and-play energy that can be dispatched to wherever it is needed, for as long as it is needed.”

KORE wants to both sell units and rent them out in a storage-as-a-service model. It’s the latest mobile energy storage launch in the industry from a growing number of providers.

Lion Energy launches ESS products ahead of LFP factory push

While KORE Power is building a 12GWh US battery Gigafactory in Nevada, Lion Energy, a Utah-headquartered solar and battery pack supplier has established a subsidiary of its own to make cells.

Energy-Storage.news reported in March that a Lion Energy spinout, American Battery Factory, plans to build a national network of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery gigafactories in the US aimed at the ESS market.

ABF claimed it could build its first 3GWh factory within two years. In the meantime, Lion Energy last week announced the launch of a new range of LFP battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Utilising Lion Energy’s US-made and designed battery management system (BMS) and energy management system (EMS), the LionESS range has been touted by the company as suitable for pairing with renewable and non-renewable generation.

The two products in the range are a home system called Lion Sanctuary, which integrates 13.5kWh of LFP battery storage with 8kW hybrid inverter/charger, and Lion POWERsave, which is available in size and capacity configurable from 30kW/50kWh to 1.5MW/2.2MWh.

Power plant controller targets Texas FFR opportunities

PXiSE’s power plant controller enables energy storage asset owners to participate in a new ancillary service opportunity in the Texas ERCOT market.

ERCOT, the grid and wholesale market operator which covers around 80% of Texas’ electricity network has established a Fast Frequency Response (FFR) market. Like other frequency response services, FFR works to quickly rectify differences in supply and demand that can impact stable operation of the grid.

ERCOT’s market participation performance requirements are stringent, PXiSE noted, but the PXiSE Renewable Power Plant Controller (PPC) meets them.

Although not technically a product launch as the PPC is already available, PXiSE noted that its product is likely one of a very limited number that can already meet the FFR market demands.

FFR assets need to respond within 15 cycles of receiving a signal from the grid that its frequency is reaching a trigger threshold. The response needs to be maintained for 15 minutes after receiving that signal, or until ERCOT recalls its deployment, whichever comes first.

Resources also need to be available quickly after each deployment, within 15 minutes after the end of each event.

PXiSE said the device can also co-optimise battery assets to manage their participation across multiple market opportunities, such as reserving energy for FFR while playing the rest of the stored capacity into wholesale markets. Meeting the high bar for ERCOT participation means the PPC can also do the same in FFR markets elsewhere in the world, the company claimed.

One notable project for the company was its role in enabling a town in Western Australia to cut off its fossil fuel energy supply for a period of an hour and twenty minutes using a renewable energy microgrid equipped with the PXiSE controller technology.

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Image: Eos Energy Enterprises via Facebook.

Zinc-based battery energy storage system provider Eos Energy Enterprises has secured a US$85 million loan facility with Atlas Credit Partners (ACP).

The money will be used for expanding Eos’ manufacturing capacity, developing the next generation of its energy storage systems and services and for general corporate purposes, it said.

The financing from ACP, a private credit fund, consists of a four-year, non-amortising term loan with a variable interest rate of SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate) plus 8.5%. The agreement also allows Eos to make a one-time request for another US$15 million subject to lender consent.

Joe Mastrangelo, Eos CEO, said: “This capital allows us to fast-track our manufacturing capacity expansion to accelerate the shift to clean energy and to deliver against our $460 million orders backlog.”

It builds on a US$200 million funding commitment the company recently received from one of its finance partners, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

The company’s order backlog now stands at 1.9GWh, of which a big chunk is a recently-expanded multi-year master supply agreement with renewable energy EPC and developer Bridgelink Commodities for the ERCOT market.

The core of the company’s battery energy storage system solutions is its Znyth (zinc hybrid cathode) brand battery, which is stacked into systems offering a duration of between three and 12 hours. Its Energy Block solution offers up to 10MW of power while the Power House starts at 10MW.

The vast majority (90%) of demand for the company’s solution is from within the US. As Energy-Storage.news reported recently, it is undergoing a 550MWh expansion of the manufacturing capacity of its Pittsburgh plant, of which 65MWh was completed in quarter one 2022.

Drew Mallozzi, managing partner of ACP, added: “The Company (Eos) has a proven technology with a strong management team and is building a capital efficient and scalable manufacturing model that ACP believes is poised to capture one of the largest secular growth opportunities that we have identified in the energy industry.”

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An ERCOT control room. Image: ERCOT.

Developer Black Mountain Energy Storage (BMES) has sold 700MW of development-stage projects to UBS Asset Management, its third substantial sale in the Texas ERCOT market in two months.

The five standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) projects acquired by UBS Asset Management, part of the Switzerland-based global bank, are expected to come online in 2024. They are located on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid.

UBS said the projects will provide flexibility, responsiveness, and dispatchability to the ERCOT grid once operational.

The main revenue sources for battery energy storage projects in the state are frequency response services regulation reserve service (RRS) and a sub-set within that group called fast frequency response (RRS-FFR), and wholesale energy trading particularly around congested nodes.

“This portfolio is comprised of strategically selected, diversified projects in locations which are well-positioned for the current state of the market, as well as the dynamic growth Texas will experience in the coming years,” said, Ken-Ichi Hino, Portfolio Manager, Energy Storage Infrastructure, UBS Asset Management.

UBS Asset Management was advised on the transaction by Troutman Pepper, Clean Energy Counsel, and Euclid Power.

BMES has now sold 1,200MW of energy storage projects for delivery in ERCOT in 2024 in the last two months, with a total energy capacity of at least 1,700MWh, assuming that UBS’ acquired projects have a discharge of at least one hour.

Last week, BMES sold 400/600MWh of projects to Cypress Creek Renewables with an average duration of 1.5 hours while in June it sold two 100MW/200MWh sites to Recurrent Energy, part of Canadian Solar. In both of those cases the buyers said they would take over project development, entitlement, engineering, procurement, financing and construction and operate the sites once live.

Developers in the ERCOT market are generally moving past one-hour systems as energy trading grows as a revenue stream.

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Borrego 96MW solar PV plant for customer AES. Image: Borrego Energy.

US solar and energy storage developer Borrego has completed the previously announced spin off and sale of its development business to energy transition investor ECP for an undisclosed amount, with the new company being renamed as New Leaf Energy.

To be operated as an independent business by ECP, New Leaf Energy will continue to be led by the existing leadership team. Borrego recently said that the sale would result in the development arm being less capital constrained.

The company has a pipeline of 450 projects, comprising more than 8.5GW of solar PV as well as 7GW/28GWh of energy storage projects and will continue its focus on distributed generation (DG) and utility-scale solar and storage following the sale to ECP.

Borrego said New Leaf Energy will look to strengthen its presence in its core markets of New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Illinois as well as targeting new markets including California, Arizona and Colorado.

Borrego’s CEO Mark Hall said, following the transaction, the company would focus on taking its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and third-party operations and maintenance (O&M) businesses “to the next level”. 

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

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