The site’s layout, from the project proposal released in November last year. Image: NADBank.

US development bank NADBank is providing a US$65.7 million loan for a co-located solar project with an 80MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Texas.

NADBank (North American Development Bank) is funding the Zier Solar and Energy Storage Project near the town of Brackettville in Kinney County, which borders the Mexican state of Coahuila.

The project pairs a 160MWac solar PV array with a 40MW, two-hour BESS and also involves the construction of a new 3.67 mile transmission line to connect to the nearby 138kV Pinto Creek substation. It is being managed by Cypress Creek Renewables, a solar and storage developer with a nationwide presence that was acquired by private equity firm EQT in November last year.

Friday’s (June 10) funding announcement did not reveal a construction or operational start date, but an earlier loan proposal says that construction could start before July this year for an operational start date during quarter three 2023.

The main aim of the project, which is 17 miles northeast of the US-Mexico border, is to increase the renewable energy and energy storage capacity on the Texas grid, which is operated by ERCOT. The ERCOT grid is unique in that it is entirely decentralised, with no centralised capacity auctions like in the UK and most other grids, meaning BESS projects make all their money through energy trading and ancillary services.

The BESS will help ERCOT reduce the use of ramp-up/down fossil fuel plants, integrate more renewables onto the grid and increase grid reliability.

According to the project proposal, the BESS is expected to complete the equivalent of 0.4 charge/discharge cycles (32 MWh) per day with a round-trip efficiency of 87%. It will be restricted to charging from the solar park during the first five years, after which it will also be able to charge from the grid.

The solar array will comprise 380,000-440,000 bifacial monocrystalline photovoltaic modules from a ‘top-tier global provider’, the proposal reads. The BESS will use Tesla Megapacks, the electric vehicle giant’s utility-scale product which uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode material, with a 10-year warranty and 20-year power guarantee.

Cypress will be asset manager, operator and maintenance provider for the BESS unit and will sign a 20-year capacity maintenance agreement with Tesla for the latter to replace degraded battery modules. It expects to use Tesla’s battery recycling programme for the end-of-life battery modules. Cypress has 1.6GW of operational solar and storage assets in the US today.

The Zier project is NADBank’s second BESS funding announcement in the space of a few weeks. At the end of May, it took part in what was claimed to be the first full debt financing of a fully merchant BESS project in California, covered by Energy-Storage.news.

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Queensland’s Wivenhoe PHES plant, which has been in operation since 1985. Image: Queensland State Archives via Flickr / Public Domain.

Australia’s first new large-scale pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in nearly 40 years is being built in Queensland and the state’s government is now exploring options for more.

The 250MW/2,000MWh Kidston Stage 2 Pumped Hydro project is under construction through development company Genex Power and its contractors, having achieved financial close in 2021 and expected to go into service in 2024.

On Friday (10 June), the state government led by the Queensland Branch of the Australian Labor Party and state premier Anastasia Palaczuk said it is allocating A$35 million (US$24.5 million) towards a search for a second site.

The funding will come from its 2022-2023 State Budget. According to Queensland Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment Cameron Dick, the viability and economic benefits of a new PHES will be investigated as part of the effort.

Dick noted that more than 20% of the state’s energy comes from renewables and that pumped hydro storage “has the capacity to deliver a reliable supply of energy in an economic way,” while complementing the role of wind and solar generation.

“This funding will support detailed analytical studies that will consider the long-term benefits of this proposed large-scale storage project.”

A further A$13 million is also being put towards a detailed feasibility study of another PHES project, Borumba Dam Pumped Hydro. However, that funding will come from the state’s Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) initiative.

Queensland is planning three REZ developments, in the north, south and central regions of the state, with each combining solar and wind technologies at gigawatt-scale. Borumba would be built close to the southern REZ, enabling the storage and dispatch of the generated energy to demand centres.

The state’s REZ funding comes from a total of more than A$14 billion set aside by the government to put into economic recovery programmes.

‘Pumped hydro has a critical role to play’

“Pumped hydro will play a critical role securing the future of Queensland’s energy system with a reliable supply of dispatchable power. As Queensland charges towards its renewable energy target, large-scale storage projects like pumped hydro will enable the continued investment in wind and solar,” Queensland Minister for Energy, Renewables and Hydrogen Mick de Brenni, said.

The government funded a study from 2017, Queensland Hydro Study, which found numerous sites in the state could host both medium-sized PHES (defined as around 300MW with eight-hours storage capacity) and large (defined as >1,000MW with around 24-hours storage capacity).

DeBrenni pointed out that Borumba was found to be an ideal site by the report, for reasons that included its proximity to the high-voltage transmission network and existing dam infrastructure as well as its proximity to the planned REZ.

According to figures released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), PHES performed strongly in the country’s National Electricity Market (NEM) in the first quarter of this year.

Collectively, PHES around the country earned A$56.5 million in spot market revenues between January and March 2022, largely driven by Wivenhoe, a PHES plant in Queensland, which made its money during times of volatile electricity pricing in the state including one three-day period which accounted for 74% of its three-month revenues.

Meanwhile, the state government is also investing in battery storage technologies, with state-owned power company CS Energy deploying a 100MW/200MWh Tesla Megapack installation at the site of a coal power plant it owns.

The government has also committed to building an electrolyte processing plant for vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs).  

The state is targeting for 50% of its electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources by 2030. Government development approval was recently granted to a peaker plant project which would pair 850MW of batteries with 150MW of gas turbines, a radically altered proposal from that originally submitted for a gas-only plant.

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The country’s first hybrid solar PV and battery plant (pictured) was commissioned earlier this year. Image: ACEN.

An infrastructure group owned by billionaire Enrique K Razon has proposed construction of a solar-plus-storage project in the Philippines, which would be one of the biggest in the world.

Prime Infrastructure Holdings (Prime Infra) is owned by Razon, chairman and CEO of marine cargo-handling services group International Container Terminal Services Group.

The company said last week that it is developing a project which would combine anything between 2,500MW and 3,500MW of solar PV generation with battery storage of 4,000MWh to 4,500MWh capacity.

Calling it “a model of dependable renewable energy,” the project would be built through companies controlled by Prime Infra, together with Solar Philippines.

Prime Infra and Solar Philippines – founded and led by young entrepreneur Leandro Leviste – have formed a joint venture (JV) called Terra Solar to work on developing solar-plus-storage plants in the Southeast Asian country.

In January, Terra Solar proposed to supply 850MW of mid-merit power, which broadly speaking is energy supplied to meet the gap between baseload and peaking power capacity, to Manilla Electric Company (Meralco).

This power would be supplied from the new plant. A location for the solar-plus-storage capacity was not disclosed, and Terra Solar is thought to be considering development of facilities at several sites in the Central Luzon region to meet its 20-year PPA obligation to Meralco.   

Terra Solar noted that it beat two competitors’ proposals in the tender for the off-take contract, which was approved by the government Department of Energy. Meralco had been mandated by the department to increase its share of renewable generation via its Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).

Under the terms of the PPA, the first 600MW of clean power supply needs to be going to the utility by 2026 and the remaining 250MW by 2027. Not only will the energy supplied by emissions-free, but it will also be de-coupled from vulnerabilities to fossil fuel price vulnerability.

“We, at Prime Infra Group, are delighted to move forward with Meralco on this record-breaking project that highlights solar power’s important contribution to strengthening the country’s energy security — solar, which is normally looked at for peaking, is now being made available by Terra Solar to answer Meralco’s mid-merit requirement, thereby addressing both the need for additional capacity and compliance with RPS,” Prime Infra CEO Guillaume Lucci said.

“DOE and Meralco should be commended for approving a project that is not only transformational and profound to the renewable energy landscape, but also for managing to do so at a competitive price.”

The Philippines has rapidly become one of the most talked-about energy storage markets in Asia, with major power generation companies SMC Global Power and Aboitiz Power among those investing in portfolios of battery storage. The country’s first-ever co-located solar and storage plant went online earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the Southeast Asian subcontinent’s largest single-site battery storage project to date is a 45MW/136.24MWh facility at a 49MW solar farm currently under construction in Thailand.

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Columbia Solar+Storage Project

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has awarded long-term contracts for three solar projects to EDF Renewables North America as part of the 2021 solicitation for large-scale renewable energy certificates. Combined, the solar + storage projects will deliver 1 GW of clean energy for the state.

The projects represent nearly 40% of the total 2,408 MW awarded, and expect to deliver clean electricity by the end of 2025. Columbia Solar Energy Center is a 350 MW AC with 20 MW of co-located storage sited on approximately 2,000 acres in the towns of Columbia and Litchfield, Herkimer County. Ridge View Solar Energy Center is also 350 MW AC with 20 MW of co-located storage sited on approximately 2,000 acres sited in the town of Hartland, Niagara County. Rich Road Solar Energy Center is a 240 MW AC with 20 MW of co-located storage sited on approximately 1,500 acres in the town Canton, St. Lawrence County.

“The team has worked diligently to progress the development of our New York solar portfolio since 2017,” says Stephane Desdunes, senior director development of the Northeast region for EDF Renewables. “We are proud of the fact we have been awarded 1,313 MW of the 2020 and 2021 procurements and 1,483 MW in total since 2018. With more than 1,000 MW of solar and storage projects still in the development pipeline, EDF Renewables looks forward to working side by side with NYSERDA and New York State to achieve the 70 percent by 2030 goal and deliver clean energy to the residents of New York.”

“The region will benefit from procurement and employment opportunities throughout the development, construction and operational phases,” continues Desdunes. “Combined the projects will create approximately 1,290 prevailing wage and union construction jobs in upstate New York during peak construction and contribute millions of dollars to the counties, towns and school districts during the operational life of the projects.”

“Advancing large-scale solar projects like these newly awarded projects are helping to build out New York’s already massive renewable energy pipeline and are central to the State’s ability to create a zero-emission electricity grid,” adds Doreen M. Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA. “NYSERDA will work closely with EDF Renewables to ensure the communities hosting these projects are engaged throughout the development process and the responsible siting of them will not only help protect our valuable agricultural lands, but benefit the state and local economies alike.”

EDF Renewables’ community engagement plans for the Columbia, Rich Road and Ridge View Solar Projects include annual scholarships for students in the project area school districts with interest in the trades or clean energy, and an annual Sharing the Sun Fund for local community organizations during the construction phase whereby local review committees will select the awardees. Starting in 2024, EDF Renewables will also sponsor an online training course for the solar workforce and a hands-on workshop in partnership with SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to bolster the local labor pipeline.

NYSERDA awarded EDF Renewables three projects totaling 303 MW AC and 10 MW of storage in the 2020 Renewable Energy Standard Solicitation and 170 MW AC in the 2018 Renewable Energy Standard Solicitation.

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Duke Energy has completed its first community solar site in Hardee County, Fla., in its drive to make more solar power available for all customers in Florida. The Fort Green Renewable Energy Center is the first of 10 solar sites, totaling 750 MW, that are part of the company’s new Clean Energy Connection community solar program.

Through the program, Duke Energy Florida customers can subscribe to solar power and earn credits toward their electricity bills without having to install or maintain their own equipment.

“Bringing cleaner resources onto the grid is important to our customers and our company,” says Melissa Seixas, Duke Energy Florida’s state president. “By subscribing to the Clean Energy Connection program and supporting solar sites like this one, our customers are joining a community that is helping drive Florida to a cleaner energy future.”

The 74.9 MW facility was built on approximately 500 acres of repurposed mining land in Hardee County, Fla. The project consists of nearly 265,000 solar panels, utilizing a fixed-tilt racking system that will produce enough carbon-free energy to effectively power more than 23,000 average-sized homes at peak production.

The second Clean Energy Connection site, Bay Trail Renewable Energy Center in Citrus County, is expected to begin supporting Clean Energy Connection subscriptions later this summer.

Launched in April 2022, the Clean Energy Connection program allows customers to subscribe to kW blocks of solar power from the company’s Clean Energy Connection solar portfolio. The monthly subscription fee will help pay for the cost of construction and operation of the solar power plants and is conveniently added to a customer’s regular electric bill.

The program sets aside 26 MW for income-qualified customers who participate in government subsidy programs or Duke Energy’s low-income energy efficiency program, Neighborhood Energy Saver.

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The microgrid’s BESS and solar PV array. Image: PG&E.

A front-of-meter microgrid combining 2.2MW of solar PV with a 9MWh battery has gone online in Humboldt County, northeast California, which its developers claim is the first of its kind.

The Redwood Coast Airport Microgrid (RCAM) is the first 100% renewable energy, front-of-meter, multi-customer microgrid to go online in the state, the press release said.

With the aid of a 2MW/9MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) made up of Tesla Megapacks, it will provide energy resilience for 19 customer groups including the California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport and US Coast Guard Air Station.

The Schatz Energy Research Center is the prime contractor and technology integrator, leading the design, testing and deployment of the microgrid. The owner of the BESS and solar PV is Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), a local Community Choice Aggregator (CCA), a type of non-profit utility.

RCAM will provide energy for the North Coast area through participation in the California Independent System Operator’s (CAISO) wholesale energy markets and ancillary services markets.

It has a built-in ‘islanding’ mode capability, meaning during times of a broader grid outage it can disconnect from the grid and continue providing power for the 19 connected customers, ensuring the flight and rescue services can continue. PG&E owns, operates and maintains the microgrid circuit and controls the system during island mode.

This is particularly significant because roads into Humboldt County are often closed by fires and mudslides meaning air services are particularly critical in emergency response. The airport handles 50,000 flights a year while the Air Station provides search and rescue services for 250 miles of coastline, nearly a third of all of California’s coastline.

The microgrid is the first project in a programme by PG&E to help communities at heightened risk of losing their electricity supply during disasters develop their own microgrid solutions, which was previously reported on by Energy-Storage.news.

The Community Microgrid Enablement Program (CMEP) offers assistance for the design and deployment of microgrids which can be islanded and operated independently of the main grid operated by PG&E.

The RCAM microgrid’s development was supported through California’s Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC), a state-wide customer-funded program that enables PG&E and other investor-owned utilities in the state to execute emerging technology demonstration and deployment projects that address important grid needs.

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The ribbon cutting ceremony at PG&E’s Elkhorn battery at Moss Landing. Image: PG&E video on Youtube.

Californian investor-owned utility (IOU) PG&E has revealed its energy storage plans in a Climate Strategy Report and cut the ribbon on the 182.5MW Elkhorn battery energy storage system (BESS).

The utility, one of three big IOUs in the state, has revealed it now has 1,315MW of energy storage connected to the grid. Some 955MW of that is utility-scale battery storage, while behind-the-meter grid-connected residential storage now stands at 360MW.

As Energy-Storage.news has reported previously, PG&E is under contract to bring a total of 3.3GW/13.2GWh of utility-scale storage online by the end of 2024 in response to a series of directives from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

It wants to scale up production of green hydrogen for various uses including for long duration energy storage (LDES). The company also plans to repurpose 500MWh of second-life batteries to be used in grid-connected energy storage.

The report’s release on June 8 came two days after PG&E cut the ribbon on the 182.5MW/730MWh Elkhorn BESS at the Moss Landing substation in the Monterey Bay area, which was commissioned in mid-April and uses Tesla Megapacks.

Speaking at the ceremony, Patti Poppe, PG&E CEO, said: “Back in mid-April, just 10 days after being fully energised and connected to the grid, we were charging the (Elkhorn) battery at US$10 a megawatt hour at midday when we had ample abundant renewable clean energy resources. Fast forward to peak that very same day, power was selling at US$100 a megawatt hour and this resource was dispatching to the grid.”

“That saves money for our customers and brings clean energy that otherwise would have been a diesel generated fossil fuel powered resource. People sometimes speculate that ‘is California going too far with clean energy?’. Heck, no, we’re just getting started and a facility like this makes it possible and that day back in mid-April proved it.”

Elliot Mainzer, CEO of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), added that another 700MW of energy storage would be added to the grid over the course of June bringing the total to around 3.9GW. It passed 3GW last month.

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Guidehouse expects one-fifth of distributed energy storage deployments in 2030 to be VPP-enabled. Image: Guidehouse Insights.

Annual deployments of distributed energy storage connected to virtual power plants (VPP) are expected to reach 3GW by 2030, according to research firm Guidehouse Insights.

The VPP Applications for Distributed Energy Storage report expects annual installations of VPP-enabled distributed energy storage (DES) to grow by an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28% over the decade, from 288.1MW installed last year to 3GW by 2030.

“As distributed energy markets increasingly become more connected and designed with intelligent management technology, more DER (distributed energy resource) deployments are anticipated to have VPP capabilities at the ready,” said Maria Chavez, research analyst with Guidehouse Insights.

The company expects the proportion of DES deployments that are VPP-enabled to be over one-fifth by the end of the decade. It defines VPPs as systems that rely on software and a smart grid to remotely and automatically dispatch DER flexibility services to distribution or wholesale markets, via an aggregation and optimisation platform.

Guidehouse anticipates that the Asia Pacific, North America and Europe markets will completely dominate the VPP-enabled DES market by 2030. Asia Pacific will account for around 40% of the 3GW deployment figure, North America around 35% and Europe 25%, the report said.

Utilities are increasingly incentivising participation for residential storage systems in VPPs, like one that Netherlands-based inverter and home storage company Enphase Energy recently participated in. But barriers to VPP penetration remain, like upfront costs of deployment and aggregation, privacy and cybersecurity risks for system owners and regulatory hurdles, the report adds.

The research firm breaks down the VPP market into three segments in a separate but related report, Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard: Virtual Power Plant Platform Vendors.

The first is demand response VPPs, which treat load management as a grid resource and are most advanced in the US. The second is supply side VPPs, which pool portfolios of generation resources through smart grid technology to firm up power, largely pioneered in Europe. The last is a mixed-asset VPPs which combine the three and is where the market is trending towards, the report added.

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Ion Storage Systems’ manufacturing facility in Beltsville, Maryland. Image: Ion Storage Systems.

Ion Storage Systems (ION), a company that has developed a solid-state lithium-ion battery technology, has raised a US$30 million Series A to expand its production facility and accelerate its entry into the stationary storage sector.

Automative giant Toyota’s VC arm Toyota Ventures, energy company Tenaska and Thai oil and energy conglomerate Bangchak Corporation took part in the fundraising round alongside several other investment groups.

The money will go towards the expansion of ION’s facility in Beltsville, Maryland (pictured), to commission and qualify a manufacturing line with an annual capacity of 10MWh of its next-generation solid-state batteries.

Phase one of its rollout will come next year when its first cells will go its first market customer, the US Department of Defense (DOD). It expects to generate commercial revenues from this by the end of 2023.

The Series A will also accelerate development projects the company has with partners and customers in the consumer electronics, automative and stationary storage sectors, which are rollout phases two, three and four, respectively.

ION has to-date had the most traction within the military space, where it is building a Conformal Wearable Battery (CWB) for the DOD that can be carried by soldiers to extend the operating time of equipment and weapons systems. It also started a year-long paid evaluation with defense, aerospace and information technology company Lockheed Martin in December 2021 to assess its tech.

Lisa Coca, Climate Fund partner for Toyota Ventures, said: “ION’s bi-layer cell design is a breakthrough for the industry. The architecture addresses the technological barriers that have historically plagued solid state batteries, and it enables critical next-generation performance metrics for widespread adoption – including high-energy density, strong cycling performance, wide temperature range, and fast charging.”

Convention lithium-ion batteries use a liquid electrolyte which carries lithium-ions back and forth between electrodes, while solid-state batteries use a solid electrolyte instead. The benefit is a much lower thermal runaway risk and higher energy density, but no such battery has been commercialised to-date although many are working on it. Another company developing a solid state battery Dragonfly Energy Corp, just went public on the Nasdaq through a SPAC merger.

The main issue with solid-state batteries to-date has been in the need for compression to achieve optimal charging conditions, expansion and contraction of the cell during cycling, and the formation of dendrites at high currents due to voids created during discharge. Toyota Ventures’ Coca wrote about how ION’s technology has gotten around these in a recent blog on Medium.

Other participants in ION’s Series A included GAINTECH Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Z2Sixty Ventures, Climate Capital, and the University of Maryland Discovery Fund.

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Battery racks inside the project in Lisdrum. Image: RWE.

RWE’s largest battery storage project to date has entered full operations in County Monaghan, Ireland.

The 60MW battery energy storage system (BESS) is the second RWE battery project to go live in the country, after its 8.5MW BESS in Stephenstown, Balbriggan, in County Dublin, went live last year.

This latest BESS – located at Lisdrumdoagh, 3km east of Monaghan town – is capable of providing rapid delivery of electricity into the power grid to help balance intermittency from renewables, as well as being able to provide short term back-up to help address power outages.

To read the full version of this story, visit Solar Power Portal.

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