The projects will be in the service territory of utility SDG&E, which commissioned this 30MW lithium-ion BESS at Escondido in 2017, the largest in the world at the time. Image: SDG&E.

Siemens’ international financing arm, US development bank NADBank and energy storage developer EnerSmart Storage have signed a US$78.2 million loan facility to finance a fully merchant battery storage project in California totalling 165MW.

The debt facility from NADBank (North American Development Bank) and Siemens Financial Services will finance the design, construction and operation of a portfolio of utility-scale energy storage projects totalling 165MW/330MWh at nine sites in San Diego county. EnerSmart Storage is the developer, owner and operator of the projects, which are in the service territory of utility SDG&E.

The deal is thought to be the first reported project debt financing of fully merchant battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in the US, which means the BESS project does not have any long-term resource adequacy agreements with utilities in place, yet. The press release did say that the projects may provide energy through resource adequacy agreements in the future.

Resource adequacy is the California independent system operator’s (CAISO) way of ensuring load-bearing entities like utilities have enough power to meet demand, and provides a framework for utilities to procure power over 10-20-year agreements from BESS projects.

The vast majority of BESS projects have these agreements before being launched, which provides long-term revenue guarantees required by debt financing providers. For example, the state regulator just approved five projects, which have long-term resource adequacy agreements with utility Southern California Edison, reported on Energy-Storage.news.

NADBank, which focuses on investments along and near the US-Mexico border, said the BESS will provide energy and ancillary services through CAISO’s wholesale energy and ancillary services markets.

The bank’s MD Calixto Mateos-Hanel commented: “As a development bank, NADBank has proven time and again that innovative financing of environmental projects in promising sectors is one of its core strengths. This energy storage project portfolio confirms the Bank continues to play a critical role in the development of sustainable infrastructure while tackling climate change and meeting the needs of the US-Mexico border.”  

Speaking on a panel at the Solar and Storage Finance USA conference in November 2021, hosted by our publisher Solar Media, several investment figures explained why merchant BESS projects might struggle to get debt financing.

“Lenders like revenue certainty, so contractual revenue is great,” Louise Pesce of Japanese-based global bank MUFG said. Merchant “doesn’t give the lender much certainty”, she added, explaining that forecasting revenues over 15 or 20-year battery lifetimes is difficult.

But Lance Jordan, senior vice president for energy and infrastructure investments at Pacolet Milliken, a family-owned investment group said that merchant battery storage projects were starting to get more debt financing opportunities, especially after events like Texas’ devastating February 2021 winter storm.

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Another Canadian Solar project, the Roserock Solar Plant in Texas

Canadian Solar Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary Recurrent Energy LLC has successfully completed the construction on a 100 MW renewable solar power plant near Ruleville in the Mississippi Delta, providing clean energy to Entergy Mississippi’s 461,000 customers. The Sunflower Solar Station is the largest solar installation in Mississippi and provides enough energy to power 16,000 homes.

Recurrent Energy developed and built the Sunflower Solar Station for Entergy Mississippi, which will own it for the life of the facility. The Sunflower project is one of the first utility-scale solar projects to be constructed under a Build Transfer Agreement (BTA) in the United States. Recurrent Energy signed a BTA with Entergy Mississippi in 2018 designating the regulated utility to own the Sunflower project when it reached commercial operation. The BTA was approved unanimously by the Mississippi Public Service Commission in April 2020.

“It’s a historic day for Entergy Mississippi, our customers and our state,” says Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi’s president and CEO. “Powering communities is the heart of our business, and this power station does that in several ways – by providing clean, green power to customers and a hedge against rising natural gas prices and giving industries with renewable energy goals an incentive to locate or expand operations in our state.”

“We are proud to have completed the largest solar project in Mississippi on behalf of Entergy in a way that has supported Mississippi businesses and paved the way for more renewable energy in the state,” said Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and Chief Executive Office of Canadian Solar. “Sunflower is our first build-own-transfer project and our first project in Mississippi. We look forward to supporting the growth of solar throughout the southeast United States and repeating this model which provides additional value for our customers.”

The Sunflower project is the first plant in what will be the largest expansion of renewable power in the state’s history. Under a program called EDGE, for Economic Development with Green Energy, Entergy Mississippi plans to replace some aging natural gas plants with 1,000 MW of renewable energy over the next five years.

The Sunflower project employed Mississippi vendors and construction workers. Attala Steel Industries, based in Kosciusko, supplied 2,475 tons of steel for foundations. Additionally, A-1 Kendrick Fence Co., based in Jackson, installed the perimeter fence. More than half of the labor hours spent on the project’s construction were from workers local to the area and surrounding counties. Signal Energy LLC served as the EPC provider.

The emissions-free, renewable energy plant sits on approximately 1,000 acres in Sunflower County and connects to Entergy’s transmission grid in Ruleville. The plant is a single axis tracking photovoltaic power generator with 272,000 PV modules. 

In 2021, Entergy Corp. announced plans to triple its renewable energy portfolio over a three-year period. Entergy expects to have 11,000 MW of renewable energy generation by the end of 2030.

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Rendering of a NHOA Taiwan project, awarded by its parent company TCC. Image: NHOA.

Taiwan’s renewable energy goals will only be made possible with the deployment of energy storage equivalent to 20% of new installed renewable energy capacity, according to the chairman of Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC).

TCC chairman Nelson Chang gave a speech at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) earlier this week in which he said the company sees energy storage – and specifically batteries – as “the key to the future of energy”.

Taiwan’s government has planned for renewable energy capacity on the East Asian island to reach 27GW by 2025 and 45GW by 2030 and TCC believes that for this to be integrated and used efficiently and effectively, more than 5GW of energy storage will be needed by 2025 and more than 9GW by 2030.

This matters to TCC, a major cement producer and supplier for Mainland China, because the company is pivoting its business towards a more circular economy model. With cement demand decreasing, TCC is moving more of its efforts towards two key areas: waste treatment and the energy industry.

In reporting Q1 2022 financial results this week, TCC noted that cement revenue from Mainland China decreased 7.8% year-on-year, while sales volume decreased 24.1% and the rising price of coal squeezed the company’s margin and profits.

Nonetheless, its investment into the energy business is paying off. The company has acquired NHOA (formerly Engie EPS), which is active in large-scale energy storage systems (ESS) and electric mobility solutions and has other related subsidiaries such as its own ESS provider in Taiwan, TCC Energy Storage and a battery maker, E-One Moli.

Consolidated revenue for the quarter was NT$22.97 billion (US$0.78 billion), up 4% from Q1 2021, and the company attributed the growth as being mainly thanks to its new energy business.

Two-thirds of TCC’s profits over the past two years have been ploughed into its waste treatment and energy businesses, which Chang said is also key to the company’s move to targeted carbon neutrality.

Company pursuing upstream and downstream battery opportunities

TCC expects to surpass 400MWh of energy storage installations by the end of this year and more than an estimated 2,900MWh by 2024. Chang noted that NHOA is active in 26 countries and that its projects include the world’s biggest vehicle-to-grid (V2G) project to date, in Italy, where NHOA is headquartered.

That site in Turin, developed by NHOA’s e-mobility subsidiary Free2Move, will integrate 600 electric vehicles (EVs) to provide more than 30MW of battery storage. Another NHOA subsidiary is establishing an independent power producer (IPP) business in Southern Europe.

In March, Energy-Storage.news reported that NHOA’s energy storage revenues doubled in 2022 from the previous year. Recent wins include a 200MWh project in Western Australia, although its former parent company Engie cancelled a major solar-plus-storage project in Hawaii a few months ago that NHOA was to supply 240MWh of battery storage to.

TCC’s battery manufacturing arms will arrive at 3.3GWh of annual production capacity by 2024, including E-One Moli’s existing 1.6GWh factory in Taiwan and another subsidiary, Molie Quantum Energy, is building what the TCC chairman described as a “super battery factory” with 1.8GWh annual production capacity also in Taiwan, scheduled for opening early next year.

Taiwan’s battery storage market, kickstarted by tenders for frequency regulation by state-owned utility Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) and underpinned by market drivers including the need for reliable green energy at many industrial facilities, has drawn in a number of enthused international players.

Global system integrator Fluence was recently awarded a 60MW / 96MWh project by Taipower, Fluence’s second battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Taiwan, while rivals Powin Energy and Wartsila are among others with active projects. NHOA itself is in an agreement to install 420MWh of BESS for TCC at industrial sites on the island.

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Electriq’s PowerPod home storage system. Image: Electriq Power.

Programmes to provide home energy storage solutions to low-income homes and businesses have been launched in Washington D.C and Connecticut by Electriq Power and Generac/PosiGen, respectively.

Home energy storage at no-cost to D.C. homes and businesses

Low-income qualifying homeowners and small businesses in Washington D.C., US, will have solar PV and battery energy storage systems (BESS) installed at no cost to them as part of a state and federal-backed program.

Electriq Power, a provider of battery energy storage systems (BESS) for residential and commercial applications, will install the units at homes and businesses and provide ongoing maintenance for 20 years. Being low-to-moderate Income (LMI) will be part of the qualifying criteria.

The programme – SEDC Solar – will lower utility costs and provide backup power to some of the capital’s most economically distressed wards, and is being financed through local and federal government tax incentives.

SEDC Solar is technically an Opportunity Zone business, one set up in an economically distressed community where new investments may be eligible for preferential tax treatment. It provides solar and storage systems to homes, businesses, and churches at no cost and is funded by an Opportunity Zone fund. Opportunity Zone funds are means for investors to make tax-free returns on their invested capital.

Michele Tihami, chief revenue officer of Electriq Power commented: “We’re happy to have found a partner in SEDC Solar that believes the benefits of energy storage and renewable energy generation should be available to all, regardless of economic status.”

Electriq Power launched a similar programme in a small farming community in rural California in March, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.

Increasing access to energy storage in Connecticut

Electriq Power’s announcement coincides with energy technology company Generac launching a programme to increase access to energy storage to residents in Connecticut first, followed by the rest of the US.

Subsidiary Generac Grid Services is partnering with residential energy efficiency solutions provider PosiGen to provide Generac home batteries to PosiGen’s existing solar PV system customers. The 18kWh system will pair with PV to provide power to the grid and backup power to the home in the event of a grid outage.

Generac will work with Connecticut’s Energy Storage Solutions programme, which was launched by the state’s two main investor-owned utilities Eversource and United Illuminating (UI) and has the aim of incentivising the deployment of 580MW of home energy storage by 2030 (that is part of an overall state goal of 1,000MW).

The press release doesn’t mention cost, implying customers will have to cover at least some of it, but PosiGen mainly provides solutions to low-to-moderate income families through the East Coast, Louisiana and Mississippi.

And the two companies hope to replicate the programme across the country “where there are favorable incentive structures and a strong interest in helping low- to moderate-income customers gain power resiliency.”

Generac is a major manufacturer and seller of back up gensets for homes and businesses that has in recent years increasingly targeted home battery energy storage.

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Rendering of Hydrostor’s Silver City project, which the company said will create a “renewable mini-grid” for Broken Hill, Australia. Image: Hydrostor.

An advanced compressed air energy storage has been selected as the preferred option for creating backup energy supply to Broken Hill, a city in rural New South Wales, Australia.

Transmission network operator Transgrid evaluated various energy storage project proposals for Broken Hill which would provide the highest net benefit to the local area and increase the ability to integrate renewable energy into its networks.

Hydrostor, a Canadian company with a proprietary advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) technology, said yesterday that its proposed 200MW/1,500MWh Silver City Energy Storage Center project was identified by Transgrid in a new Project Assessment Conclusions Report as the best-placed.

The long-duration energy storage (LDES) system would be capable of dispatching stored energy to the grid to participate in the National Electricity Market (NEM) and help the region’s capacity-constrained network free up space for more renewables.

Transgrid executive general manager of networks Marie Jordan said the Hydrostor project is the high-voltage transmission network operator’s “preferred long-term solution… in the long-term interests of electricity customers”.

“As we continue the transition to renewable energy, we must prioritise clean energy solutions, which support the nation’s goal of decarbonisation and its leadership in the renewable technology sector,” Jordan said.

Broken Hill is a historic mining region in the western outback of New South Wales (NSW). Lately it has become host to a number of utility-scale solar PV and wind energy facilities and a 50MW battery energy storage system (BESS) is currently under construction.

The city is running diesel generators to provide reliable and peaking capacity that are mostly about 40 years old and coming to the end of their life, Hydrostor CEO Curtis Van Walleghem said in an interview with Energy-Storage.news at the beginning of this year.

Transgrid didn’t want to replace those generators with more fossil fuels, so began efforts to find a cleaner alternative. Hydrostor’s Silver City project has already been awarded a transmission reliability contract by the system operator, while the energy storage company wants to ‘stack’ that revenue stream with money earned in the NEM and with further off-taker deals, potentially with local government and energy traders.

Hydrostor believes the project can be completed and up and running by 2025, or sooner, the CEO said.

Compressed air is stored in hard rock caverns excavated below ground. Image: Hydrostor.

While Hydrostor has just one project in commercial operation so far, a 2.2MW system with about five hours storage duration, in Ontario, Canada, it is developing large-scale projects in California and in Broken Hill that add up to 1.1GW/8.7GWh.

CEO Van Walleghem said the company can simply provide technology for customers, or as in the case of Broken Hill and its two California projects, can also seek out opportunities for projects and enter the development process itself.

The Hydrostor technology is called ‘advanced’ compressed air because it makes some notable improvements on compressed air energy storage which has been in operation at two sites totalling 400MW in the US and Germany for many years.

The main one is that unlike conventional compressed air, A-CAES doesn’t require air to be pre-heated using fossil fuel generators to be expanded. Instead it uses what the CEO calls “a very simple and reliable thermal management system,” that stores heat created when compressing the air by heating water and then using the hot water in the later step of expanding the air. This increases the efficiency by about 25% versus other compressed air solutions: from about 40% to about 65% round-trip efficiency.

The company also claims that unlike pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), A-CAES is relatively easy to site and construct, requiring far less space and water, while geoengineering is largely limited to underground cavern tunnelling.

Hydrostor has received a US$250 million investment commitment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management which was announced in January and a more recent US$25 million investment from institutional investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP).

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A visualisation of Powin’s analysis which led to it settling on lithium iron phosphate as a chemistry of choice. Image: Powin Energy.

Global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator Powin Energy is expanding its battery cell and system testing lab in Oregon, US.

Renovations of the Powin Battery Lab in Tualatin are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. The upgraded lab will expand the company’s cell, module, and system testing capabilities which, it said, will add an important layer of transparency to understanding battery cell performance in an industry that typically relies on vendor self-reporting.

The company expects the expanded lab to open its supply chain to new cell vendors. In an interview with Energy-Storage.news published this week, CEO Geoff Brown said the lab gives the company an understanding of the direction and improvement in the overall science of batteries, and that Powin wants to bring new industry leaders’ products to the storage market.

Brown added that the company’s research to-date had shown that lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is the best existing chemistry “…by a wide margin, so that’s why we’re LFP. I don’t expect I will be saying the same thing 10 years from now.”

The lab will allow the company to characterise cell performance and longevity through long-term and advanced life-cycle testing using its custom-built environmental control room, and to test at both the cell and system-level. Testing results will be summarised in Cell Vendor Reports for Powin’s customers. The lab has logged hundreds of thousands of channel-hours in performance testing to-date.

Part of the expansion will involve the introduction of an advanced grid simulation test bed, which will enable Powin to simulate grid behaviour and renewable assets like solar PV projects. That should, the company said, provide its team with insights into Powin systems’ response to grid events, streamlining the interconnection and integration process in complex electricity markets globally.

Powin SVP Danny Lu, who Energy-Storage.news also recently interviewed, added: “The data and reports generated by Powin Battery Lab will be critical in comparing initial characterisation and long-term cell performance, to the end of life and past the warranted period, of market-leading cell suppliers to the up-and-coming vendors.”

“We will also have the capability to test next-generation and alternative battery chemistries such as sodium ion, solid state, & other chemistries, allowing Powin to stay ahead of the curve. The data and analysis are paramount to creating a landscape of competition and cell optionality in the ESS cell space and in turn providing our customers with the best commercial terms in a challenging battery supply chain environment.”

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Mark Babcock

Maxeon Solar Technologies Ltd. has signed an agreement with CED Greentech to significantly expand Maxeon’s differentiated channel program to residential installers in the United States. This new collaboration combines CED’s strengths as a solar equipment distributor with Maxeon’s panel technology and North America manufacturing footprint.

“CED is an ideal partner for Maxeon,” says Mark Babcock, chief revenue officer at Maxeon Solar Technologies. “Demand in the United States for our unique offering is soaring, and thanks to CED we will be able launch at-scale in short order. Maxeon will support the effort not only with our product, but also with our multi-tiered channel program which we credit for facilitating an exceptional customer experience to over one million Maxeon-powered residential customers around the world.”

Maxeon will offer its flagship Interdigitated Back Contact panels and its 40-year warranty. Products will be available for purchase later this year with deliveries starting in January 2023.

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Justin Lee

Qcells’ new solar panel manufacturing facility will be located in Dalton, Ga. The $171 million investment will boost production of advanced photovoltaic modules.

“Our additional investment in Dalton will help Qcells better serve the needs of U.S. customers with increased local manufacturing capacity,” states Qcells CEO Justin Lee. “Georgia has become the clean energy manufacturing heart of America, and we are proud to contribute to the state’s advanced manufacturing economy.”  

The new facility will produce 1.4 GW of solar modules per year made with Qcells’ next-generation photovoltaic cells, a high-efficiency tunnel oxide passivated contact technology, better known as TOPCon. Located near the company’s existing 1.7 GW factory in Dalton, the expansion will bring Qcells’ total capacity in the U.S. to 3.1 GW.

“We are excited to see Qcells continue to expand in Georgia,” states Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. “The state of Georgia and Korea have enjoyed an outstanding partnership for decades, supported by a dedication to relationship building. We have been focused on bringing jobs and opportunities to hardworking Georgians across the state.”

Groundbreaking is planned for fall 2022 and operation is expected to commence within the first half of 2023.

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Duke Energy’s nonregulated commercial brand Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions has designed and constructed a campus-wide renewable energy system at Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYU- Hawaii) with rooftop solar, carport solar and battery energy storage. The system contains Tesla Megapacks.

The estimated annual electricity production of the entire project will be 6.37 MWh – enough to meet an estimated 39% of the university’s energy needs each year.

“This project has made BYU-Hawaii more eco-friendly and reduced our environmental impact,” says Kevin Schlag, operations vice president. “The combination of solar and battery storage is a smart solution that will allow us to support our students and their education more sustainably by potentially saving the university over $20 million in utility costs over the system’s life.”

Located on 100 acres in Laie on the island of Oahu, the university’s renewable energy project consists of three rooftop solar installations, five solar carports throughout the campus, including its main parking lot, and 7,324.8 kWh of battery storage.

“Now more than ever, universities, companies and municipalities are powering their infrastructure using renewable energy to ensure sustainability and reduce carbon emissions,” states Chris Fallon, Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions’ president. “We’re proud that we were able to deliver the faculty, students and administration of Brigham Young University-Hawaii a renewable energy solution that positively impacts the local environment and reduces the university’s impact on the energy grid in Hawaii.”

The university financed the project through a 20-year power purchase agreement with Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions.

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6.5-7GW of BESS has been deployed in California, Texas, the UK and Australia at the time of writing. Image: Chris Hunkeler / Flickr.

Alongside its many benefits, growing deployments of energy storage will pose complex challenges around availability of data and resource planning for grid and distribution network operators.

This is an extract of an article which appeared in Vol.31 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

Growing deployments present unique challenges

Some 4,150MW of utility-scale energy storage was added to electricity grids in California, Texas, the UK and Australia last year as Energy-Storage.news wrote recently. Other US states and countries in Europe, like Italy and Germany, are slowly but surely catching up.

Haresh Kamath, director of distributed energy resources and energy storage at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the R&D and demonstration project organisation, highlighted an issue that independent system operators (ISOs) in the US will face as storage grows.  

“There will come a point when the ISOs will have to understand how much storage is available at any given time in terms of duration. That will be a challenge to the ISOs once storage is a large enough asset to really make a difference,” he explained.  

Discussing the UK’s national grid, market intelligence firm Modo’s chief analytics officer Robyn Lucas echoed this point: “As storage grows, there will be a big challenge for the distribution networks in getting the data they need to manage their network – things like storage availability, power and energy capacity.”  

“Distribution networks don’t really have any visibility on the batteries that are connected to the system on a real time basis at the moment. And that’s going to be a big problem as we go to more local services.”  

Gabe Murtaugh, storage sector manager for the California ISO which recently passed 3GW of grid-connected battery storage, said that growth in storage makes planning for resource adequacy, the program to ensure CAISO has adequate generating resources to meet demand, much more complicated.  

“Energy storage flips the premise of resource adequacy on its head because you are no longer simply thinking about generating capacity during a given hour. You also must ensure that there is enough energy to charge the storage resources and ensure there is enough energy from those resources to provide full generating capability across all 24 hours of a stressed day. Developing longer duration storage technologies will help with this,” Murtaugh said.

Round-trip efficiency also has to be taken into account and further complicates the storage requirements CAISO sets. Lithium-ion’s 85-95% is good but other technologies, especially long duration, may have lower figures which would change the storage capacity equation.  

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