Convergent Energy + Power supplying 5MW/15MWh BESS to Massachusetts utility

A render of the battery energy storage system. Image: Convergent Energy + Power.

Energy storage solutions provider Convergent Energy + Power willy supply Massachusetts utility Holyoke Gas & Electric (HG&E) with a 5MW/15MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

Convergent announced the plans to provide the municipally-owned utility with the BESS on 14 April. The project is expected to stabilise costs for HG&E customers in the context of rising energy prices and should come online in 2023.

The developer will own and operate the BESS using its proprietary energy storage intelligence platform, PEAK IQ. Convergent said the BESS will dispatch at strategic times, storing energy when it is cheapest and cleanest and discharging energy to displace the most expensive and carbon-intensive periods.

Convergent describes itself as “one of the original players in the energy storage sectors” with over US$400m invested in projects to-date across North America. It recently brought two similarly-sized BESS projects online in California for investor-owned utility Southern California Edison (SCE).

The northeast US state’s Solar Massachusett’s Renewable Target (SMART) programme incentivises households to invest in residential or community solar and has helped drive the colocated storage market and recent storage news in the state has mostly been around colocated projects.

This includes Nexamp’s community solar being commissioned last month, a Blackrock-owned developer buying six projects totalling 88MWh of storage and Italy-headquartered NOAH’s 10MWh system delivered in Bellingham. Convergent’s project appears to be a standalone site with no mention of colocated solar.

The New England state enacted House Bill 4857 in August 2018 which directed the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources to set an energy storage target of 1,000 MWh by 2025. It is currently about a third of the way according to the state government’s website.

The state’s three electricity utilities which operate the grid, National Grid, Eversource and Unitil, report storage deployments every February (National Grid is part of the UK grid operator).

As of February 2022, National Grid had deployed 329MWh, Eversource had deployed 20MW/44MWh while Unitil had deployed 2.12MW/4.23MWh. National Grid’s pipeline totals 666MW/843MWh, Eversource has 127MW/175MWh planned, while Unitil aims to deploy 18.14MW/85.04MWh.

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Twain Finalizes $42 Million in Financing for Longbow Solar Project

Michael Park

Twain Financial Partners has closed on $42 million in financing to complete the Longbow Solar project, a massive ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system in Brazoria County, Texas, just southwest of Houston. Old Texas rice fields soon will be harvesting something new as a $145 million clean energy project nears completion with this sizable final investment.

Twain’s $42 million commitment, its largest solar loan to date, is part of its recent commitment to finance $1 billion worth of new renewable projects over the next three years.

“Renewable energy investment is a fast-growing segment of our business, and the Longbow project helps highlight our capabilities in that space,” says Michael Park, who recently joined Twain as its director of renewable energy. “I fully anticipate Twain will announce funding commitments for a number of similar projects in the coming months.”

The Longbow Solar project is being co-developed by Clean Capital Partners and Aspen Creek. The project is on schedule to be placed into service by August 2022.

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PG&E commissions 182.5MW/730MWh Tesla BESS at Moss Landing

The Moss Landing area in Monterey Bay, where the BESS project is located alongside a gas power plant, electric substation and a separate BESS project by Vistra Energy, the largest in the world.

Californian investor-owned utility (IOU) PG&E has commissioned the 182.5MW/730MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) supplied by Tesla at its Moss Landing substation.

The BESS project in Monterey county, known as the Elkhorn Battery, was fully energised and certified for market participation by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) on 7 April. It was designed, built and will be maintained by both PG&E and Tesla while the project is owned and operated by PG&E.

Elkhorn comprises 256 Tesla Megapack battery units on 33 concrete slabs with each unit housing batteries and power conversion equipment in a single cabinet. It connects to the 115kv electric transmission system through transformers and switchgears installed as part of the project.

It can discharge 182.5MW of power for up to four hours and will participate in the CAISO wholesale electricity markets as well as ancillary services like operating reserve.

It is not to be confused with Vistra Energy’s 400MW/1,600MW Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility located at the same site, also owned by PG&E. That one is the largest BESS in the world and Vistra recently announced plans to add another 350MW/1,400MWh of storage. It temporarily went offline last year due to a faulty sprinkler system.

Elkhorn brings PG&E’s battery storage connected to California’s electricity grid to 955.5MW, spread across six projects commissioned over 2021 and 2022, with another 1,400MW expected to come online this year. Vistra’s Moss Landing BESS is the largest, followed by LS Power Development’s 200MW Diablo Storage System in Contra Costa County, followed by Elkhorn. The utility is under contract to bring on 3,330MW in total by 2024.

BESS projects like these and others by PG&E’s fellow IOUs SDG&E and SCE are in responsive to a series of directives from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). The most recent was an order to procure 11.5GW of clean energy by the CPUC in mid-2021, with resources required to come online between 2023 and 2026. The state aims to have a carbon-free grid by 2045.

Nearly 3GW of BESS is now connected to CAISO’s grid (which accounts for the majority of the electricity system in the state) and is doing up to 6GWh of load shifting a day, as Energy-storage.news recently reported last week.

SDG&E also this week announced the completion of a microgrid project in the CPUC’s designated ‘high fire threat district’.

The Romana microgrid facility, one of four planned in the area, will use a 500kW/2000kWh BESS to provide backup power to the Ramona Air Attack Base. The base is home to CAL FIRE and U.S. Forest Service’s aerial firefighting assets including an OV-10A Bronco tactical aircraft and two S-2T airtankers.

It is part of the utility’s efforts to keep essential resources powered during Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS).

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NREL: Rapid growth of energy storage to enable high shares of renewable energy on US grid

Battery storage with four hours’ duration such as pictured here, is largely seen as key for adding firm capacity in much of the US. Image: Vistra Energy.

Energy storage is poised for “rapid growth” in the US, with between 130GW to 680GW of diurnal storage capable of integrating an 80% share of renewables on the US grid by 2050.

That’s one of the key takeaways from work by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Storage Futures, a seven-part series of studies which has just concluded with the publication of its final chapter: ‘Key learnings for the coming decades’.

NREL has conducted what it described as ‘high-resolution modelling of future scenarios,’ calculating the value of diurnal battery energy storage — defined as storage with

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Pivot Energy Finalizes Financing to Develop 90 MW Solar Portfolio

Pivot Energy has closed a $190 million financing facility to support a multi-state portfolio of distributed generation solar projects. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will lead the debt facilities and Foss & Co. will make the tax equity investment. The 90 MW portfolio comprises over 40 solar projects, approximately 80% community solar, and 20% commercial and industrial (C&I) power purchase agreements (PPA).

This is the first portfolio of projects Pivot will build, own and operate since its strategic acquisition by ECP in June 2021. In addition to C&I PPAs, clients include community solar subscriptions for commercial clients, residents, and nearly 1,200 low-to-moderate income (LMI) households. The portfolio exhibits strategic diversity across project types, client offtake arrangements and geographic reach with projects located in New York, Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, California and New Jersey.

The debt transaction led by SVB includes a construction loan, tax equity bridge loan and permanent loan – which, coupled with the tax equity investment from Foss, will enable Pivot to fully construct, operate and own this portfolio.

“We are excited to work with Pivot Energy to provide financing for this solar portfolio,” says Bret Turner, head of project finance, business development and innovation for Silicon Valley Bank. “Making solar accessible to more Americans is crucial in efforts to combat climate change, and the community solar subscriptions and PPA opportunities in this portfolio offer households and businesses an easy way to participate in the benefits of solar energy.”

All projects in the portfolio will be managed through SunCentral, Pivot’s proprietary community solar subscriber management and acquisition platform.

“We are pleased to work with Pivot Energy as they launch this new portfolio,” comments Bryen Alperin, director of renewable energy and sustainable technology at Foss & Co. “This portfolio will expand access to clean low-cost electricity for small businesses and households. This impactful investment furthers our goal of deploying tax equity into under-served segments of the market, while generating substantial environmental benefits.”

CohnReznick Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Pivot Energy on the transaction. Stoel Rives acted as counsel for Pivot, Milbank acted as counsel for SVB, and Winthrop & Weinstine acted as counsel for Foss.

“SVB and Foss have been ideal partners for Pivot as we work to bring this portfolio to fruition,” states Pivot Energy CEO Tom Hunt. “We are excited about the unique opportunity this presents as our first owned portfolio on a national scale. We look forward to our continued partnerships with SVB and Foss as we work to grow our solar footprint across the nation, positively contributing to the environment, our communities, and our investors.”

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ALLETE Completes New Energy Equity Acquisition

Bethany Owen

Allete Inc. has closed the previously announced acquisition of distributed solar developer New Energy Equity for approximately $165.5 million. New Energy Equity, with headquarters in Annapolis, Md., has successfully completed more than 250 distributed solar projects across the nation totaling more than 330 MW. The company has a development pipeline of about 2 GW across 26 states over the next three years.

“We’ve been signaling our move into the solar industry for some time, and as we met with New Energy Equity’s leadership team we knew we had found the right company to position us well,” says Bethany Owen, Allete’s chair, president and CEO. “The team brings a depth of distributed and community solar expertise and experience to ALLETE, along with a proven track record of financial success. The addition of New Energy Equity enhances our strong portfolio of companies and capabilities and opens new growth opportunities as we lead the way to a sustainable energy future.”

New Energy Equity also has two wholly owned subsidiaries, Impact Power Solutions and Energy Support Services. New Energy Equity’s entire team, including management, will remain in place, as will the company’s Maryland headquarters and offices in Roseville, Minn. as well as Boulder, Colo.

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Clean Energy Program Investments Part of DOE’s New Equity Action Plan

Jennifer M. Granholm, Secretary of U.S. Department of Energy

In support of President Biden’s Executive Order to advance racial equity, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released its first-ever Equity Action Plan designed to ensure that the agency eliminates barriers to access, transforms programs and policies to open even broader pathways for underrepresented groups to access DOE resources, and stands up new programs to better serve communities. In furtherance of the new Equity Action Plan, DOE unveiled a commitment of up to $102 million in funding and support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and other Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) as foundations for talent in STEM fields. DOE also released its framework for President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which commits 40% of the benefits of federal investments in climate and clean energy to frontline, underserved and overburdened communities.   

“President Biden is committed to increasing diversity in the clean energy workforce to put it on the strongest footing to deliver solutions to the climate crisis, and I am proud of our efforts to ensure that equity remains at the core of everything we do,” states U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.  “We are creating transformative change throughout DOE that will break down barriers to funding and investments and forge stronger bonds with HBCUs and MSIs. The return on that investment will be profound: cultivating the scientific brilliance honed at these institutions to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in a new net-zero economy.”

E.O. 13985 was signed on the first day of the Biden Administration and required every federal agency to undertake a comprehensive review of programs, policies and practices to better ensure that they equitably serve all eligible individuals and communities, particularly historically underserved and underrepresented communities. 

DOE has created a new framework to incentivize partnership with Minority-Serving Institutions for every relevant funding opportunity under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This framework will encourage recipients like higher education institutions, industry, and local and state governments to incorporate HBCUs as financial partners in research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy, and job creation in underserved and overburdened communities.

DOE’s comprehensive examination of its methods and policies focused on procurement, financial assistance, research and development (R&D), demonstration and deployment, and stakeholder engagement.

DOE’s Equity Plan outlines the top five priority actions to advance equity, including addressing gaps in data collection to facilitate data-informed decision-making, increasing opportunities for new applicants to DOE funding opportunities, and growing participation in DOE R&D and financial assistance programs. In addition, it expands strategic Tribal and stakeholder engagement across DOE programs and improves access and equity in DOE’s Weatherization Assistance Program.

The department’s current approaches to data collection limit visibility into who is participating in its business opportunities, outreach events and programs. To address the data gaps, DOE intends to create a data collection system for underserved communities and individuals for all DOE contract and financial assistance opportunities. 

Though no specific policy, program or regulation contributes to the limited applications from BIPOC communities, rural communities, LGBTQIA+ persons, and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality, DOE aims to increase the opportunities for new entrants and alleviate resource constraints (e.g., financial, IT, human resources, etc.) through a range of activities, including the creation of a central portal for DOE acquisition opportunities, and streamlining and/or relaxing subcontracting requirements.

DOE recognizes that current practices do not do enough to support diversity in financial assistance, and that underserved communities face barriers within each aspect of the R&D process. DOE will increase opportunities for underrepresented groups by incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion requirements into all DOE financial assistance processes, broadening diversity of DOE merit reviewers and reducing the administrative burdens associated with applying for financial assistance funding. 

DOE learned that the department has not had a comprehensive or coordinated strategy for outreach and engagement with Tribal Nations, underserved communities, MSIs and other communities that historically have been underrepresented in the DOE programs. To build trust with diverse stakeholders and Tribal Nations, and to increase the public’s awareness of DOE opportunities and activities, DOE will explore the establishment of positions within the department to shepherd department-wide tribal and stakeholder engagement to institutionalize and expand community engagement activities.

Low-income households sometimes face delays in getting weatherization assistance when buildings in need of significant non-energy related home repairs are not deemed cost-effective when evaluated for potential energy saving. DOE plans to take actions that will reduce these delays through a newly proposed Weatherization Readiness fund that will ensure DOE funding is available to all grantees and low-income households, as well as a competitive grant program that will provide financial assistance to make homes weatherization ready. 

Read the complete DOE Equity Action Plan here.

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MYRE Handed EPC Contract for ConEdison’s Timberland Project in Georgia

MYR Energy Services Inc. (MYRE), an MYR Group Inc. subsidiary, has executed a contract with Con Edison Clean Energy Businesses Inc. (ConEdison CEB) for the Timberland Solar Project, which is located in Georgia. The project consists of 194 MW DC/140 MW AC utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar development and new 345 kV substation. The contract is valued in excess of $100 million.

Under the contract, MYRE will provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services to install more than 380,000 solar modules on a 1,300-acre site and provide construction of the associated substation. The project will break ground in spring 2022 with preconstruction activities to begin immediately. Project completion is scheduled for late 2023.

“MYR Group is proud to play a significant role in this important project, leveraging our technical expertise to deliver superior construction and further elevating our position in the clean energy market,” says Rick Swartz, president and CEO of MYR Group.

“This award reflects the strong relationship we have developed with ConEdison CEB and we look forward to enhancing our partnership with them on turnkey, utility-scale solar projects,” continues Swartz. “As an industry leader, we are committed to delivering projects that support ongoing investments in clean energy, improving grid resiliency, and upgrading aging infrastructure.”

Image: Photo by Jadon Kelly on Unsplash

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Biden’s Defense Production Act intervention ‘won’t solve near term battery supply chain challenges’

Land at California’s Salton Sea region, where the extraction of lithium from geothermal brine will be piloted. Image: CTR.

President Joe Biden’s recent invocation of the Defense Production Act of 1950 could help to solve supply chain issues for the battery storage industry, but only over the longer term. 

That’s according to a number of sources Energy-Storage.news has spoked to since the decision was announced at the beginning of this month. The president called on the Cold War-era legislation, which will authorise federal government support for production and processing of minerals and materials used for batteries in electric vehicles (EVs) and stationary battery energy storage systems (BESS).     

“We certainly welcome President Biden’s effort to invoke the Defense Production Act Title III to help secure the domestic production of batteries that is clearly in our national interest,” Dr Francis Wang, CEO of Nanograf told Energy-Storage.news. 

Nanograf is a US startup which is developing silicon anodes for lithium batteries which could be a higher energy density replacement for graphite which is typically used today. The company is working to perfect its technology, which it claims could overcome challenges limiting the use of silicon that have prevented others from commercialising it. 

“Lithium-ion innovation began in the United States but was slowly outsourced over the past few decades and America has fallen behind in terms of high-volume, high-quality battery production. Almost all the key components of the battery supply chain are sourced from abroad,” Wang said.

The dilemma is however neither “easy nor cheap to solve,” Wang said, adding that investments enabled by the Defense Production Act could be “key to helping the US secure access to materials and onshoring production capacity,” reducing the country’s dependence on foreign imports, which comprise the vast majority of the supply chain today. Back in 2020, Wang had commented that the COVID-19 pandemic threw into stark relief the US’ dependency on imports for the battery industry, particularly from China.

‘Problem is here now, not five years down the road’

Biden’s use of the act comes as a result of both long and short-term market challenges for the battery supply chain in America which have been well documented. Joseph Johnson, market intelligence manager at Clean Energy Associates, a technical advisory which analyses solar PV and energy storage industry trends, noted that it follows a review of the critical minerals supply chain which Biden ordered as he entered office. 

This began as a 100-day review to identify immediate actions to be taken, as well as a year-long review, which concluded a couple of months ago. 

“The US has identified it has a deficit or a lack of that lithium-ion ecosystem production, kind of stemming upstream. Where the minerals are produced is one key issue and then looking beyond that, a lot of the refining operations also don’t take place domestically in the US, a lot of material is then imported, still from Asia, largely for any sort of US cell manufacturing needs — which are slowly growing with those big automakers pairing with partner cell producers,” Johnson said. 

“So this act is to then spur more investment, more attention and more protections for these ore producers looking at setting up operations or mineral extraction inside the US.”

Danny Lu, executive VP of US energy storage manufacturer and system integrator Powin Energy, said that the Defense Act’s use, as well as other efforts being taken by the Biden-Harris Administration and energy secretary Jennifer Granholm’s Department of Energy are positive developments in localising production and securing the US battery supply chain. 

However, Lu said it does not solve the near term issues of the industry. There need to be more government grants, tax credits and benefits for companies to move factories into the US and set up federal programmes, as opposed to the state-level programmes that most are relying on, according to the Powin VP.

Establishing battery manufacturing facilities can be done relatively quickly, perhaps a couple to three years from permitting to the start of production. Solving the minerals supply question poses longer-term problems.

“If you’re talking about starting from the mining of the material to the processing, all from scratch, I don’t think that’s solving a two to three year problem. I think that’s that’s trying to solve a 10 to 20 year problem,” Lu said. 

Before that can happen, there needs to be “an environment and policy in place to actually promote the growth of the energy storage market and not to try and bundle up energy storage batteries with EV batteries that are produced in the US”.

Demand for batteries is rapidly increasing and supply has not been able to keep up, Nanograf’s Dr Francis Wang notes, and supply chain issues for the battery industry “are quite severe and will likely get even worse,” with a big mismatch between the large numbers of gigafactories to produce batteries coming online around the world versus the availability of capacity to mine raw materials. 

As Danny Lu notes, the problems are even more severe for energy storage, since cell providers are generally prioritising their EV customers, which buy much bigger volumes of battery products than BESS companies do. With BESS more commonly being built with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells, only about a gigawatt of LFP production facilities exist in the US today.

Caspar Rawles, chief data officer at lithium-ion battery supply chain information provider Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said that it isn’t yet clear what forms of support will be created by the Defense Production Act. 

It did signal an intent to solve the supply chain issues and theoretically could have a positive impact on domestic raw material production in the US, Rawles said. However, a key omission was that the government has said it will not intervene to expedite permitting of new extraction facilities, which would be “the key step”. 

“That permitting process can really hinder the speed at which new supply can come online. What you want to see is actually some action rather than just words. I’m not saying they don’t intend to do anything about it [the supply chain] but it really needs to accelerate things because the problem is here now — it’s not five years down the road, it’s here today and it’s going to continue to grow from here,” Rawles said. 

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ESS Inc hits back at EPRI director’s ‘long-duration lithium’ comments

PGE’s recent test and demonstration project marks the first deployment of ESS Inc’s Energy Center project. Image: ESS Inc.

Lithium-ion will struggle to compete at long durations and its price declines cannot continue forever, said Alan Greenshields, Director EMEA for iron electrolyte flow battery supplier ESS Inc, in a rebuttal to an earlier Energy-storage.news article on the topic.

The written statement was submitted in response to last month’s article citing the US Electric Power Research Institute’s (EPRI’s) Haresh Kamath, who said alternative energy storage technologies could struggle to compete with lithium-ion as the latter could reach cost-competitiveness at up to even 24 hours duration by the end of the decade. Kamath is director of distributed energy resources and energy storage at EPRI, the R&D and demonstration project organisation funded by electricity industry stakeholders.

ESS Inc’s Alan Greenshields argued that lithium-ion is simply not a solution for long duration storage and that much more comes into play that cost-competitiveness alone.

“While Li-ion has been the greatest battery breakthrough in the past 40 years and redefined our lives in terms of transport and electronic devices, the technology is not the one that, on its own, will take us into the era of widespread energy storage from renewable generation,” he said.

He cited Long Duration Energy Storage Council estimates that 140TWh of storage will be needed by 2040 for full grid decarbonisation globally and referred to lithium-ion batteries’ issues around cost, safety and sustainability.

“The decline in cost of lithium-ion batteries has been a remarkable story for the last 30 years, but like all good stories, it will eventually come to an end,” he said, citing “price spikes in lithium, nickel and cobalt of 490%, 100% and 64% in the past year, respectively (nickel’s since the start of 2022 alone).”

“The belief that Li-ion prices would continue their steep descent forever is therefore not credible.”

Greenshields also said that lithium-ion becomes progressively less cost effective at durations longer than four hours. Whilst few would argue that the cost differential with flow batteries and other long duration tech starts to fall past that duration, it remains true that energy storage system developers are still widely opting for lithium-ion at durations of up to eight and even 10-12 hours. At those durations, batteries can do much of the daily renewables load shifting needed.

In an interview with Energy-storage.news this week, Mitsubishi Power Americas’s Senior VP for Energy Storage Solutions/Oriden Power Tom Cornell said that lithium-ion is still feasible at 10-12 hours.

“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 RFPs (requests for proposals) we’ve seen for customers for those longer durations are actually specifying that they’ve got to be lithium based.”

Energy storage investor Gore Street Capital’s CEO Alex O’Cinneide told Energy-storage.news that it’s only at six to seven hours’ duration that alternative technologies to lithium-ion start to be considered.

ESS Inc’s Greenshields also raised well-publicised concerns over the ethics and sustainability of Lithium-ion battery manufacturing. “Cobalt is one of the main elements in the manufacturing of Li-ion batteries and is mined predominantly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is mined through child slave labour,” he says.

Figures vary but one report from mining-technology.com said that 30% of cobalt extraction in the DRC in 2018 was from artisanal mining, where exploitative and illegal labour practices are most likely to take place. With around 60% of cobalt coming from the DRC, that means practices like the use of child labour are possible in nearly one-fifth of global cobalt production.

Greenshields then moved on to the question of safety. He pointed out that iron flow batteries’ (for which ESS Inc holds patents and is the only manufacturer) constituents of iron, salt and water make them fundamentally non-flammable and that no iron battery fires have been recorded to-date.

That contrasts strongly with well-publicised lithium-ion fires around the world. He cites a fire at a battery energy storage system (BESS) in Beijing in April last year that took the lives of two firefighters and took 235 to fight it, as well as the numerous accidents with lithium-ion BESS projects in Korea in 2018/19 (though, as Energy-storage.news has reported, inadequate installation, control and monitoring were found to be the cause, not the battery cells themselves being defective).

Another area where flow batteries like those of ESS Inc can claim undeniably superiority over lithium-ion is lifespan. The latter lose capacity with every cycle and require over-dimensioning (building larger systems than needed) or in-field upgrades to ensure project performance. Greenshields also said the effectiveness of recycling is up for debate which, combined with the limited cycle life, multiplies the environmental footprint of the technology.

“In comparison, Iron Flow Batteries have a design life of 25 years and no cycle limitations. This is thanks to the proprietary technology which continuously keeps the electrolyte in as-new condition, meaning that the system shows neither capacity nor power loss over its lifetime. And should a battery be taken out of operation, the iron-salt-water electrolyte is not just recyclable but reusable,” he said.

Despite these undeniable facts, the price shape of both technologies today still means the vast majority of BESS project developers or Requests for Proposals opt for lithium-ion, even at those longer durations outlined earlier.

Greenshields doesn’t come across as anti-lithium-ion by any means. He said the technology is excellent for mobility applications and shorter duration regulation tasks for energy storage, but that moving to high levels of renewable generation needs cost-effective solutions for durations well in excess of four hours.

He pointed out that using lithium-ion for large-scale, long duration applications would exacerbate supply chain issues and drive up costs by competing for materials needed for EVs.

But when it comes alternatives to lithium-ion in the short-term, other technologies may be hard to come by, according to Joseph Johnson, market intelligence manager at Clean Energy Associates (CEA). He says price is a major stumbling block and most manufacturers are focused on trying to limit price increases for their lithium-ion cells.

“For financial, safety and sustainability reasons, the world needs to adopt new technologies to harvest renewable and bring us to grid net zero. The Iron Flow Battery is highly economic for grid energy storage, has unlimited cycle life with no degradation, uses only earth-abundant materials, and is 100% recyclable,” Alan Greenshields from ESS Inc concluded.  

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