Scott Gubbels

Nelnet has acquired a controlling investment in affiliates of GRNE Solutions LLC, known as GRNE Solar, a Midwest solar engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firm. In addition, Nelnet attained certain solar assets from an affiliate of GRNE, some already generating power and others currently being constructed.

GRNE designs and installs residential, commercial and utility-scale solar systems in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and soon in Colorado. Its solar projects typically generate between 1-5 MW of power. GRNE also offers battery backup, electric vehicle charging, energy monitoring, and operations and maintenance services.

Based in Palatine, Ill., and Lincoln, Neb., GRNE was established in 2012 by Jess Baker and Eric Peterman. The co-founders will continue to lead GRNE and retain a minority ownership interest in the company.

“We are excited to partner with Jess, Eric and the GRNE team to accelerate their growth plans and our diversification into solar development,” says Scott Gubbels, Nelnet’s executive director of tax and renewable energy. “The GRNE team has earned a strong reputation in the solar industry for their culture, values and high-quality execution and construction management. Together, we will create a unique solution in the renewable space, including EPC services, financing solutions and subscription management.”

“This acquisition presents an outstanding opportunity for the growth of GRNE and for Nelnet’s continued expansion into the renewable energy space,” states Baker, co-founder and president of GRNE Solar. “With Nelnet’s proven track record for growing and scaling business as well as GRNE’s industry expertise, we will continue to accomplish amazing things. Solar energy is a key component to accomplishing the energy goals of the future, and we are proud to be part of the solution.”

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NREL’s Flatirons Campus near Boulder, Colorado.

Hydrogen storage company GKN Hydrogen, gas utility SoCalGas and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory are collaborating on a new green hydrogen storage solution.

The three will work together to deploy two of GKN’s ‘HY2MEGA’ green hydrogen storage subsystems on NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Colorado, US.

They will connect to an existing electrolyser and fuel cell at the ARIES (Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems) facility at Flatirons. The electrolyser will use renewable energy sources, possibly wind based on photos provided in the press release, to produce hydrogen for storage in GKN’s storage solution.

HY2MEGA stores hydrogen in a solid state under low pressure, which can then be converted to produce electricity. The two systems will store a total of 500kgs of hydrogen on-site and GKN said its solution can enable long duration clean energy storage, providing resilient power in case of widespread outages.

The three-year project is set to launch by the end of 2022. The Department of Energy (DOE) provided US$1.7 million in funding while SoCalGas, the US’ largest gas distribution utility, provided another US$400,000 for the project.

“This project is exactly what the ARIES platform was designed for: demonstrate the benefits of a new technology that efficiently stores energy produced from renewable electricity,” said Katherine Hurst, group manager and research scientist at NREL. “It brings together a national laboratory, a clean energy technology developer, and a large utility to work on solutions that help decarbonize the power grid.”

ARIES is a research platform that tests new energy technologies up to the 20MW-level with the help of an 8-petaflop supercomputer. Within energy storage, it particularly looks at connecting multiple different technologies.

“SoCalGas will leverage the large-scale hydrogen storage capabilities of GKN Hydrogen’s HY2MEGA from this project to help accelerate the commercialization and deployment of green hydrogen projects,” said Neil Navin, vice president of clean energy innovations at SoCalGas.

The project is fairly unique in that it is exploring green hydrogen’s potential for power-to-gas-to-power electricity energy storage.

Most big green hydrogen projects are primarily seeking to produce green hydrogen as a feedstock for industry, followed by applications in transportation and blending with natural gas in combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants. The ACES Delta project in Utah, whose developers describe it as the largest green hydrogen project under construction anywhere in the world, is an example of the latter.

The economics of using green hydrogen for power-to-gas-to-power are far from proven due to the very low round-trip efficiency of around 33%. This is much lower than other energy storage technologies, including 75%-plus for some advanced compressed air solutions like Energy Dome’s, c.80% for pumped hydro, 85% for some thermal storage solutions and 90%-plus for lithium-ion.

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Inside one of Northvolt’s laboratories. Image: Northvolt.

Northvolt has raised US$1.1 billion in new capital ahead of a potential IPO in the next two years, amidst what a company spokesperson described as a “cautious capital market”.

The Sweden-based lithium-ion battery gigafactory company has signed a US$1.1 billion convertible note to finance its expansion. It brings its total raised since inception to US$8 billion, though the company has not publicly provided an update to its valuation, which was touted to be US$12 billion prior to this capital raise.

A convertible note is a debt instrument that converts to equity at a later date instead of paying principal or interest. Participating investors were AMF, AP funds 1-4 (via the co-owned company 4 to 1 Investments), ATP, Ava Investors, Baillie Gifford, Compagnia di San Paolo through Fondaco Growth, Folksam Group, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, IMAS Foundation, Olympia Group, OMERS Capital Markets, PCS Holding, Swedbank Robur, TM Capital and Volkswagen Group.

When asked if macro-economic factors like the high inflation and supply chain constraints had driven this capital raise or affected the company’s project timelines, Northvolt’s VP communications & public affairs Jesper Wigardt told Energy-Storage.news:

“The battery industry is very capital intensive, so this is a natural step to continue our expansion in Europe. We have definitely seen the macro-economic trends that has created a more cautious capital market – but that’s also why we see this as a show of strength for our company and a wide-spread understanding of the need for a continuous rapid expansion of battery production.”

“The Covid pandemic and the following disruption in global supply chains definitely posed a challenge for us, but we’ve been working hard with our suppliers to find new solutions and lose as little time as possible, and keep to our timelines. The first cell out of Northvolt Ett before the end of 2021 was one of those major milestones that we were very pleased to reach, and we will continue to fight every day to ramp up production and deliver to our customers.”

Recent activity by Northvolt and its energy storage strategy

Northvolt is launching multiple facilities in Europe covering the battery supply chain, including cathode material production, battery recycling and lithium-ion cell production, and had a busy first half of the year.

Its recycling plant in Norway, launched through a joint venture, started operations in May as reported by Energy-Storage.news and Northvolt made its first commercial deliveries to customers from its Northvolt Ett gigafactory in Sweden during spring 2022. In March, it announced it would build a battery cell gigafactory in north Germany, its third, and the month prior acquired a site in Sweden for a 100GWh cathode material gigafactory.

Northvolt has a total of US$55 billion in orders from companies primarily in the EV sector but has also struck deals with stationary energy storage companies like Fluence, the largest battery energy storage system integrator in the world. The two will cooperate to deliver battery technology for grid-scale storage applications, while Northvolt is also building a factory in Poland for assembling energy storage systems (ESS) in Poland with an initial output of 5GWh per year.

“The majority of our supply agreements are with automotive customers, however a significant volume of Northvolt Ett’s capacity is committed to energy storage customers. We’re not set on an exact share of production, but there is tremendous momentum for ESS (energy storage systems) in Europe and we look forward to delivering products which will play a fundamental role in the energy transition,” Wigardt said.

IPO on the cards

The company is also mulling an IPO within the next two years, according to a widely-cited interview with chairman Carl-Erik Lagercrantz who said going public in that time frame would be a “reasonable” expectation.

When asked to comment, Wigardt said: “Yes, due to the capital intensive nature of the battery industry, we will most probably see a need to access public markets in the future. However, we’re not in a hurry and are currently keeping all options open.”

Fellow Nordic-based gigafactory group, Norwegian startup FREYR, went public through a SPAC merger in July last year. In a recent update on its first gigafactory, FREYR said that factors including supply chain constraints and inflation have driven an uplift in the expected cost since plans were first announced.

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The first grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) project in India, inaugurated in 2019. Image: Tata Power.

India is on the “cusp of a potential energy storage revolution,” thanks to recently launched tenders, according to authors of a new report.

The country’s government has recognised the important role energy storage will play in its power sector. Targeting the deployment of 500GW of non-fossil fuel energy, including 450GW of new wind and solar capacity by 2030, batteries and other storage technologies have been identified as an enabler of the ambitious national goal.

Tenders for energy storage launched by various state-administered agencies are ushering in a new era, the report, co-authored by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and JMK Analytics found.

India has already surpassed 150GW renewable energy capacity, as of the time of writing. Yet to arrive at its 2030 target without jeopardising stability of supply or power quality, the nation’s Central Electricity Authority has projected a need for 27GW/108GWh of grid-scale battery storage and about 10.1GW of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).

Two tenders currently running, one from the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) and another from state-owned power group NTPC, will alone add 1GW/4GWh of storage to the grid. They are also likely to pave the way for a wave of new deployments, with SECI’s tender for standalone battery energy storage systems (BESS) designated as a pilot, for example.

“India is on the cusp of a potential energy storage revolution. Large-scale deployment of storage will be critical to firm increasing amounts of variable wind and solar as India scales up renewable energy capacity to meet its target of 500GW of non-fossil fuel energy by 2030,” IEEFA energy economist and lead for India Vibhuti Garg said.

Garg noted that the recent power crisis highlighted a need to invest in energy storage alongside renewable energy that can help reduce reliance on coal-fired generation, which the economist described as “increasingly uneconomic and unreliable”.

The two tenders are not India’s first: earlier tenders for peak power provision and round-the-clock renewable energy supply had been held in 2019 and 2020, but the NTPC and SECI solicitations are the first for standalone energy storage systems (ESS).

As such, they could catalyse development of the “entire Indian ESS market,” JMK Research founder Jyoti Gulia said.

Image: IEEFA/JMK Research

Along with a government plan to financially support 50GWh of domestic advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery manufacturing and other developments such as new Ministry of Power battery storage procurement and utilisation guidelines, the sector appears to be advancing rapidly.

There has been huge progress in the last couple of years. Yet it has taken nearly 10 years to reach this point, Dr Rahul Walawalkar, founder and president of the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) and director at consultancy Customized Energy Solutions said in a recent Energy-Storage.news webinar.

“The policy framework in India has evolved over the last 10 years. The work started in 2013 with the Ministry of Power and CEA setting up a taskforce for large-scale renewable integration. At that stage, we were looking at 20-30GW of renewable energy by 2030,” Walwalkar said.

The following year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi upped the scale of the targets significantly, setting a 100GW solar PV target for 2020 through a National Solar Mission. From there, the renewables sector grew year-on-year and in 2018 a strategy on energy storage was launched.  

India could become one of the top three global markets for energy storage in the coming decade, Dr Walawalkar said, with IESA having recently published its VISION 2030 report on how the country can get there.

There remains a lot of work to be done, but the NTPC and SECI tenders will be among the key developments in the next 12 to 18 months, according to the IESA president.

Challenges ahead

However, while a successful and timely staging of the tenders would likely be transformative in informing how future procurements could be held, there are a few challenges ahead, according to the IEEFA and JMK experts.

Due to the nascent stage of development of ESS technology in India, those challenges include technical, regulatory and procurement issues.

One example is that the NTPC tender requires energy storage with six-hour duration. However, the report said, batteries are not really economically viable beyond the four-hour duration mark, while new PHES resources have lead times too long to be able to compete.

There is also some ambiguity in the regulation of energy storage assets. In India’s Electricity Act law, in place since 2003, storage is not defined as a standalone asset.

“Thus, taxation of such assets might create a few regulatory hurdles, especially until the formulation of a national ESS policy,” JMK Research associate and report co-author Akhil Thayillam said.

Another important point regards the ability of energy storage, particularly batteries, to deliver multiple different services and benefits, from renewable energy integration and supply to applications that support the operation of the grid.

The report took as a case study an existing large-scale battery project in the UK to show how this could work, providing revenues from multiple value streams and offering some degree of certainty to investors.

The report recommended that tender design should be flexible and consider the potential for a variety of business models, while also recognising that different technologies may be suited to different applications. It is also likely that tenders will need to be designed specifically to support local manufacturing, perhaps with domestic content requirements.

In our recent webinar, Dr Rahul Walawalkar highlighted that the ancillary services market is not yet really open for batteries to compete in. This could be a relatively shallow but important market opportunity going forwards, Walawalkar said.

SECI general manager Dr Bharath Reddy also participated in the webinar and gave further details on the corporation’s own tender, as well as learnings from various other deployments and investments the group has made.

Alongside that, market analyst Rachel Loquet from energy storage consultancy Clean Horizon offered some breakdowns of the figures involved in the SECI tender, including modelling on the revenues winning projects would need to be able to earn to offer a return on investment.  

Read the IEEFA-JMK Research report ‘Evolution in grid-scale ESS tenders in India’ here.

Watch Energy-Storage.news’ webinar (with Clean Horizon): ‘Learn about India’s current and future business models for energy storage’ here.

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Rendering of the Fluence-Rich Electric project. Image: Fluence / Rich Electric.

Fluence has signed a deal for its third battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Taiwan, its biggest in the region so far.

The global energy system integration and energy optimisation services company announced today that it is targeting completion of the project for the middle of next year.

At 100MW/100MWh, it will be the largest of its type in Taiwan to date, but it joins a growing number of battery systems in development and construction in the island territory.

State-owned electric power company Taipower has set a target for 1,000MW of BESS within its service areas by 2025 to help balance the grid, with Taiwan home to many industrial and high tech sector activities as well as having ambitious renewable energy deployment policy targets.

In the longer term, another company active in the market, Taiwan Cement Corporation said in May that it believes Taiwan’s goals of installing 27GW of renewables by 2025 and 45GW by 2030 means that as much as 5GW and then 9GW respectively will be required to effectively integrate that capacity to the Taiwanese grid and on its nearby islands.

For Fluence, the latest project follows an initial 6MW/6MWh BESS order in Taiwan that was announced in December 2021 and then another for a 60MW/96MWh BESS which Energy-Storage.news reported in April.

Each is with a different local partner company. Meanwhile, the energy storage technology company has now arrived at 4.8GW of BESS under contract or deployed worldwide, with a growing sideline in energy storage and renewable energy management and optimisation services.  

“Taiwan has become one of the most active energy storage markets in the Asia Pacific region. The growth momentum of the energy ecosystem is driven by a clear target and objectives for renewable energy and net zero emission set by the local government,” Fluence SVP and APAC region president Jan Teichmann said.

For the 100MW order announced today, Fluence is partnering with Rich Electric, a Taiwan-headquartered power electronics and electrical engineering group founded in 1988. Rich Electric is involved in manufacture of AC motor drives, solar equipment, EV powertrains, inverters and other kit like energy management systems (EMS) for lithium-ion battery packs.

“Energy storage systems are indispensable to the deployment of grid-connected renewable energy systems,” Rich Electric chairman Eric Chen said.

The main market for grid-connected large-scale battery systems in Taiwan is through Taipower’s ancillary services product, Automated Frequency Control (AFC), which the utility began tendering for on a competitive basis in 2020.

AFC helps maintain frequency of the grid within close boundaries of 60Hz, with Taipower holding solicitations for four sub-markets ancillary services that also include spinning reserve and supplemental reserve.

Taipower is thought to be tendering for about 590MW of ancillary services between now and 2025, with other applications like renewables integration set to grow in importance in driving market activity in the meantime.

Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy, Ministry of Economic Affairs is also planning to deploy 500MW of battery storage co-located with ground mount solar PV plants, for example.

Other international companies to have entered the Taiwan grid-scale BESS market via the existing opportunities include Wärtsilä, Powin Energy and Taiwan Cement Corporation subsidiary, NHOA. The latter has been contracted by its parent to install 442MWh of BESS at industrial sites it owns.

Across the wider Southeast Asia region, Energy-Storage.news has reported on projects in territories including the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in recent months. Most energy markets in the region are strongly regulated and often state-run, resulting in a relatively long run-up to the start of activity, which appears to now be taking off.

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More people are employed in battery storage than nuclear power generation, with 53% of sector workers categorised as in construction roles. Image: Burns & McDonnell.

The number of people in the US working in battery storage continued to grow in 2021, adding nearly 3,000 jobs from the previous year.

According to the latest edition of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER), 69,698 workers were employed in battery storage in 2021.

This equated to an increase of 4.4% over 2020, when the number stood at 66,749, and continued increase from 2019’s 65,904 battery storage workers.

Although battery storage wasn’t counted as a separate breakout category in 2016, the first year the USEER report was published (covering statistics from 2015), the 2020 edition which compiled the previous five editions’ takeaways noted that from 2016 to 2019 a total of 18,300 battery storage jobs were added – equal to growth of 38%.

More than half of employees in the sector (53%) as of 2021 were in construction, 18% in manufacturing, 17% in various professional services roles, 11% in wholesale trade, distribution and transport and a remaining 2% categorised as providers of “other services”.

The DOE surveyed about 33,000 private energy businesses and combined that with public labour data to create its snapshot of estimates across five major energy sectors: electric power generation, fuels, energy efficiency, motor vehicles and transmission, distribution and storage.

Energy storage is counted as a subset of transmission, distribution and storage. The number of battery storage jobs was almost nine times higher than the next highest storage category, pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), which employed 7,901 people in 2021.

In fact, battery storage accounted for 80% of all 86,584 storage jobs, with other categories including petroleum, natural gas and other fuels.

Meanwhile, in power generation categories, solar employed 333,887 people, a rise of 5.4% (17,212) from the year before, while wind power employed 120,164 people. Battery storage has almost caught up with coal’s 70,831 employee numbers and employs more workers than advanced natural gas (69,113), nuclear (55,562) and other power generation technology including natural gas and traditional hydroelectric as well.

US battery storage jobs have risen significantly since the first edition of the report estimated figures for 2015. Image: Solar Media from USEER data.

However, despite an overall growth in energy employment, as our solar PV colleagues over at PV Tech noted in their coverage of the report last week, it isn’t all good news.

Energy sector job numbers still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels after some 840,000 jobs in total were lost by the end of 2020. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm did note that despite a challenging period, the energy sector was still a standout among US industries for job growth in 2021.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Texas and California made the most new energy sector hires in 2021, with around 31,000 and 29,000 new jobs respectively.

It was also noted that women remain underrepresented in the energy sector, making up a quarter of all jobs versus a national average of nearly half, while Black or African American workers were 8% of the energy workforce versus 12% national average across all industries.

The full 2022 USEER report can be found here.

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The tower in Berlin. Image: Vattenfall.

Swedish public utility Vattenfall is about to start filling a 45m-high, 200MW-rated thermal energy storage facility with water in Berlin, Germany.

The heat storage tank can hold 56 million litres of water which will be heated at 98 degrees celsius and will be combined with the existing power-to-heat system of Vattenfall’s adjoining Reuter West power plant.

The water will be fed directly into the district heating network to supply customers’ heating needs in their homes, a company spokesperson told Energy-Storage.news. The filling is expected to take two months, followed by a period of testing before commercial operation begins in April 2023.

Jornt Spijksma, project manager at Vattenfall, said that the combination of Reuter West and the storage tank forms an “optimal, fossil-free and future-proof component to supply our Berlin customers with heat.”

He explained that when there is a surplus of wind energy, the power-to-heat system can convert that surplus into heat to be stored in the tank, reducing any need to curtail wind production. The storage tank can also integrate heat from other industrial processes such as the city’s cleaning department or waste heat from waste water.

The spokesperson added that it could potentially also connect with other renewable heat sources such as a large-scale heat pump.

The tank has a maximum thermal output of 200MW which it can discharge for 13 hours, making it a 2,600MWh system.

Vattenfall worked with three separate companies to deliver the project although has not revealed their names. Construction began in January 2022.

The company said that the storage tank is essential for securing heat supply for its customers, with the ability to ensure supply even during cold weather (Berlin typically has very cold winters).

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Flow batteries, which are often touted as a solution for wind firming, are expected to help Europe’s deployment of battery storage pick up in the late 2020s. Image: CGP Grey.

Some anticipated lithium-ion battery gigafactory projects in Europe are quietly revising their plans and may not open at all, according to the head of energy storage for research and consulting company Delta-EE.

Delta-EE recently forecasted that the European battery energy storage system (BESS) market would plateau over 2024-27 after three years of strong growth in deployments due to lithium-ion supply chain constraints.

“The limiting factor is lithium supply – some anticipated gigafactories are quietly revising their plans and may not open – and demand for batteries from EVs,” Jon Ferris, Delta-EE’s head of flexibility and storage told Energy-Storage.news when asked for more details on its forecasts.

Ferris pointed out that the annual figures in that period are still expected to be fives times’ higher than 2020 deployments. Part of the gulf in deployment growth from 2021-23 and 2024-27 is the former period including projects postponed during Covid.

Europe is generally agreed to be far ahead of the US when it comes to getting lithium-ion battery gigafactory developments financed and launched.

South Korea’s LG Energy Solution recently announced it was re-assessing a US$1.3 billion investment in an Arizona, US, factory due to ‘unprecedented’ economic conditions. No such announcements from major projects have surfaced in Europe recently but record-high inflation could make this more likely.

Just last week, Norwegian startup FREYR Battery announced it would go ahead with construction of the first of a pipeline of nearly 100GWh of production facilities.

Alongside the ramp-up of Europe’s domestic lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity, the pick-up in deployments from 2028 onwards that Delta-EE is expecting may be helped by other battery technologies.

“Alternatives to lithium that are less suited for mobility (sodium, zinc, iron etc) are likely to become more competitive for stationary storage, while non-battery storage is also growing (from a small base),” Ferris said.

He added that he expected flow batteries to find competitive niches that will contribute to the pick-up in growth, but didn’t expect the availability of second life batteries to materially impact forecasts until the 2030s.

Speaking on the findings more generally, Ferris added: “Great Britain and Germany are leading the way, but their needs could increase as renewables targets are revised upwards. As a peninsula, Spain is likely to require further growth, especially if rising temperatures strain the reliability of pumped hydro.”

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Intersect Power’s Athos III project in Riverside, California, which is currently under construction. Image: Intersect Power.

Utility-scale renewables developer Intersect Power has secured US$750 million in funding to take its portfolio of renewables, energy storage and green hydrogen projects beyond 8GW.

The growth equity investment will accelerate the developer’s entrance in new markets and technologies, including 1GW of green hydrogen production, and more than trebling its mid-to-late stage portfolio to 8.5GWp of renewables and 8GWh of co-located storage pipeline in the US.

Its current pipeline of solar PV projects in construction sits at 2.2GWp, while its co-located storage pipeline stands at 1.4GWh, all of which is set to be operational by 2023.

The investment was led by climate investor TPG Rise Climate with additional participation from existing investors Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Trilantic Energy Partners North America.

Intersect said the new financing will enable it to continue focusing on securing shorter offtake contracts combined with large-scale battery storage and green hydrogen production.

As part of the investment, Ed Beckley, Steven Mandel and Maryanne Hancock, all three representing TPG Rise Climate will join Intersect Power’s board of directors.

In November 2021, Intersect Power secured US$2.6 billion in financing for the construction and operation of a portfolio of 2.2GWdc solar and 1.4GWh of co-located storage projects in California and Texas.

Pine Gate Renewables, D.E. Shaw raise US$900 million between them

In the past week or so, two other major fund raises have been achieved by US companies developing utility-scale renewables, with an interest in solar PV and energy storage.

Sustainable infrastructure investment firm Generate Capital has invested US$500 million in US developer Pine Gate Renewables to support its utility-scale solar expansion.

The investment will be divided into US$200 million in equity investment and US$300 million in long-term asset partnership to finance solar projects. As part of the investment, Generate Capital will join the board of directors of Pine Gate.

The solar and energy storage developer currently operates more than 1GW of renewable energy projects.

Moreover, it has a pipeline of 20GW in active development across the US and has raised over US$1 billion in corporate and project capital financing in the last six months.

Readers of Energy-Storage.news will note that this year, Pine Gate Renewables has signed Memorandum of Understanding agreements for multiple gigawatt-hours of non-lithium energy storage technologies: nickel-hydrogen battery storage from startup Enervenue, and with zinc-based battery storage company Urban Electric Power.

D.E. Shaw Renewables Investments (DESRI) has secured up to US$400 million in new capital finance to support its US renewables strategy.

The independent power producer has turned to funds managed by asset management group Harbert Infrastructure for the finance, including Gulf Pacific Power and Harbert Infrastructure Fund VI, with all financing to be used at DESRI’s discretion.

DESRI currently has a portfolio of renewable assets totalling 6GW, comprising projects at the operational, under construction and contracted stages of development.

The group’s investments in energy storage to date have included a solar-plus-storage project in California due to come online in 2024, for which it signed a 200MW/400MW combined power purchase agreement (PPA) with Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), Energy-Storage.news reported in March.

It is also developing the Arroyo Solar and Storage project in New Mexico, which combines 300MWac of solar PV with a 150MW / 600MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) and became Wells Fargo’s first tax equity investment into the US solar-plus-storage market late last year. Arroyo will help utility Public Service Company of New Mexico keep serving customers after the forthcoming closure of its San Juan Generating Station coal plant, along with other solar-plus-storage resources.

DESRI financier Harbert meanwhile is no stranger to power generation, having investments in power assets totalling 7GWac of generation capacity.

This story first appeared as separate items regarding Intersect, Pine Gate Renewables and DESRI on our sister site PV Tech.

DESRI piece by Liam Stoker.

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Transgrid operates high voltage lines for New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Image: Transgrid.

Grid-scale battery storage has emerged as the preferred option to ensure reliable electricity supplies in regions of New South Wales, Australia, transmission operator Transgrid has said.

Transgrid has looked at “multiple options” for addressing load constraints on the network in and around the towns of Bathhurst, Parkes and Orange as well as the North West Slopes regions of New South Wales (NSW).

Each area is experiencing growth in electricity demand and the trend is expected to continue. Constraints could lead to failures in delivering reliable supplies of electricity.

Transgrid is manager and operator of the high voltage electricity network serving New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

The grid operator issued Project Assessment Conclusions Reports last week, relating to potential investment options that it would seek approval for from the Australian Energy Regulator, with Bathhurst, Orange and Parkes regions considered in one report and the North West Slopes in another.

“We looked at multiple options for addressing load constraints on our network and we are excited to say that grid-scale batteries have been identified as the preferred option as they provided the greatest overall benefit,” Transgrid executive general manager of network, Marie Jordan said.

It is one of the first times to date large-scale batteries for the National Electricity Market (NEM) “have outperformed other options throughout the regulatory test,” Jordan said.

Battery projects proposed by two third-party providers ranked equally as the top option in the Project Assessment Conclusions Reports.

They would be able to participate in the market in addition to meeting their network support commitments, but this participation would be limited during winter and summer periods when network support needs are likely to be more acute. In spring and autumn, market participation would be less limited.

Batteries would be able to charge with renewable energy at times of abundant generation and off-peak demand periods, discharging to the network when generation is lower and demand higher. They would also provide services like reactive power support.

For Bathhurst, Orange and Parkes, the buildout would comprise a 20MW/40MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at Parkes and a 25MW/50MWh BESS at Panorama in the suburb of Bathhurst. A 25MVa synchronous condenser and a new 132 kV transmission line are also among considered options which could be picked as complementary to the battery systems.

In the North West Slopes, a 50MW/50MWh BESS has been proposed for construction in the locality of Narrabri as well as another BESS of unspecified output and capacity at Gunnedah substation. The North West Slopes plan also includes some transmission upgrades, which Transgrid said could be executed with minimum disruption by being place on existing lines.

In each case, batteries were selected in part because of their ability to be constructed and commissioned much sooner than other proposals. The BESS could be in place and in operation by a 2024-2025 timeline.

Competitive solicitation set to begin

A competitive procurement process will now be launched by the transmission operator and commercial negotiations carried out.

The Narrabri BESS could provide roughly A$513 million (US$350.33 million) in net benefits and the BESS at Gunnedah about A$496 million. The two BESS options for Bathhurst, Orange and Parkes could provide A$3,221 million and A$3,202 million in net benefits, according to Transgrid.

The announcement comes just after the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) forecast that batteries and other energy storage would be a major player in transitioning the NEM to low carbon energy in the coming decades.

By 2050, as coal declines in importance and disappears entirely from the provision of base load energy to the NEM, the market’s firming capacity mix will require 46GW/640GWh of dispatchable storage capacity, AEMO said.

This would be in addition to 7GW of existing non-pumped hydro hydroelectric capacity and some 10GW of gas generation, according to AEMO’s Integrated System Plan (ISP) 30-year roadmap for the NEM.

Australia’s energy market is currently in crisis mode, with high electricity prices driven by gas price volatility and outages at around 3GW of coal plants – although the latter situation is thought to have been resolved. This comes as the country experiences some of its coldest winter weather for decades and for a couple of weeks last month AEMO temporarily suspended spot market trading in the NEM.

The situation has driven calls for greater investment in renewables and storage – and for a national energy storage target policy.

As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper last week, there are also considerations for greater drilling for fossil fuels in the area around Narrabri.

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