President Joe Biden. Image: Lisa Ferdinando/Flickr.

The Biden administration plans to use the Cold War-era Defense Production Act (DPA) to ramp up mining and processing for materials integral to batteries and renewable energy, like lithium, graphite, nickel, manganese and cobalt.

The DPA means the federal government will be authorised to support the production and processing of minerals and materials used for large-scale batteries for electric vehicles (EV) and stationary energy storage.

Details on what concrete measures will be taken are scant but industry bodies have said it is a strong signal that Biden is taking the supply shortage seriously.

According to some reports, the move should help companies access government funding for feasibility studies for projects that extract those materials or make existing facilities in the supply chain more productive. Support for feasibility studies is mentioned briefly in the announcement, which came in the form of a memorandum for the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

The Department of Energy has already made US$3 billion available during Q2 this year for the battery supply chain while a senior official recently said it had US$10 billion of loan applications for battery manufacturing plants in process.

In the memorandum, the President said: “It is the policy of my Administration that ensuring a robust, resilient, sustainable, and environmentally responsible domestic industrial base to meet the requirements of the clean energy economy, such as the production of large-capacity batteries, is essential to our national security and the development and preservation of domestic critical infrastructure.”

It added that the US currently depends on ‘unreliable foreign sources’ for many of the necessary materials and minerals, before saying:

“To promote the national defense, the United States must secure a reliable and sustainable supply of such strategic and critical materials. The United States shall, to the extent consistent with the promotion of the national defense, secure the supply of such materials through environmentally responsible domestic mining and processing; recycling and reuse; and recovery from unconventional and secondary sources, such as mine waste.”

Further down, the memorandum said that expanding domestic production of the materials and minerals was “…necessary to avert an industrial resource or critical technology item shortfall that would severely impair the national defense capability.”

The US has long been seeking to kickstart a US manufacturing base for lithium-ion batteries which are integral to the EV and energy storage sectors. The political desire culminated in large funding and focus on batteries in the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill passed late last year.

Gigafactory announcement have paled in comparison to Europe, however, although a Clean Energy Associates report reckoned by 2030 the US would be close to Europe’s global market share in production of 16%.

A White House fact sheet adds that the President is also reviewing potential further uses of the DPA to secure safer, cleaner, and more resilient energy for America. The DPA was first enacted during the Korea war of 1950 and was last invoked in February last year to bolster vaccine production and boost supply of testing kits and PPE equipment to fight a large wave of Covid-19.

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Mytilineos large-scale solar plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert region. Image: Mytilineos.

Energy storage technology provider and system integrator Fluence has won another contract to use its bidding platform to maximise market participation for renewable energy facilities in Australia. 

Greece-headquartered industrial and energy group Mytilineos has deployed Fluence IQ Bidding Application at three of its Australian solar PV farms totalling 108MW, in New South Wales.

The AI-enabled bidding application is currently available in two key regions, California’s CAISO market and in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) which spans most of the country’s east and southeastern built-up areas. 

While Fluence is best known for its work delivering turnkey battery energy storage systems (BESS) in a growing number of global markets, the company has also since the acquisition of digital energy management specialist Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) also furthered its involvement in software platforms for managing and optimising assets.

This includes making the applications available for renewable energy asset owners and operators as well as for battery storage.

In the NEM in Australia, Fluence IQ uses AI to predict future market prices for energy and frequency control ancillary services (FCAS), analysing thousands of variables from system loads and transmission headroom to generator activity and weather. 

It calculates optimal bids across all markets for dispatch intervals from each day to the next, against price forecasting, operational constraints of the onboarded assets and the business model applicable. These bids are then submitted directly to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) or the customers’ own trading desks. 

In a recent interview with this site, Fluence market director for the EMEA region Julian Jansen said the growth and scaling up of digital and software services, is an important part of the company’s overall strategy.

In another interview, the CEO, Manuel Perez-Dubuc, highlighted the way the Fluence IQ business line grew quickly in its first year, with 2,744MW of contracts signed in 2021. 

In February Fluence netted another Australian deal, for optimising large-scale solar and wind with a combined capacity of 320MW for Telstra Energy, which followed a 1.1GW deal announced earlier that month to optimise solar PV assets in the western US for AES Corporation, one of Fluence’s owner companies. 

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Sungrow worked on the 100MW Minety project in England (pictured), which came online in August 2021. Image: Shell Energy Europe.

Inverter supplier Sungrow has announced a new partnership with Statera Energy, to supply a 362MW/391MWh energy storage project in the UK.

The first phase of the project was grid-connected in Q1, 2022, with the rest expected to come online this year. The project will play into the Capacity Market as well as the Dynamic Containment ancillary service market.

“We have partnered with Sungrow because of its proven track record, the quality and the integrated nature of its product offering,” said Tom Vernon, managing director of Statera Energy Limited.

“Statera believes that battery storage will play a pivotal role in facilitating the transition to low carbon generation and will continue to work with Sungrow on coming projects in the UK in 2022.”

Flexibility provider Statera has developed over 500MW of battery storage, as well as 150MW of flexible gas generations projects. It currently has a pipeline of 2.5GW of projects, including batteries, thermal generation, pumped storage and hydrogen technologies.

In March 2021, it completed a financing deal with NatWest to support eight new projects in the UK.

Sungrow meanwhile has over 224GW of inverters installed worldwide as of December 2021. In the UK, this includes supplying its 1500V energy storage system solutions for the 100MW Minety battery storage project in southern England, which is currently Europe’s biggest.

This story first appeared on Solar Power Portal.

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Eskom’s Sere Wind Farm. Image: Eskom.

Hyosung Heavy Industries has been contracted to provide a battery energy storage system (BESS) to South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom. 

The South Korean heavy electrical equipment and engineering group confirmed to Energy-Storage.news that reporting by Korean media group Maekyung on Wednesday was accurate. 

Eskom sent a letter of acceptance (LoA) which Hyosung Heavy Industries received 26 March, for the company to lead the project in which it will install and maintain a 48MW BESS at a substation near the coastal city of Durban.

A month-long review period is now underway ahead of final contract signing. 

Hyosung had been among a group of South Korean companies which submitted letters of intent in 2020 to carry out the three stage project, which Maekyung Media Group said is worth ₩150 billion, with the 48MW BESS the second stage and itself worth about ₩96.7 billion (US$80 million).

Hyosung Heavy Industries expanded into the US in 2019 and won its first European battery contract in early 2021, with a 50MW BESS in the UK for investment management group Downing. 

The company provides full energy storage system (ESS) to customers, including power conversion system (PCS), batteries and energy management system (EMS) and taking a hands-on approach to design. It leans on its experience as a leading power equipment company in Korea, the company claimed.   

Eskom in South Africa meanwhile has had well-publicised financial difficulties and an unreliable grid, while at the same time targeting for more than 40% of its power to come from renewables by 2030. The utility is also its country’s grid operator and is procuring battery storage systems as a means to lower electricity costs, increase system reliability and integrate higher shares of renewable energy and lessen its dependence on fossil fuels. 

As reported by Energy-Storage.news in mid-March, Eskom is finalising procurements for more than 830MWh of BESS capacity at eight sites, backed with a loan from the African Development Bank, having already signed contracts for 1,300MWh of storage paired with renewable energy as part of a tender to remedy a 2GW shortfall of capacity. 

Further larger procurement rounds are expected to be launched in the next few months as the utility learns what works as its current procurement processes conclude, Adam Terry, technical director at South Africa-based consultancy Harmattan Renewables said.  

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Blue Sky Solar Project

Comcast has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for 250 MW of solar electricity from Constellation that will power approximately 12% of Comcast’s U.S. operations and the vast majority of its Mid-Atlantic operations with clean, renewable energy.

The agreement will support construction of the Blue Sky Solar Project, currently being developed by Scout Clean Energy in Illinois.

“Sourcing clean, renewable energy is the top priority for meeting our goal to be carbon neutral by 2035,” says Peter Kiriacoulacos, executive vice president and chief procurement officer at Comcast. “This marks the first of many major green investments that are already underway or on the immediate horizon which demonstrate our commitment to sustainable, responsible business.”

Comcast is committed to being carbon neutral by 2035 for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, or the direct and indirect emissions it owns and controls, across its global operations. With purchased electricity accounting for the majority of these emissions, sourcing renewable energy is critical to meeting this goal.

Comcast’s renewable energy strategy will prioritize securing green tariffs, direct PPAs, and virtual PPAs through contracts that bring new renewable capacity to the grid. It will also include building onsite renewable energy capacity and supplementing electricity needs with purchases from existing clean energy projects or renewable energy certificates (RECs).

“We commend Comcast on its carbon neutral commitment and are pleased that our offsite renewable solution will serve as a significant steppingstone toward achieving that goal,” states Jim McHugh, chief commercial officer at Constellation. “As our nation transitions to a clean energy future, Constellation is dedicated to offering the products, services and expertise that help our customers strategically manage their energy use and reduce their carbon footprints.”

Comcast will source 250 MW of carbon-free solar electricity from the 300 MW Blue Sky project – a majority share of the project’s total output. Blue Sky is one of the largest solar projects approved to date in the PJM power grid, which spans the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region and portions of the Midwest. Comcast is currently the sole customer.

Blue Sky is expected to reach commercial operation by December 2024. Comcast has signed a corresponding 15-year agreement with Constellation beginning in 2025 to receive energy and RECs from Blue Sky as part of its retail electric supply contract.

“We are pleased to work with Comcast and Constellation to deliver carbon-free solar energy and invest $400 million into the local community, creating new sustained jobs and tax revenue for local schools,” says Michael Rucker, founder and CEO of Scout Clean Energy. “Comcast’s commitment made this possible.”

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The partnership will start with a 20MWh BESS in Ontario. Image: PowerFlex.

EDF Renewables subsidiary Powerflex has partnered with Ontario utility Hydro One to develop Distributed Energy Resources (DER) solutions in the Canadian province.

The two will bring DER solutions to the Ontario market, starting with two battery energy storage system (BESS) projects totalling 20MWh.

The announcement said the partnership’s projects will provide greater choice to customers and increase local grid resilience and stability, while an earlier document from Powerflex said it would help customers optimise energy consumption and reduce their bills.

Powerflex is providing a turnkey BESS that will utilise its Energy Management System (EMS) platform including computer-aided tools to monitor, control, and optimise the system’s performance. The company said the platform provides users with real-time insights, historical reporting, asset dashboards, and consolidated billing.

Jason Rakochy, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Growth, Hydro One commented: “Hydro One is committed to embracing innovative solutions to optimise our electricity grid through increasing our use of Distributed Energy Resources. Through our partnership with PowerFlex, we are providing Ontarians with another sustainable energy option as we continue to support Ontario’s goal of becoming a low-carbon economy.”

Ontario already has nearly 5,000MW of DER assets across its network according to the website of the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). It says that integration into wholesale markets is limited to aggregated Hourly Demand Response resources or individual resources over 1MW.

Alongside the obvious benefits of load shifting and supporting grid stability through ancillary services, storage has another role to play in the Ontario market.

In the words of the executive director of trade body Energy Storage Canada in a guest blog for Energy-storage.news last year, storage is: “…a way for Ontario to keep power here for us to use rather than having to ship it to competitive Great Lakes states at discount prices to then be used against Ontario as an economic development and job creation tool – jobs that could be here in Ontario.”

Canada’s second-most populous province was also in the news recently when Enel X announced a pilot project collaboration with the IESO. The project will aggregate a combination of behind-the-meter battery storage and demand response to create more reliable resources for the grid.

Powerflex, formed in 2017 as a Caltech spinout before being acquired by EDF Renewables in 2019, also provides solutions in solar, storage, smart EV charging, microgrids, and standalone EMS.

Hydro One is a utility serving the Ontario province with a mixed ownership structure. It is publicly-listed with the province owning 47% of its shares and private investors owning the rest.

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Southern Company subsidiary Southern Power’s battery-based energy storage projects at its Tranquillity and Garland solar facilities in California are now fully operational.

“These co-located solar and storage projects are a first of their kind for Southern Power,” says Bill Grantham, Southern Power’s president. “We expect these new battery-based energy storage projects to enhance California’s grid reliability. The combination of our solar technology and these new energy storage resources will further position Southern Power to meet our customers’ needs as the energy industry continues to evolve.”

The battery-based energy storage additions will enhance California’s grid reliability by providing Southern California Edison and the California ISO with additional flexible resource capacity that will assist in further integrating intermittent renewable energy into the grid. At peak capacity, the Garland Solar Facility Battery Storage project will add 88 MW and 352 MWh of energy storage, while 72 MW and 288 MWh of energy storage will be added to the Tranquillity Solar Facility.

The resource adequacy capacity benefits of both battery facilities are being sold under a 20-year power purchase agreement to Southern California Edison.

The energy storage projects are owned in partnership with KKR and AIP Management (on behalf of Danish pension funds PKA and PenSam), each of which have existing ownership interests in the Garland and Tranquillity solar facilities.

Rosendin Electric served as the constructor of the sites, and Mitsubishi Power Americas served as the equipment supplier utilizing Powin Energy Corporation batteries. Mitsubishi Power Americas will also service the projects under a 20-year, long-term service agreement.

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A solar farm in Hawaii. Image: Hawaiian Electric.

Utility Hawaiian Electric has launched a 10-year programme of credits and incentives to its Battery Bonus scheme, which launched last year as a one-time cash incentive for adding battery storage to residential PV systems.

It launched the scheme last year on O’ahu, the third-largest island in the archipelago where the capital Honolulu is located. It has three tranches comprising a 50MW total cap, paying customers US$850/kW for those accepted for the first 15MW down to US$500/kW for the last 20MW.

Figures presented in a quarterly update meeting about the Battery Bonus scheme, posted on Youtube by Hawiian Electric, indicated uptake was nearly 1MW by September 2021 with a total of 334 applications received.

The 10-year programme is effective 1 June this year and features several new credits and incentives. The first is a fixed monthly export credit for Battery Bonus participants who are not part of Hawaiian Electric’s Net Energy Metering program.

It will be equivalent to the respective retail rate for exporting energy during a two-hour period of the evening peak and will be available for three years. The Battery Bonus scheme requires customers to use and/or export the battery’s electricity for a two-hour period between 6pm and 8.30pm.

A new US$5/kW monthly peak capacity payment over the 10-year programme is also being introduced, while the 5kW-per-customer size limit for solar systems is being scrapped (as long as the additional solar is not more than twice the size of the battery – no battery size limit exists).

These two latter incentives do not affect customers’ participation in existing programs like Net Energy Metering or Customer Grid Supply.

Hawaiian Electric is also pushing for grid-scale solar PV to be paired with storage in nearly all cases. It will soon launch an ‘all source’ renewable energy procurement which will stipulate that all solar PV farms need a four-hour storage system while it will be optional for wind applications.

Other US states to have launched incentives for homeowners to buy residential battery storage systems include Connecticut and California.

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Peak Power is partnering with Oshawa Power to develop and execute an energy platform that demonstrates how disparate distributed energy resources (DER) can improve the reliability of a local grid. The project, funded by Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), supported by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) Innovation Sandbox, and sited at Ontario Tech University, will use AI-powered cleantech to show how aggregating clean energy assets can reduce energy costs along with carbon emissions.

Working closely with Oshawa Power, Peak Power will draw on their expertise in creating intelligent energy management tools to pool together energy storage, electric vehicles (EV) and solar installations into one single resource. Peak Power’s tool for Oshawa Power will function in a similar manner to the company’s Synergy software, which has been deployed at various energy storage and EV projects across North America.

“Distributed energy is key to our clean energy future, which is why we’re excited to once again team up with Oshawa Power and IESO to show the benefits of aggregated DERs,” says Derek Lim Soo, CEO of Peak Power. “Our project with Oshawa Power will demonstrate how clean energy assets are strongest when grouped together, and how Peak Power can create the tools needed to do just that. The pilot at Ontario Tech will serve as an example of how increasingly popular but distinct DER assets can reliably power a grid.”

The partnership between Peak Power and Oshawa Power is the latest project between the companies funded in part by the IESO’s Grid Innovation Fund, which supports pilot projects that demonstrate the potential of local energy supplies in meeting local and provincial electricity needs. The Peak Power/Oshawa Power project will draw on funding of $1.5 million from the Grid Innovation Fund, along with an additional $2.9 million from additional funding partners. Last November, Peak Power announced that IESO had awarded funding to the company and Oshawa Power to support vehicle-to-grid technology and real-time energy prediction.

“We’re thrilled to once again work with Peak Power on a project that serves to amplify the benefits of small, renewable energy assets,” states Ivano Labricciosa, president and CEO of Oshawa Power. “As a progressive utility at the forefront of the clean energy transition, we’re constantly looking for ways to modernize our grid and prepare our customers for the net zero future. Peak Power’s cleantech expertise and the support of IESO will help us learn more about the best ways that DERs can support the needs of our grid.”

The OEB Innovation Sandbox is providing customized guidance allowing this project to proceed.

“Demand for electricity in Ontario is increasing due to economic growth and a rapid shift to electrification in transportation and other sectors,” comments Lesley Gallinger, president and CEO of the IESO. “With continued investment in local pilot projects through the Grid Innovation Fund, such as in this Peak Power-Oshawa Power project, we are closer to unlocking the potential of communities to provide sustainable and reliable electricity supply to help meet the growing needs of Ontarians.”

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The Flower Valley II BESS in Reeves county, Texas. Image: Jupiter Power.

Energy storage developer Jupiter Power has turned a 200MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Texas online and expects to have over 650MWh operational before ERCOT’s summer peak season.

Flower Valley II, located in Reeves County, has started commercial operations, the company said yesterday (30 March 2022). The 100MW/200MWh BESS is Jupiter’s first transmission-connected project and amongst the largest operating commercially in Texas, it added.

It will provide power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid through energy capacity and grid-firming ancillary services. The main ancillary service that energy storage participates in on the Texas grid is the regulation reserve service (RRS), and within that fast frequency response (FFR), which together account for the bulk of revenues for energy storage assets.

“We are thrilled to announce the commencement of commercial operations at our largest battery to date,” said Andy Bowman, chief executive officer, Jupiter Power. “Our utility-scale energy storage projects provide fast-responding, dispatchable energy that is essential for allowing the grid to better match renewable resources with customer demand.”

Texas is far and away the leading state with 45.1GW of renewable energy generation, nearly double California’s 22.9GW, by year-end 2021. However, it only has about half of California’s 2.6GW of grid-connected energy storage (as of 31 January 2022).

Flower Valley II sits next to Flower Valley I, a smaller 9.9MW/19.8MWh system which entered commercial operations in mid-2021, and more than US$70 million was invested in the two projects.

Jupiter has two other transmission-connected projects in Texas totalling another 400MWh currently in commissioning and expected to be operational before ERCOT’s summer peak season. Crossett in Crane County is a 200MW/200MWh system while Swoose II, also adjoining an existing 9.9MW/19.8MWh BESS, holds 100MW/200MWh of energy.

With 15MWh of energy from the already operational Triple Butte I in Pecos County, the two larger upcoming projects will bring Jupiter Power’s operational storage capacity in the state to 654.6MWh (and 427.3MW of power).

ERCOT has a streamlined interconnection process for generation resources below 10MW, which may partially explain the size of Jupiter’s already commercially operating projects. The requirements of RRS and FFR have also driven the deployment of one-hour systems, meaning smaller average size BESS projects compared to California where four-hour systems became mainstream at least four years ago.

Jupiter’s strategy in Texas is to start developing projects without contracts in place in order to deliver capacity to the grid or ancillary services. It choose strategic locations where storage is most needed like system bottlenecks or regions with volatile power prices that storage could mitigate.

RRS provides 10-minute energy deployments in response to significant generation losses on the system as well as operating reserves for frequency containment after large generation contingency events. Within RRS, RRS-FFR (fast frequency response) requires assets to be automatically deployed and provide a full response within 15 cycles after the frequency meets or drops below 59.85 Hz.

A market source told Energy-storage.news that these two services will remain the main revenue driver for some time with no signs of a saturation of the market. Although storage is increasingly making money through arbitrage too, they added.

The state suffered a major power crisis after a winter storm last year in which hundreds died, some as a result of power outages. Industry sources at the time said the crisis highlighted the importance of energy storage on the grid.

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