Image: NYPA via Twitter.

New York Power Authority (NYPA) has started a process of adapting sites that host fossil fuel powered peaker plants in its service area to host battery storage which could replace them. 

NYPA, which serves around a quarter of the state of New York’s electric load, today issued a Request for Proposals (RfP) that could lead to four-hour duration battery energy storage systems (BESS) being installed at those sites. 

The RfP comes as part of an ongoing push towards clean energy, as outlined in the public power organisation’s long-term strategic plan. NYPA wants to serve emissions-free electricity to all its customers by 2035 — five years ahead of a New York State target date for achieving a zero emissions electricity sector. 

It also comes in recognition of the fact that many of New York’s urban peaker plants are located in areas which are home to the state’s most disadvantaged communities. 

In October 2020, ahead of the publication of its VISION2030 strategic plan two months later, NYPA began a collaboration with the PEAK Coalition, a group of clean energy and environmental justice groups, to see how a fleet of about 400MW of gas-fired peaker plants — so-called because they are only called into action to meet energy demand at peak times — could be transitioned to cleaner options. 

The six simple combustion turbine peaker plants were opened just after the turn of the millennium in 2001, dubbed with the now perhaps ironic title of Small Clean Power Plants (SCPPs). 

Each runs on average for only about 10% of the hours in a year, but despite this low capacity factor can contribute significantly to air pollution as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels. 

The sites’ land and electricity infrastructure could instead be used to host BESS facilities which could do the same job without the heavy environmental and increasing economic costs. 

“To meet New York’s clean energy targets, we need a multifaceted approach that includes creative solutions such as battery storage and innovative adaptation of our current infrastructure to meet the energy demands of tomorrow in a cleaner way,” NYPA interim president and CEO Justin E. Driscoll said. 

New York State also has a 6GW deployment target for energy storage by 2030, a large portion of which NYPA and other state utilities will need to provide. 

Polluting sites can be leveraged to expedite clean energy transition

A study commissioned on behalf of NYPA has just been published by analysts Energy & Environmental Economics (E3) and power engineering company GE, which consulted with the PEAK Coalition and clean energy consultancy group Strategen.    

It will be technically and economically feasible to replace the peakers with renewables and four-hour batteries by 2030, the Small Clean Power Plant Adaptation Study finds. This will be made possible by the converging trends of renewable energy generation in New York increasing and technology improvements and the falling costs of battery storage.

This wouldn’t have been the case just three years ago, the study found, because although most peakers only run for about 10% of the year, there were several days, mostly in summer peaks, when the gas plants were running continuously for 8 hours or more at full output. 

Tied to New York’s Clean Energy Standard, which will require 70% of electricity consumed in the state to be renewable by 2030, the frequency and duration which the peakers will need to run for both decrease and battery storage can help meet the gap.

“As the State moves ahead with offshore wind, solar and transmission projects that will deliver more clean energy to New York City, NYPA is encouraged by the modelling and forecasting in this collaborative study that shows that we may be able to expedite our transition to cleaner energy technologies at our in-city plants, providing that we can continue to ensure a reliable, resilient energy system for New York City,” Driscoll said. 

The RfP is currently tentative. NYPA wants to assess the options in response and develop a strategic roadmap for how to adapt the SCPPs, which will be published by the end of this year. 

Bids are due by 24 May 2022 and potential awards will be announced at the beginning of July. More details on that can be found at the NYPA Procurement website here, while the Small Clean Power Plant Adaptation Study can be viewed in full here.

Can all 6GW of NYC peakers be replaced?

The fleet represents only a small portion of the entire state’s peaker plants but the SCPP adaption process could be a significant start for NYPA. Around 75% of NYPA’s load is served by hydroelectric plants, so it needs to take immediate action to decarbonise the remaining 25%.  

NYPA also owns the land which used to host New York’s most pollution-heavy power plant ever, the 885MW natural gas and oil-fired Charles Poletti Power Plant, which closed in 2010. Already in development at the site is a 100MW/400MWh (4-hour) battery energy storage system (BESS) project. 

Developer 174 Power Global, a Hanwha Group subsidiary, was handed regulatory approval for the project in July 2021 and is being leased the land by NYPA. In an interview with Energy-Storage.news last year, NYPA chief commercial officer Sarah Orban Salati discussed that project and a range of other initiatives and options ahead in the clean energy transition.

A previous study commissioned by PEAK Coalition and authored by Strategen, published in March 2021, found that a combination of renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy storage could enable retirement for New York City’s entire 6GW fleet of peakers, albeit it would require several gigawatts of each technology. 

Some of those plants run on even more polluting fuels like heavy fuel oil and kerosene. Peaker plants contribute nearly all (97%) of New York State’s nitrous oxide emissions and New York residents paid around US$4.5 billion to operate them over the past decade. 

PEAK Coalition’s membership includes New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and the New York City Environmental Justice Group and three other organisations. 

A March 2019 article for this site and our journal PV Tech Power investigated the wider potential for solar-plus-storage peaker plants. 

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A page from Berkeley Lab’s research briefing. Image: Berkeley Lab.

US national energy laboratory Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has released its top 10 findings from a research programme into renewable projects that pair generation with energy storage, so-called hybrid projects.

The research into the growing trend of hybridisation, or colocation, has been carried out in order to better understand where batteries should be located to provide the highest value, according to Will Gorman, Graduate Student Researcher in the Electricity Markets and Policy Department. Gorman wrote about the earlier stages of the study in a piece for Energy-storage.news last year.

The first trend Berkeley Lab noted in its report is a growing developer interest in hybrid power plants, which the research defines as a combination of generation and storage, operated either as a single or two separate units and sited at the same location. It excludes non-battery storage technologies and virtual hybridisation.

The report said cumulative operational capacity increased by 133% from 2020 to 2021, by the end of which there were more than 8GW of PV or wind hybrid plants online. It said 42% of PV in interconnection queues is paired with storage while only 5% of wind is.

The research also found that a hybrid project power purchase agreement (PPA) price premium reflects the size of its battery, with a positive correlation between the price per MWh and the battery’s PV capacity (i.e. size relative to the PV plant). Overall, the net value of hybridisation appears to be positive, it added.

The hybridisation trends is driven by the availability of the investment tax credit (ITC) for energy storage, but only applies when it is deployed together with storage and the batteries charge directly from the onsite solar PV at least 75% annually. This effectively reduces the overall project cost by 30% if pairing with storage, but it is not the only reason for hybridisation, Berkeley Lab added. Sharing of equipment and interconnection and permitting costs, capturing clipped energy and facilitating intraday energy shifting are other reasons.

Interestingly, market prices have incentivised shorter duration batteries with PV of between one and four hours.

The report’s fifth finding was that the capacity contribution of a hybrid is less than the sum of its parts, as shared infrastructure can limit the contribution of a hybrid project’s constituent components.

This is something that was touched on in a recent interview Energy-storage.news did with Gabe Murtaugh, storage sector manager for the California ISO (Independent System Operator), who challenged the rationale of the tax credit mentioned earlier.

He said: “‘The investment tax credit for storage resources located with on-site storage is challenging for the ISO. It does not incentivise full storage participation in the organised energy markets, but instead incentivises charging only when there is generation from the on-site solar resource. If the ISO needs to charge a battery during the night for grid reliability during the morning ramp, it may not be able to because of these rules.”

“When this is applied to most storage resources on the grid, it threatens reliability. The ISO supports incentives to build storage, but also wants to ensure that these resources can be fully utilised once they are operating in the market.”

Indeed, the research’s eighth finding is that the power system value of hybrids depends on their operation and not all large-scale PV-plus-storage hybrids are integrated into organised markets. It said most operating hybrid projects in 2020 either followed incentive program signals or capacity & transmission demand charges instead of wholesale market price signals.

What’s more, behind-the-meter storage to maximise solar self-consumption through things like net-billing tariffs provides “little market value for the electric system,” it added.

Berkeley Lab’s research also concluded that ancillary services are a valuable yet fleeting option for hybrid projects. Those ancillary service markets are relatively shallow compared to the proposed volumes of battery projects in interconnection queues.

Developer preference for operating the assets separately or as a single asset are also mixed, with the separate strategy currently the most popular in California. The report said that regulators should try to maintain this flexibility in order to spur innovation.

Its penultimate conclusion was that there are big opportunities to pair storage with customer-sited PV. Roughly 30% of US battery storage installed in 2020 was behind-the-meter but only 6% of residential and 2% of non-residential PV systems include storage. The ‘Attachment rates’ is much higher in Hawaii at 80%. The report concluded with the statement that hybridisation’s relative novelty means further research into it is needed.

Read the whole report here.

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Granite Redevelopment Properties LP, a real estate investment and redevelopment company that focuses on the restoration and stabilization of multifamily properties, has enlisted The Solar Co. to complete a large multifamily solar panel installation project. At 16 of Granite’s apartment communities in Dallas and Tarrant counties, the company is installing solar panels to generate electricity and offset energy costs at its Class B and C communities, comprising more than 3,600 units. Additionally, solar carports at nine properties will provide protection from the elements for 2,000 parking spaces while generating power.

“When we ran the numbers for overall project returns, we were sold and wanted to go all in,” says Tim Gillean, president at Granite Redevelopment Properties LP. “Not only is it a responsible decision from an environmental standpoint, it also makes tremendous financial sense and adds millions of dollars to the overall value of our portfolio.”

The Solar Company designed and installed the 15 MW, 40,000-panel system to maximize sun exposure, allowing the apartment communities to meet their energy needs as well as protecting costs associated with Texas’ rapidly rising utility rates. Expected project completion is July 2022.

“Granite is setting a trend for owners of Class B and C apartments – and potentially the entire multifamily industry,” states Travis Wildeman, CEO of The Solar Company. “By removing one of the biggest expenses for many landlords with rooftop solar panels and solar carports, the math is hard to argue with.”

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A 961 kW solar array on the rooftop of Phoenix Contact’s U.S. headquarters will generate about 30% of the facility’s energy needs. Phoenix Contact partnered with Gatter & Diehl Consulting Engineers and Terrasol Energies Inc. to design the rooftop solar array. Phoenix Contact designed and installed the monitoring portion of the system, which features numerous Phoenix Contact products.

“We estimate this solar power installation will reduce our electricity costs by approximately $150,000 per year. While a smart business choice for us, reducing our company’s carbon footprint is more important in the long term,” says Jack Nehlig, president of Phoenix Contact USA. “Sustainability and renewable power generation are at the heart of Phoenix Contact’s vision for an all-electric society. This is one critical step on our journey to becoming a carbon-neutral company by 2030.”

Terrasol Energies Inc. also installed the solar array on the roof of Phoenix Contact’s Logistics Center for the Americas last year. The solar array consists of 2,185 SunPower photovoltaic panels, which can generate up to 961 kW. A $250,000 PEDA restart grant and a $270,000 grant from the PPL ACT 129 fund helped offset the $1.8 million investment into the solar array.

In 2014, Phoenix Contact installed a 1MW combined cooling heating and power (CCHP) facility. The system provides 65% of the facility’s energy needs and saves the company more than $300,000 annually. With the CCHP and the solar array, Phoenix Contact will generate enough energy to go off the grid on sunny days during the shoulder seasons (spring and fall).

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The Grid Storage Launchpad which is expected to open in 2023. Image: PNNL.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has launched the construction of a research facility for exploring new energy storage technologies.

The Grid Storage Launchpad will have space for 35 research laboratories, offices for 105 staff and testing chambers to assess new storage technologies up to 100KW under ‘realistic conditions’. It will have a focus on long-duration technologies and is expected to be ready for occupancy as soon as 2023.

Senator Maria Cantwell joined others in helping break ground on the site yesterday (21 April). Investment in the facility will total US$75 million, of which the bulk will be provided by the DOE along with US$8.3 million from Washington state’s Clean Energy Fund (CEF).

“The Launchpad will help us make America’s grid more reliable and resilient, lead the world in inventing and exporting clean energy products, and accelerate the transition to a cleaner energy system,” said Cantwell.

“The Grid Storage Launchpad facility will boost clean energy adaptation and accelerate the development and deployment of long-duration, low-cost grid energy storage,” added Gil Bindewald, acting principal deputy assistant secretary at DOE’s Office of Electricity.

The CEF money was specifically for advanced research instruments to glean new insights into the real-time behaviour of battery materials. PNNL used it to purchase two state-of-the-art Thermo Fisher electron microscopes and a Thermo Fisher spectrometer to view changes to battery materials as they charge and discharge.

The launch of the facility comes amidst fervent debate about the place for alternatives to lithium-ion in long-duration storage. It is widely agreed that alternatives to li-ion for long-duration are needed, and billions have been invested in pre-revenue companies launching novel solutions, but there is some debate as to the threshold of duration at which alternatives become cost-effective.

The recently-formed Long Duration Energy Storage Council claims that long-duration energy storage technology has the potential to deliver 85-140TWh of storage by 2040.

See a video from PNNL about the Grid Storage Launchpad below.

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San Diego-based Nuvve became a listed company in late 2020. Image: Nuvve.

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) solutions provider Nuvve, along with a host of other groups, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate the commercialisation of V2G and other vehicle-grid integration (VGI) technologies.

Nuvve has been chosen to work with government agencies, utilities and electrification industry leaders to accelerate the commercialisation of V2G as well as vehicle-to-building (V2B), vehicle-to-home (V2H) and other VGI technologies.

The agreement is part of a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) MOU launched by the DOE with a number of partners including national labs, state and local governments, utilities and private companies to evaluate the potential of bidirectional charging in the country’s energy infrastructure.

“The MOU signed today represents a collaborative approach to researching and developing novel technologies that will help unify the clean energy and transportation sectors while getting more American consumers into electric vehicles,” said deputy secretary of energy Dave Turk.

Other participants in the V2X MOU include several DOE and California-based public institutions, California’s three investor-owned utilities, vehicle fleet operators, several automotive giants such as Nissan, Ford and General Motors, and other electric vehicle (EV) solution infrastructure companies like Zeem Solutions, Rhombus and Fermata Energy (a V2X player).

The DOE initiated the MOU to ensure that the development of the EV market incorporates bidirectional charging, which will enable VGI technologies. VGI has the potential to reduce building loads and increase the provision of grid services while also creating revenue opportunities for EV owners.

Nuvve’s main activities are providing bidirectional charging infrastructure – allowing electricity to flow in and out of a vehicle – and the energy management platform to manage that flow of power. It says its energy management platform enables VGI at all levels, including smart charging and V1G to V2B/V2H and V2G. The platform acts as an aggregator to combine the power from a fleet of EV batteries to form virtual power plants (VPPs) that can provide power to the grid.

Depending on the age of the model, it can take as little as five to 20 EV batteries to form a 1MWh system, typically the minimum size for a utility-scale battery energy storage system project.

Gregory Poilasne, chairman and CEO of Nuvve, said: “We look forward to collaborating with the DOE to make V2G and V2B/V2H more ubiquitous and available to fleets and EV owners across the country.”

The company recently struck a deal in Japan to provide its V2G technology to a local power company for the use of EV batteries in providing grid services and other grid stability applications.

It also partnered with US-based VPP project company Swell Energy to explore the integration of different distributed energy resources for homes and businesses. It will investigate how EVs can participate in Swell’s VPP network.

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Rendering of how the system will look at the Sembach site. Note the rows of BatteryBlocks with green detail, bookended with a CombiBlock on the right of each row. Image: Leclanché.

Leclanché will provide an 11.9MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) for deployment at a utility-scale solar PV power plant near Kaiserslauten, Germany.

The Switzerland-headquartered energy storage solutions company will deliver a full turnkey lithium-ion BESS, based on the LeBlock modular technology platform it launched to the global market in 2021. 

German energy optimisation company Olmatic chose Leclanché’s BESS for the project, which will perform frequency regulation services through the primary control reserve (PCR) market. PCR is a Europe-wide service, but is procured and delivered locally.  

Olmatic works with power plant operators to find the best ways to maximise the value of their assets. In the case of the 5.6MW Sembach PV plant which has been in operation since 2006, the municipal utility which owns it can add the battery storage to get revenues from helping balance the grid. 

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider FlexPowerHub, also a German company, is automating the BESS’ participation in the ancillary service market, using artificial intelligence (AI) forecasting of local power demand and production. 

By prompting the system to automatically kick in to send power to the grid when grid frequency drops — either due to lower renewable energy production or higher electricity demand — the power plant owner is not required to have specialist knowledge of the market or the battery technology to be involved.

FlexPowerHub COO and partner Martin Simmerstatter said the company wanted to make entry into the energy balancing market — which he described as “very complex” — easier for renewable energy plants and their owners and operators. 

“By automating the entire process, energy industry know-how is no longer necessary – this lowers the barrier to market entry enormously. In combination with an innovative storage system from Leclanché, revenues can be generated on the negative as well as on the positive energy balancing market. In addition, we optimise revenues through DeepLearning forecasts and thus reduce the amortisation period of a battery storage system,” Simmerstatter said. 

First German installation for LeBlock

Leclanché launched LeBlock in May 2021. The company claimed at the time that its design, which comprises separate BatteryBlock units that can be stacked together makes it plug and play, suitable for assembly on site, as well as easy to transport. 

The company told Energy-Storage.news at the time of its launch that it was motivated by the growing market demand for larger, higher voltage and higher rated capacity battery storage systems. 

The BatteryBlocks are 5ft wide and come pre-installed and configured, with four blocks able to fit into the footprint of a 20ft ISO standard container. It meets the various necessary fire safety and transportation standards, Leclanché said. 

BatteryBlocks each have water-cooled battery racks neatly fitted together with Leclanché’s CombiBlocks, units which include the central cooling systems for thermal management. At the launch, the company said in the standard configuration each of the BESS blocks fits up to 745kWh of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, although it can be integrated with different battery types too. 

At the Sembach PV plant, Leclanché will deliver 16 BatteryBlocks, four CombiBlocks and a 8.78MVA power conversion system (PCS) system for connection to the local 20kV/50Hz grid.

“Energy storage systems are taking on an important role in the energy market with regard to the further expansion of renewable energy sources, security of supply and grid stability,” Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava said, adding references to other European projects the company is providing LeBlock systems to in Germany and the Netherlands. 

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Rooftop solar PV at an Amazon ‘fulfilment centre’ in Europe. Image: Amazon.

Amazon has added 37 new renewable energy projects to its portfolio, including 26 new utility-scale solar projects, two of which will be hybrid solar-plus-storage. 

The technology and logistics giant is adding a total of 3.5GW to its 12.2GW portfolio of renewable energy.

The company has also stepped up its investments in colocated solar-storage projects with two new hybrid facilities in Arizona and California. The project in Arizona will have 300MW of solar PV paired with 150MW of battery storage while the California project will have pair 150MW of solar PV with 75MW of battery storage.

The two newest projects will double Amazon’s current solar PV paired with energy storage capacity from 220MW to 445MW.

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, said: “We now have 310 wind and solar projects across 19 countries, and are working hard to reach our goal of powering 100% of our business on renewable energy by 2025—five years ahead of our original target of 2030.”

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

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Tandem PV, a California-based photovoltaic technology company specializing in ultra-high-efficiency tandem metal-halide perovskite solar panels, has closed the initial $6 million of its $12M Series A financing round. The round was led by Bioeconomy Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, through its new Planetary Technologies fund, with participation from an international solar manufacturer and a U.S. utility company. Tandem PV will use the funds to build a pilot manufacturing facility in San Jose, Calif.

“Our mission is to find scalable Planetary Technologies that can help the world mature beyond fossil fuels at the pace necessary to avoid unsustainable warming,” says Rik Wehbring, managing director of Bioeconomy Capital and a board member at Tandem PV. “Tandem PV is commercializing transformative technology that achieves this goal.”

“We have tremendous market pull from residential solar installers, end users, equipment distributors and utilities – the industry is ready for more sustainable, efficient and cost-effective solar panels,” says Colin Bailie, co-founder and CEO of Tandem PV.

Tandem PV transforms silicon solar panels into high-efficiency tandems by leveraging perovskite-coated front glass via a drop-in manufacturing replacement. This solar panel technology is poised to offer 50% higher efficiency than the average solar panel and drive solar system costs down by 30% or more.

“The cost and performance improvements expected by Tandem PV’s technology will enable substantially higher photovoltaic penetration worldwide, potentially offsetting three gigatons of CO2 equivalent per year,” adds Chris Eberspacher, co-founder and managing director of Tandem PV. “Tandem PV is on a fast track to develop, demonstrate and commercialize perovskite and silicon tandem solar panels for homes across the United States and worldwide.”

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Polar Racking is supplying the foundations and racking to Aspin Kemp & Associates Inc. (AKA) for the Sunbank Project in Summerside, PEI. The project consists of a community microgrid with a capacity of 26.26 MW DC as well as a 10 MW battery energy storage system for which AKA has been selected as the EPC.

“The Summerside Sunbank Project proves that jurisdictions of any size can play an active role in sustainability when they truly want to,” says Vishal Lala, managing director at Polar Racking. “We are thrilled to work with Aspin Kemp & Associates to advance the city’s clean energy goals by supplying the racking and foundation for this project.”

The Polar team is responsible for supplying and engineering the structural racking for this large ground-mount solar project. The Sunbank Project is expected to reduce the city’s imports of electricity from 58% to 38%.

“This is a showcase project for the region,” states Tom St. Onge, Sunbank’s project manager. “This scale of this renewable energy project is a first on the Island and will help increase the awareness of the great work the City of Summerside is doing. Aspin Kemp & Associates is pleased to be leading this effort on behalf of Summerside to create a project Prince Edward Island can be proud of.”

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