EDP Renewables (EDPR), through its fully owned subsidiary EDP Renewables North America LLC (EDPR NA), and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY) have executed a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) for 60 MW at the 240-MW Cattlemen Solar Park in Milam County, located in central Texas.

The agreement will enable EDPR NA to further develop Cattlemen Solar Park, which has an estimated capital investment of approximately $280 million and is anticipated to be operational in 2023.

Bristol Myers Squibb, in line with its long-term environmental sustainability goals, has stated that by 2030 it will purchase 100% of the electricity it uses from renewable sources. The PPA with EDP Renewables’ Cattlemen Solar Park marks a significant step toward achieving this goal. Edison Energy LLC served as advisors.

“As a leading global biopharma company, BMS recognizes the critical link between climate change and human health, and our dedication to transforming patients’ lives through science underpins our approach to environmental sustainability,” says Danielle Menture, vice president of sustainability, EHS and occupational health. “This agreement not only is an important milepost in our sustainability journey, but also is a step toward a clean energy future for everyone.”

“We are delighted to partner with Bristol Myers Squibb on this arrangement that will help in making further strides toward achieving their environmental goals,” states Sandhya Ganapathy, COO of EDPR North America. “Texas leads the nation in installed wind, solar, and storage capacity, and EDPR is proud to have the opportunity to bring more solar energy online and generate new local and statewide economic benefits in the Lone Star State.”

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The company recently agreed to supply a large BESS to California utility Southern Power. Image: Mitsubishi Power Americas.

Energy-storage.news catches up with Thomas Cornell, Senior VP Energy Storage Solutions at Mitsubishi Power Americas, about the company’s energy storage market activity, strategy and future plans.

Cornell, who has over 30 years’ experience in energy, power generation and more recently energy storage, joined Mitsubishi Power Americas in 2017. Mitsubishi Power is the power solutions brand of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), one of the four companies making up the Japanese conglomerate founded in 1870. MHI had sales of ¥3.7 trillion (US$28.8 billion) in 2020.

Mitsubishi Power has delivered around a dozen battery storage projects in North America in the last two years, including eight in California totalling 280MW/1,140MWh, most recently a six-hour system for investor-owned utility SDG&E.

Cornell has global responsibility for energy storage solutions, as well as for pan-renewables project developer Oriden, although so far storage is a segment that has mainly taken off in North America for the company.

In this Q&A, he discusses Mitsubishi Power’s approach to the energy storage market, the six-hour system and delivering storage projects for a variety of needs, new battery storage technologies and a green hydrogen project the company is working on, before finishing on his key strategic priorities going forward.

Energy-storage.news: What is Mitsubishi Power America’s approach to the energy storage market?

Cornell: As a company, we’ve been involved in battery storage for more than two decades, developing our own cell technology. But we divested from being a cell OEM and reorganised the group to be more focused and technology-agnostic, because we know the energy storage world is changing so rapidly. We want to have a platform that gives us the flexibility to move as the market changes and as technology changes.

Our pedigree is really coming from our utility-scale, power and energy-related projects and products. What we’ve learned from that side of the business is that whether it’s nuclear, fossil fuels, air quality or environmental, you can’t be just a standalone product company. You’ve got to be more than that to succeed so we are bringing that kind of that same mentality into our battery energy storage portfolio.

We can provide turnkey solutions, engineering, products, long-term services, financing for and equity into projects. It’s really a whole soup-to-nuts offering that we can bring into the battery space.

Since we refocused the group here four years ago it’s been going very well. We’re starting to pick up a lot of traction for that type of solution being offered to customers in the market. Our green hydrogen business actually took off a lot faster than we expected and we moved that over to one of our other business units within Mitsubishi Power Americas.

Mitsubishi Power Americas recently delivered a six-hour BESS system to California utility SDG&E. Can you tell us a bit about that system in terms of the cost and use cases compared to a four-hour system?

It’s not a tremendous difference in cost when going out to six hours. Over the last 12-24 months, especially in California, we’ve seen a number of RFPs coming out that are asking for six-hour, eight-hour and we’ve even had some up in the 10-12 hour range, such as in the PJM market.

Specifically for this SDG&E project, what the customer is asking us to do is to oversize on the front end. Their location in the San Diego region means they’ve got fairly heavy solar curtailment so they’re looking for the ability to extend that duration up to six hours.

For us, going out to six hours means things like more verification of the battery cell technology to make sure that the cells are compatible with that duration. And then it’s just a question of designing the inverters and the balance of plant (BOP) systems to make sure that they’re compatible with that and still cost-effective. So going from four to six hours really was really just a single-digit-type percentage additional cost to the project, nothing detrimental.

In terms of the use cases, right now it’s really time shifting and some peak capacity so that’s why they really wanted to cover that six-hour time shift. That’s their going-in rationale for the battery system.

But what we’re finding generally and in the case of SDG&E is that customers want to have as much flexibility with the design as possible. So they want the ability to have some fast response and the ability to play in the arbitrage market. But they also want to have the systems, design and layout there to look at future technology advances and possibly can even extend that duration if necessary.

Can you talk a bit about the challenges of designing systems for a wide variety of applications?

We’ve probably done more than 12 projects in the last two years but all the applications have been very different. Some in the ERCOT market have been really around the fast frequency response (FFR) market so customers are looking for very fast reacting systems. Probably half of those in California have been coupled up with solar.

And then the rest of them have been standalone projects more geared towards peak applications, time shifting and energy arbitrage. Those are the ones where the customers are looking for as much versatility as possible and a future proof design. They don’t need it to be as fast as reacting as what we put in ERCOT, for example, but still want it to be able to react and charge relatively quickly.

The levers that we can pull to this end are things like the software, the battery cell technology, the layout, how you line up the battery systems behind the inverter configuration etc. For longer durations, one thing is staying away from adding DC converters into the system which adds additional cost.

These are all the things that we can do as a trade off as we optimise the designs for what the customer is trying to try to accomplish. We usually go through numerous iterations with the customer as they’re starting to plan what they want to do. What we start with and what we end up with are typically two very different things.

So you’ve mentioned 10-12 hour systems a few times. Is that feasible with lithium-ion and if so, at what duration do other technologies enter the picture?

Yes it’s it’s feasible with lithium-ion. Falls in the cost of lithium-ion until recently has really led to developers starting to push the envelope and look at extending the duration a little bit more. Though this price blip we’re going through that may have people re-evaluating that.

But when people are looking at 10-12 hour durations the first questions you always get asked are: have you done this before, what is your experience doing it, what are the effects of doing this? And we’ve looked at other technologies in that timeframe to see if they would be a better solution, like flow batteries.

But really, the only technology for storage that is at the level for the MW and the MWh needed and close to those durations that’s proven has been lithium-based. There really is not anything, except for pumped hydro maybe, be it solid state batteries, sodium, zinc or even flow batteries that has proved itself out at those durations. But, over time, those technologies will become more viable.

The Requests for Proposals (RfPs) we’ve seen for customers for those longer durations are actually specifying that they’ve got to be lithium based.

Assuming that flow batteries can get to the price curves that they’re forecasting, we always saw that breakpoint, at which they would become more economical, at about that 10-12 hours’ duration. But now with the price of lithium spiking, I truly believed that by this point in time that we would have had some of the flow technology getting more orders, more awards and more hours on them. But they have not actually really cracked into that market yet.

Mitsubishi Power has launched gas turbines capable of running with hydrogen (pictured). Image: Mitsubishi Power.

Can you tell us a bit about the green hydrogen project Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is working on?

It’s a full scale project called the Advanced Clean Energy Storage Project in Intermountain, Utah. There’s an existing coal plant which will retire in 2023-24 and be replaced by a combined cycle power plant in 2025. At launch, that power plant will be covered approximately 20-25% by green hydrogen.

We’ll use renewable energy, mainly solar and wind, to power electrolysers to produce hydrogen that we’ll store in salt caverns in Delta, Utah. The cavern is huge and will have about 300GWh of storage capacity. That will give us a tremendous amount of chemical storage and we will then be able to blend that into the new combined cycle plant that’s coming online in 2025. The timeframe is currently moving between 2030 and 2035 for when they will try to transition over to 100% green hydrogen in that plant.

How would you characterise the development of the storage market in the coming year/years?

Last year was a breakout year for the sector, to prove that on a utility-scale basis, battery storage is a viable, resilient and dependable source of energy. In the US, it was mainly restricted to a handful of states but now we’re seeing it become much broader than that. If you look at the transmission queues in all regions of the US they’re getting saturated with battery energy storage projects.

We’re getting a tremendous amount of growth in the US but we’re starting to see it in Latin America where we’ve just secured large orders. In Europe, we’re bidding on a number of opportunities now in the UK, Germany and Italy, and we’re starting to see the same thing in Southeast Asia and Japan.

So we’re looking at the next decade really being the decade of energy storage with tremendously high growth. In 2022, we’re going to deploy 2x what we did last year and we think the market will also be 2x what it was last year, and in 2023 we’re expecting it will be 4x.

Our belief is that the pricing spikes that we’re seeing right now will probably settle out over the next 12-24 months and we’ll get back under that decreasing cost curve for lithium. You’re going to see batteries being deployed for even more reasons than those that we’re seeing today, especially when you start talking about EV charging infrastructure.

Tom Cornell of Mitsubishi Power Americas. Image: Mitsubishi Power Americas.

So what are some of your key strategic priorities for the next few years?

So our focus over the next few years is to get ahead of the market as far as looking at the various technologies, what are the controls and software platforms that are going to be needed, how we’re going to grow the business, the capital that we’re going to need because the ramp-up of capital is going to be incredible as well. We’re looking at all means and methods to raise capital to support our business.

And then the biggest thing too is developing a really a mature service model. And that’s where we’re taking a lot of our lessons learned from our other Mitsubishi businesses that have been out there giving long-term service contracts, and how we’re going to effectively manage those long term contracts, how we’re going to bring secondary market batteries and used batteries from the EV side of trucking and bussing into the business.

We’re going to constantly look at changes in technologies, whether it’s solid state, zinc-based, sodium-based etc because we think there will be more advances. This is the decade of energy storage and we feel very privileged to be at the forefront of that and heavily engaged in helping shape that market.

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A rendering of the BESS project view from the nearest road. Image: Open Road Renewables.

Developer Open Road Renewables has proposed a battery energy storage system (BESS) in Indiana, US, which will total 131MW/524MW of storage, the company’s President exclusively told Energy-storage.news.

The company has proposed the four-hour BESS project, called Monroe Power, to adjoin a substation near the small town of Walkerton in Indiana’s LaPorte County.

The local Board of Zoning and Appeals is assessing the proposal. It would serve Indiana’s electric grid in LaPorte County and surrounding areas, part of the grid operated by MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator).

In a statement provided to Energy-storage.news, President Cyrus Tashakkori said: “Monroe Power is planned as 131 MW/524 MWh using lithium-ion batteries. The facility will contribute to the stability and resiliency of the regional grid and will save ratepayers money as transmission and capacity costs continue to increase in Indiana. The facility can also reduce ratepayers’ peak power costs.” 

Monroe Power LLC is the project development entity set up by Open Road Renewables for development of the project. A detailed project description document says the site will take between nine and 18 months to build, with interconnection approval by MISO expected in Spring 2023.

The document says the project will involve over US$100 million of capital investment while a news report described it as a US$150 million project. The document adds that the project is expected to ultimately be owned and operated by, or otherwise contractually committed to, NIPSCO (Northern Indiana Public Service Company), one of the state’s main utilities.

The plan was initially formulated for a 71-acre site but that was amended to just 14 acres. It has reportedly received some local opposition and efforts have been made to landscape the site in order to reduce the visual impact (see picture above). You can read the whole project description here.

Regions within MISO’s responsibility, which covers much of the Midwest and some southern states, have typically relied on coal for power generation rather than natural gas as in nearby PJM. This has created opportunities for energy storage deployment as these coal facilities are rapidly being retired due to their very high carbon emissions.

An analyst at research firm IHS Markit recently told Energy-storage.news that this rapid retirement was creating a significant economic value proposition for solar-plus-storage projects in the Midwest. Associate director for gas, power and energy futures Sam Huntington described Indiana as a “real surprise” in terms of deployment with several very large battery projects for NIPSCO, including by NextEra Energy Resources.

When asked by Energy-storage.news why projects in Indiana have appeared to tend towards being on the large side, Tashakkori said: “The latest MISO capacity auctions (MISO’s 2022/2023 PRA- Planning Resource Auction) reveal an 8 GW shortfall in capacity resources in central MISO. This means higher prices for consumers to ensure grid reliability.”

“Larger transmission-level BESS systems like Monroe Power are key to efficiently providing that capacity, especially as utilities like NIPSCO continue to shift away from coal and towards renewables.”

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Amazon Solar Farm – Eastern Shore, an 80 MW AC project developed by Community Energy and located in Accomack County, Va.

Amazon’s 37 new renewable energy projects put the company five years ahead of its original target to power 100% of its operations with renewable energy by 2030. The new projects increase the capacity of Amazon’s renewable energy portfolio by nearly 30%, from 12.2 GW to 15.7 GW, and bring the total number of renewable energy projects to 310 across 19 countries.

“Our commitment to protecting the planet and limiting Amazon’s impact on the environment has led us to become the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world in both 2020 and 2021,” says Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. “Given the growth of our business, and our mission to run 100 percent of Amazon’s operations on renewable energy, we aren’t slowing our renewable investments down.”

The new projects announced are located across the U.S., Spain, France, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. They vary in project type and size, with three new wind farms, 26 new solar farms, and eight new rooftop solar installations at its buildings around the world. As a result of these projects, Amazon now has a total of 310 renewable energy projects, including 134 wind and solar farms and 176 rooftop solar projects. Once operational, the projects are expected to produce 42,000 GWh of renewable energy each year.

Amazon also continues to invest in renewable energy projects paired with energy storage. The new projects include a 300 MW solar project paired with 150 MW of battery storage in Arizona and a 150 MW solar project paired with 75 MW of battery storage in California. Combined, the two projects double Amazon’s total announced solar paired with energy storage from 220 MW to 445 MW.

In the U.S., 23 projects are spread across 13 states, bringing Amazon’s total clean energy procurement in the U.S. from 7.2 GW to 10.4 GW. Notably, the new projects include Amazon’s largest renewable energy project (by capacity) announced to date, which is a 500 MW solar farm in Texas. The announcement also includes the company’s first renewable energy projects in Missouri. The remaining projects are in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Virginia.

The company added an additional 314 MW of renewable energy capacity in Spain, bringing its total investment to 1.4 GW in the country. The five new projects include three solar farms and two wind farms, bringing Amazon’s total renewable energy projects in Spain to 14.

Amazon announced its second solar project in France, which brings the company’s total renewable energy capacity announced to date to 38 MW in the country.

The company added its first rooftop solar project in the United Arab Emirates, which is a 2.7 MW installation in Dubai. Amazon also announced seven rooftop solar projects in Australia, Canada, India and Japan, totaling over 5 MW of clean energy capacity.

“As number one on CEBA’s Deal Tracker Top 10 for the second year in a row, Amazon continues to demonstrate its commitment to advancing clean energy,” states Miranda Ballentine, CEO of Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA). “Amazon’s recent announcement highlights the increasingly sophisticated strategies used by energy customers to deploy carbon-free energy projects across the nation and the world, and the critical role energy customers play in optimizing emissions reductions.”

“Amazon continues to be a leader in rapidly scaling up renewable energy projects here in the U.S. This increasingly includes hybrid projects that pair energy storage with renewable energy generation, unlocking the ability to use clean reliable energy throughout all hours of the day,” comments Heather Zichal CEO of the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

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Saint-Ghislain data centre complex in Belgium, with solar PV array in right foreground. Image: Google / Centrica Business Solutions.

Google has hailed the imminent completion of a project to retrofit one of its data centres in Europe with battery energy storage system (BESS) technology as a step towards rolling out similar solutions across its fleet of global facilities. 

The search engine and tech giant this morning announced a number of milestones achieved on various renewable and clean energy projects at sites in three European countries and Chile in South America. 

All of these help to take the company closer to its goal of 24/7 carbon-free energy (CFE) by 2030 in real-time, as opposed to carbon neutral through matching local energy use with renewable generation elsewhere. 

Three new large-scale renewable energy facilities it has contracted with are now operational: 125MW of wind turbines delivered by AES Chile for Google’s first Latin America-based data centre in Biobio, Chile, a power purchase agreement for 60% of the output of a 211MW wind farm to power a data centre in Hamina, Finland, and a 54.5MW solar PV power plant in Denmark which takes Google’s solar capacity in the country to more than 150MWh. 

Progress has also been made at the company’s data centre in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, with a battery storage project fully installed, tested and being prepared to go into full service. 

When the Saint-Ghislain retrofit was announced in December 2020, Google described it as a first step in taking data centres “from climate change problems to critical components in carbon-free systems”. 

Google VP of global data centres Joe Kava at the time called batteries “multi-talented team players,” capable of providing grid services and integrating higher shares of renewables to local energy networks. 

Previously, when the data centre facility suffered an outage of power, the main source of backup was diesel generators. Kava noted that in 2020, around 20GW of diesel generators were being used as backup by the global data centre industry. 

Instead, the addition of batteries provides low-carbon backup to the data centre’s operations, but crucially, Google also recognised that battery storage can play multiple roles to help balance the electrical grid. This is especially handy as the batteries’ normal mode of operation at the hyper scale data centre is to sit idly, waiting to be called upon. 

Google said it has partnered with Centrica Business Solutions and energy storage technology provider and integrator Fluence on the battery project and it will soon begin providing grid services to Belgium’s transmission operator Elia. 

“We have now fully installed and tested the battery and are preparing to use it to support the Belgian grid. This will advance our clean energy goals in Belgium, but what we are most excited about is the potential to scale battery-based technologies across our global portfolio of data centres,” the company posted on its corporate blog, The Keyword, today. 

In a separate announcement, Centrica Business Solutions — the sustainable commercial and industrial (C&I) energy solutions subsidiary of multinational utility Centrica — said its FlexPond software will be used to control the flexible storage and dispatch of energy from the Saint-Ghislain data centre’s batteries into Elia ancillary services markets. 

“Managed correctly, we can not only support data centres to operate more sustainably, but also deliver grid scale flexibility – balancing the volatility of renewable energy, in support of a 100% zero carbon energy network of tomorrow,” Centrica Business Solutions International director Arno Van Mourik said. 

Centrica Business Solutions said the data centre is equipped with 5.5MWh of battery storage, of which 2.75MWh will be optimised for participation in Belgian grid demand response programmes. The battery storage will be aggregated with other distributed energy assets. 

Saint-Ghislain was actually Google’s first data centre to get an onsite solar PV array, 2.8MW added in 2017. 

The potential for battery storage in Belgium has recently become rapidly apparent, with a handful of large-scale projects by other players in the market, including two of 25MW/100MWh at advanced stages of development or construction already, having reached financial close. 

“Google is pleased to drive technology innovation at the intersection of the data centre and energy industries, particularly when our innovations catalyse benefits beyond our own operations,” Google’s senior lead for data centre energy and infrastructure Marc Oman said in a statement provided to Centrica Business Solutions.

“Our new battery project is a great example of this: not only will it allow Google to operate more cleanly during interruptions to grid reliability, but through our collaboration with Centrica, our battery will help the Belgian electricity grid maintain its target frequency and stay in balance.”

Elsewhere, in Nevada, Google is developing a solar-plus-storage project to power its US$600 million data centre near Las Vegas, together with regional utility NV Energy. The tech giant is also in a collaborative partnership to provide 90% carbon-free energy from a mixed 500MW portfolio of wind, solar, hydroelectric and battery storage with power and renewables company AES Corporation for a data centre in Virginia. 

Google recently also signed up to join the Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) Council, an international CEO-led initiative to push for the global deployment of energy storage technologies which have eight hours or longer duration.      

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Total corporate funding into battery storage companies in Q1 2021, Q4 2021 and Q1 2022. Data from Mercom Capital.

Battery storage companies raised US$17 billion in corporate funding during the whole of last year — a significant leap from US$8.1 billion in 2020 — but in the first quarter of this year alone have raised US$12.9 billion already. 

The figures come from market intelligence group Mercom Capital’s latest quarterly report into the battery storage, smart grid and energy efficiency sectors and the corporate funding — including venture capital (VC), debt and public market financing — that goes into them. 

The US$12.9 billion amount attracted by battery storage companies across 26 deals during the first quarter of 2022 included US$1.1 billion of VC money and US$11.7 billion in debt and public market financing. It utterly dwarfs the total US$316 million for smart grid companies and US$109 million for energy efficiency in the same period. 

In the previous quarter (Q4 2021), battery storage’s total corporate funding came to US$4 billion across 27 deals, implying that average deal sizes have ballooned. 

After the sector had seen a 159% increase in funding from 2020 to 2021’s full-year totals, Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu had said that battery storage’s significance in the global energy transition was finally being reflected by investment activity. 

It seems likely the continued robustness in funding activity Prabhu predicted at the end of 2021 will be maintained.  

Mercom Capital noted that last quarter, VC funding into battery storage dipped quarter-on-quarter and remained largely flat year-on-year: in Q4 2021 VC investors put in US$1.6 billion (28% up over Q1 2022) and in Q1 2021, US$1 billion (15% less than in Q1 2022). 

But debt and public market financing soared from US$2.4 billion in Q4 2021 and US$3.7 billion in Q1 2021. 

Hydrostor tops VC funding top five list

As with previous editions of its report, Mercom Capital revealed the top five recipients of VC funding. This time out, it makes for interesting reading due to the mix of different technology and company types that made the list. 

Canadian company Hydrostor, which has a proprietary advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) technology and is also developing several gigawatt-hour scale projects in California and Australia, got the number one spot. 

This was due to a US$250 million investment commitment from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, about which Hydrostor CEO Curtis VanWalleghem spoke at length with Energy-Storage.news at the time it was announced. Yesterday, this site also reported that the company has freshly attracted US$25 million in institutional investment from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP). 

Second in the list was German industrial electrolyser company Sunfire which raised US$215 million in a Series D funding round from investors Copenhagen Infrastructure Energy Transition Fund I and Blue Earth Capital. US solid-state battery company Factorial which raised US$200 million, also in a Series D from carmakers Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis, came third. 

Viridi Parente, also a US company, which claims it is developing ‘fail-safe’ lithium-ion battery technology for heavy industrial and grid applications raised US$95 million from a consortium including National Grid Partners in a Series C to land in fourth place. 

Our Next Energy (ONE), another US company, was fifth in the list, after raising a total US$65 million in a Series A funding round, with the company claiming its battery tech could double the range of electric vehicles (EVs) using cobalt-free chemistries that pose no thermal runaway risk. 

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Western Australia, where a pumped hydro project is among several to have been recently funded by the government, is mostly made up the arid outback.

Construction work has started on a 30MWh pumped hydro storage project in Western Australia for a commercial operation start date in the second half of 2023.

The project is the first pumped hydro storage microgrid in Western Australia, the local government said, adding it will mitigate up to 80% of power outages. It will improve power reliability for homes and businesses in Walpole, where it is located, as well as help integrate the onset of new renewable energy sources.

The small city is at the end of a 125km-long feeder line which is exposed to disruptive elements like wildlife, storms, lightning and bushfires.

The Government of Western Australia recently committed AU$2 million (US$1.5 million) towards the project as part of its Clean Energy Future Fund (more on that further down). It is a joint venture between utility Western Power and renewable energy developer Power Research and Development.

The pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) facility has a maximum power output of 1.5MW and will use two farm dams to store 30MWh of energy (15 hours duration). It will release water through a generator during periods of high demand as well as in the event of an outage.

“This project, despite being on a smaller scale, will be used as a template for other areas in the State (of Western Australia), and possibly nationally and internationally,” said the Western Australia Energy Minister Bill Johnston.

“Power outages in the town can be disruptive and improving reliability is a priority for Western Power,” he added.

Elsewhere in the country, Kidston Stage 2 Pumped Hydro Project, a 250MW facility, is under construction in the state of Queensland through developer Genex Power. At the time it was announced, Kidston was described as Australia’s first new PHES plant in nearly 40 years, although it seems it will be overtaken by the Western Australia project’s more rapid development timelines largely owing to the latter’s smaller scale. Kidston is expected to be completed during 2024.

Also in development is a possible network of up to 3,500MWh of PHES capacity at 10 facilities in the island state of Tasmania, which could export renewable energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM) in a project dubbed “Battery of the Nation”.

Second round of Western Australia government’s Clean Energy Future Fund (CEFF)

In concurrent news, the Government of Western Australia has launched the second round of the Clean Energy Future Fund (CEFF), pledging AU$11 million (US$8.2 million) to seven clean energy projects including Walpole’s and two other storage projects.

The CEFF supports clean energy projects and technologies that have the potential to support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Two of them are battery energy storage projects.

Metro Power Company’s AmbriSolar Battery Energy Storage System project won AU$340,000 to add solar generation and a DC-coupled battery to an existing solar farm in the town of Merredin.

Alinta Energy’s Port Hedland Big Battery project won nearly five times that amount – AU$1.5 million – to add battery storage to a gas-fired power station in the northern town. The storage aims to replace spinning reserve with energy stored in the battery to provide instant support to the grid when needed.

Project funding is conditional on successful completion of a formal funding agreement. Overall, the seven projects are expected to invest a total of AU$197 million, create 255 jobs during construction and 65 long-term operational ones, and generate 81GWh of power a year. The press releases refers to two of the projects as pilot projects (not the storage ones).

The $19 million CEFF is administered by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, with support from Energy Policy WA.

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Image: San Diego Supercomputer Center/Urban Electric Power.

Urban Electric Power installs 1MWh of alkaline batteries as backup in data centre

Urban Electric Power has replaced 1,000kWh of lead-acid batteries at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) with an energy storage system comprised of its rechargeable alkaline battery technology.

The SDSC hosts the research computing loads for the University of California San Diego and has been an international leader in high-performance and data-intensive computing since its founding in 1985. The massive computer clusters and petabytes of storage it uses will now get their backup power from rechargeable alkaline batteries in the new energy storage system.

Urban Electric Power’s batteries uses zinc manganese-dioxide cells and the company has a patented method of making them rechargeable for 10 years or more.

There are 5,200 individual alkaline cells in SDSC’s initial installation, which store a total of 1MWh electricity. An additional 5,200 cells are on the way for a phase 2 installation in summer. The lead-acid batteries removed are now being recycled.

Invinity Energy Systems Receives Certification to Multiple Major ISO Standards

Vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) company Invinity Energy Systems has been certified as compliant with three different International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards follow an audit by global assurance provider SAI-Global.

The company claims it is the only flow battery manufacturer worldwide to hold all three standards concurrently. They are the standards for:

Quality Management ISO 9001Environmental Management ISO 14001Health & Safety Management ISO 45001

ISO 9001 sets out the criteria for an organisation’s quality management system (QMS). The second, ISO 14001, defines an Environmental Management System (EMS) as a systematic framework to ensure the measurement, management and minimisation of an organisation’s immediate and long-term environmental impacts.

ISO 45001, meanwhle, is the world’s international standard for occupational health and safety and is implemented alongside regional, national and industry-specific rules regarding workplace safety.

Invinity said that compliance with the three standards will accelerate its commercial development and growth in the energy storage market.

Exelon: historically strong grid reliability in 2021

Exelon, the largest utility in the US, said its customers experienced a year of historically strong electric service reliability as a result of investments in grid resiliency and highlighted the important future role of batteries.

The Fortune 100 company said the performance runs counter to the trend of decreasing reliability identified in a recent Associated Press study. Its targeted investments to make the electric grid more resilient to powerful storms includes battery energy storage.

It said the Beach Haven Battery Storage Project launched by its subsidiary Atlantic City Electric (ACE), which operates in New Jersey, will ease the strain of peak demand and provide backup power when it enters commercial operation in 2023. ACE customers experienced the lowest frequency of electric outages ever in 2021 and the frequency of outages has improved by 60% over the last 10 years.

Its five other utility subsidiaries also experienced record low levels of interruptions, record restoration times and lowest frequency of outages depending on the utility.

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A JM Steel worker on a Nextracker-dedicated production line in Sinton, Texas.

Nextracker and JM Steel, a division of JENNMAR USA, have debuted a dedicated solar tracker production line on the campus of the new Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) facility near Corpus Christi. Nextracker launched a new facility with JM Steel to manufacture low-carbon tracker components for solar power plants throughout the southern United States.

“Customers want protection from steel and logistics cost volatility, and logistics delays associated with shipping, containers and ports,” says Dan Shugar, founder and CEO of Nextracker. “We are migrating to domestic production to stabilize pricing and achieve superior on-time delivery for our customers. Moreover, U.S. steel manufacturers like SDI have a much cleaner, lower carbon production processes than most overseas manufacturers. With JM Steel, we are collocated next to SDI Sinton, the newest steel mill in America, further lowering cost and improving sustainability by integrating key manufacturing activities on a single campus.”

A dependable steel supply is central to utility-scale solar, which is now the lowest cost form of energy in many locations. In response to global supply disruptions, Nextracker made the strategic decision to focus on manufacturing in the United States. Partnering with JM Steel, Nextracker will have a dedicated supply of critical materials in Texas and the Southern U.S.

“JM Steel’s proximity to SDI will provide Nextracker and their customers cost-effective products with quick response times to feed the growing solar market in Texas and the South,” statesTony Calandra, CEO of JM Steel and JENNMAR USA. “And all of the steel being used to make Nextracker’s products will be made with SDI’s newest Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) technology, which utilizes recycled or scrap steel as a raw material for a lower carbon footprint which is a perfect fit for Nextracker’s solar products.”

Steel manufacturing typically is energy-intensive, but the Electric Arc Furnace, a next-generation process, is much more efficient and cuts pollution dramatically. EAF-based steel mills typically are as much as 75% less carbon-intensive than traditional blast furnaces.

“SDI is thrilled to welcome our customers JM Steel and Nextracker to our Sinton, Texas campus, and supply our environmentally-preferred low carbon steel for Nextracker’s innovative solar tracker products,” mentions Barry Schneider, senior vice president of Flat Rolled Steel Group at Steel Dynamics.

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Garrick Rochow

Consumers Energy and key stakeholders throughout Michigan have agreed on a settlement related to the company’s Clean Energy Plan, a sweeping proposal to stop using coal as a fuel source for electric generation by 2025. The agreement, which requires regulatory approval, includes a broad coalition of customer groups, environmental organizations, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) staff, energy industry representatives and the Michigan Attorney General. It provides a 20-year blueprint to meet Michigan’s energy needs while protecting the environment for future generations.

“This is a historic commitment to lead the clean energy transformation and create a brighter future for our state,” says Garrick Rochow, president and CEO of Consumers Energy. “A diverse set of stakeholders came together to endorse a Clean Energy Plan that will provide reliable and affordable energy to customers for decades to come while protecting the environment.”

Consumers Energy updated its original 2018 Clean Energy Plan by including the pledge to accelerate the elimination of coal to 2025, among other benefits to customers and environment in its 2021 Clean Energy Plan, filed with the MPSC last June. The settlement agreement supporting Consumers Energy’s plan comes after more than a year of listening to key stakeholders’ ideas and input. The next step in the process is for the MPSC to review the settlement agreement.

The settlement includes continuing the rapid transition to clean, renewable sources by adding nearly 8,000 MW of solar power by 2040 ensuring 60% of its capacity comes from clean sources.

“Reaching consensus on this Clean Energy Plan moves Michigan toward a cleaner, more reliable energy future while caring for our co-workers and communities impacted,” Rochow adds. “We’re grateful for the thoughtful, positive contributions of all stakeholders throughout this process and look forward to the MPSC’s decision on our plan.”

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