Rendering of a large-scale CO2 Battery project alongside a solar farm. Energy Dome said its intent is to make renewable energy dispatchable 24/7. Image: Energy Dome.

Startup Energy Dome has scored its first commercial licensing agreement for its carbon dioxide-based energy storage solution, with Italian power engineering firm Ansaldo Energia.

The agreement allows Ansaldo Energia to commercialise Energy Dome’s technology in its core markets where it has a historic commercial presence. Energy Dome has two products: the carbon dioxide (CO2) battery and its Energy Transition Combined Cycle (ETCC) technology.

The CO2 Battery is its core underlying technology product while the CO2 ETCC is a proprietary turbine technology which can combine with existing gas turbines and the CO2 Battery. The group claims the latter enhances the battery to be able to have multiple working modes in addition to charge/dispatch.

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The two companies plan to start building the first ETCC and CO2 Battery commercial plants by the beginning of 2023. Ansaldo plans to integrate the ETCC into its gas turbine product portfolio and to offer the CO2 Battery as a product within its energy transition portfolio.

Ansaldo Energia will provide the turnkey engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) package using Energy Dome’s Front End Engineering Design (FEED). The companies have not revealed the power output of the planned commercial units but Energy Dome has previously suggested that 25MW/100MWh or 200MWh plants could be built once the tech is ready for market.

Ansaldo Energia is a power engineering firm specialised in building power plants, power equipment including heavy duty gas and steam turbines and generators, as well as nuclear activities. The license agreement follows on from a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed last year for the firm to test the technology readiness level of Energy Dome’s solution.

The Milan-based startup raised US$ 11 million in a series A three months ago. Its technology uses a thermodynamic cycle to storage and dispatch energy with a 4-24 hour duration.

It ‘charges’ by drawing carbon dioxide from a large atmospheric gasholder – the Dome – and stored under pressure in a high density liquid state at an ambient temperature. To dispatch the energy, it is evaporated and expanded into a turbine to generate electricity and returned back to the Dome.

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On its website, Energy Dome compares its technology to compressed air energy storage (CAES) and liquid air energy storage (LAES). It says its CO2 battery has an energy storage density 10-30 times that of CAES although only two-thirds that of LAES. However, it says that LAES requires cryogenic temperatures making the system complex and ‘uncompetitive’, while the liquid in its solution can be stored at ambient levels.

Energy Dome is one of several companies offering novel energy storage solutions based around compressed gas though some have come and gone. Netherlands-based Corre Energy raised €20 million last year for its green hydrogen production and compressed air energy storage solution, before listing on the Irish stock market later in the year. Canada-based Hydrostar is seeking approval for a 400MW advanced compressed air (A-CAES) plant in Ontario.

SustainX merged with another company and abandoned its efforts to create CAES technology which didn’t require huge underground caverns in 2015. Lightsail Energy, founded in 2008, attempted something similar with big VC backing (including Bill Gates and Peter Thiel) but shut down in 2018 (its founder recently wrote publicly about it for the first time).

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Inauguration of a 1MW Tesla Powerpack project in New Zealand in 2018. Mercury CEO Fraser Whineray stands with New Zealand Minister for Energy Dr Megan Woods. Image: Mercury Energy.

Construction will commence in New Zealand on the country’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS) project so far in July this year, with the 35MW system expected to be commissioned in December.  

Project partners WEL Networks — and electricity distribution company — and renewable energy developer Infratec announced this week that major equipment suppliers have been contracted for the project.

They include vertically integrated BESS solutions company Saft and inverter electronics company Power Electronics NZ. This week Saft was also announced as contractor to the largest BESS project in the Arctic and recently completed work on France’s biggest project of its type.

In October 2021, Energy-Storage.news reported that WEL Networks and Infratec were in the final assessment stages of the project, to be built in Huntly, a town in the Waikato district of the Upper North Island. 

Expected project costs cited by WEL Networks chief executive Garth Dibley at the time were about NZ$25 million (US$17.13 million).

The BESS will provide fast reserve ancillary services to the local grid, as well as providing backup power in the event of emergencies. Dibley said on Monday that it will support electric vehicle (EV) charging and maximise the benefits of solar power. 

New Zealand has an ambitious goal of sourcing all of its electricity from renewables by 2030 — albeit thanks mainly to hydropower and then geothermal and biomass with some wind, the country is already on a fairly advanced pathway towards that goal. 

However, much of its baseload and balancing energy still comes from different thermal power sources including coal and gas. 

The country’s first 1MW/2.3MWh BESS, using Tesla Powerpack 2 equipment, was connected in 2016 at the distribution level by Vector, another of New Zealand’s 29 electricity distribution companies. In 2018, another 1MW Tesla Powerpack project, this time with 2MWh capacity, was inaugurated by energy retailer Mercury Energy at its R&D centre at a cost of NZ$3 million. Mercury’s was the first to be connected to the high voltage transmission grid.

Since then, although neighbouring Australia’s rapid growth of solar PV and wind has driven some investment into (some very) large-scale batteries, New Zealand’s market has been much quieter. 

Regulator ready to invite more investment into battery storage

A much larger BESS project than the Huntly 35MW system has been announced by another generator and retailer company, Meridian Energy. In February Meridian reaffirmed that a BESS of “at least 100MW” is being planned for construction in combination with a utility-scale solar farm at Ruākākā Energy Park, a development adjacent to Marsden Point oil refinery, also in the far north of New Zealand. 

The national regulator, the Electricity Authority has said it will amend the Electricity Industry Participation Code to allow energy storage systems to participate in the national reserve market. This will promote competition in the wholesale market and contribute to reliability of electricity supply, according to the Authority.

Transmission system operator Transpower also published studies in 2017 that showed the potential value of large-scale battery storage for balancing New Zealand’s grid and in 2019 that showed the potential value of distributed storage. 

Grid-scale batteries are already able to participate fully in New Zealand’s energy market as generation or as dispatchable demand, and can also offer interruptible load while charging. It is however prohibited from providing generation reserve. The Electricity Authority has noted that the need to interconnect electricity supply between the country’s North and South Islands will provide a need for ‘buffering’, which battery storage can do.     

The regulator is expected to amend the code by April this year. 

As mentioned above, while New Zealand boasts large hydropower capacity, dry years due to low snowmelt or rainfall can leave hydroelectric unavailable for long periods. A government-supported project, NZ Battery, will investigate the feasibility of “non-hydroelectric energy storage options”.

These could include bioenergy, geothermal, hydrogen, compressed or liquid air storage and flow batteries, engineering solutions company WSP said after being awarded a contract to work on a feasibility study for the project in January by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). 

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Shanco, a roofing company in the Mid-Atlantic, is one of the first roofers to offer the new Timberline Solar roof. GAF Energy, a Standard Industries company and a provider of solar roofing in North America, recently launched Timberline Solar to deliver the first true solar roof to market. Timberline Solar incorporates roofing materials into a clean energy-generating system, resulting in a durable, attractive roof that produces energy. The solar roof is now available to residents in Maryland and Virginia.

“Over the years, we have looked into providing a solar option to our customers but have been challenged with finding the right solution. When we were introduced to the Timberline Solar Energy Shingle, we knew this was the right product,” states Leo Ruberto, owner of Feazel, the parent company of Shanco. “GAF Energy has created an impressive solar solution that will not only meet the needs of our customers but is reliable and aesthetically appealing. We are proud to grow our partnership with GAF Energy and offer this award-winning solar solution.”

“For us, working with Shanco is a game-changer,” says Jason Barrett, senior vice president at GAF Energy. “We’re thrilled to support the clean energy momentum already building in Maryland and Virginia as residents reap the benefits of harnessing solar power.”

This new system incorporates the world’s first nailable solar shingle, the Timberline Solar Energy Shingle. The product is assembled domestically at GAF Energy’s U.S. manufacturing and research facility in California.

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Abigail Ross Hopper

In 2021, U.S. solar prices increased as much as 18% due to unprecedented supply chain challenges, trade actions and legislative uncertainty, according to the U.S. Solar Market Insight 2021 Year in Review report. As a result of these issues, a third of all utility-scale solar capacity scheduled for completion in Q4 2021 was delayed by at least a quarter and 13% of capacity slated for completion in 2022 has either been delayed by a year or more or canceled outright, according to the report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk business. Over the last six months, Wood Mackenzie has decreased near-term solar forecasts by 11 GW, or 19%, due in large part to continued supply chain constraints, price increases and interconnection challenges.

“In the face of global supply uncertainty, we must ramp up clean energy production and eliminate our reliance on hostile nations for our energy needs,” says Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s CEO and president. “Policymakers have the answers right in front of them: if we pass a long-term extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit and invest in U.S. manufacturing, solar installations will increase by 66 percent over the next decade, and our nation will be safer because of it. America’s energy independence relies on our ability to deploy solar, and the opportunity before us has never been more obvious or urgent.”

New 10-year forecasts from Wood Mackenzie show that passing a long-term extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), new manufacturing tax credits and other clean energy incentives would increase solar installations by 66% over the next decade compared to baseline projections. In addition, if the manufacturing tax credits move forward, the industry could unlock nearly 20 GW of new domestic solar manufacturing capacity.

Under an ITC extension scenario, 10-year forecasts for the residential, non-residential (commercial and community solar) and utility-scale solar sectors would increase by 20%, 15% and 86%, respectively. Solar capacity additions by 2030 would exceed 70 GW annually under this scenario.

Without policy action in Congress, Wood Mackenzie projects that U.S. solar capacity would only reach 39% of what’s needed to hit President Biden’s 2035 decarbonization target.

“The supply chain constraints of the last year will hit 2022 installations the hardest, reducing capacity by 7% compared to 2021,” observes Michelle Davis, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report. “But our forecasts demonstrate long-term growth will overshadow these short-term challenges, especially if federal clean energy incentives are passed. In our ITC extension scenario, installed solar capacity is expected to multiply six times by 2032.”

Despite the headwinds, demand for solar remains high. In 2021, the residential market saw 30% year over year growth with over 500,000 U.S. homeowners installing solar, helping the industry reach 23.6 GW of new installed solar capacity.

However, the residential solar market’s momentum could slow as policymakers in California and Florida consider new programs that would reduce compensation in their net metering programs. Wood Mackenzie’s forecasts account for California’s December NEM 3.0 proposal to demonstrate its impacts. If the net metering proposal moves forward, the California residential solar market is expected to be cut in half by 2024.

Solar accounted for 3.9% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2021. Residential solar installations totaled 4.2 GW in 2021, a 30% year-over-year growth.

Community solar volumes reached 957 MW, representing 7% year-over-year growth, while commercial solar volumes in 2021 were nearly equal to 2020 at 1,435 MW. Project delays from interconnection challenges and supply chain constraints limited growth in both sectors. 

For utility scale capacity, 17 GW were installed in 2021, about 3 GW less than expected due to supply chain constraints, logistics challenges and trade headwinds. In Q4 alone, more than a third of all capacity expected to come online was delayed to 2022 or later.

Year-over-year price increases for utility-scale solar reached 18% for fixed-tilt projects and 14.2% for single-axis tracking projects in Q4.

Read the full report here.

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A.P. Moller – Maersk, an integrated container logistics company, and Ørsted have signed a letter of intent (LOI) about partnering on a new Power-to-X facility. On the U.S. Gulf Coast, Ørsted will develop a 675 MW Power-to-X facility that will produce approximately 300,000 tons of e-methanol per year, which Maersk will offtake for its newly ordered fleet of 12 methanol-powered vessels.

The facility will be powered by approximately 1.2GW of renewable energy from new onshore wind and solar farms. The biogenic carbon needed to produce e-methanol will be extracted through carbon capture at one or more large point sources.

The project is targeted to be commissioned in the second half of 2025. Final investment decision could be made in late 2023.

“We commend Maersk’s clear and ambitious action, which has made the company a leader in the difficult task of reducing the climate impact of the maritime industry,” says Martin Neubert, deputy CEO and chief commercial officer at Ørsted. “Partnerships with large offtakers of green fuels, like Maersk, is an important part of Ørsted’s strategic journey, as we broaden our Power-to-X footprint across the world to become a global leader in renewable hydrogen and green fuels. The project with Maersk is our first in the U.S., and we look forward to help accelerating the U.S. Power-to-X market while creating local jobs and economic activity, just as we’ve done in the growing offshore wind industry in the U.S.”

“To transition towards decarbonization, we need a significant and timely acceleration in the production of green fuels,” states Henriette Hallberg Thygesen, CEO of fleet and strategic brands for A.P. Moller – Maersk. “Green methanol is the only market-ready and scalable available solution today for shipping. Production must be increased through collaboration across the ecosystem and around the world. That is why these partnerships mark an important milestone to get the transition to green energy underway.”

The Power-to-X project in the US Gulf Coast region is the second green fuels collaboration between Ørsted and Maersk after the potentially 1,300 MW Green Fuels for Denmark project in Copenhagen, which the two companies are partnering on with other large offtakers.

“The U.S. Gulf States have an abundance of cheap renewable energy resources, both solar and wind, making the region a natural location for large-scale production of green fuels, which we expect there will be a very large demand for in the U.S. going forward,” adds Neil O’Donovan, CEO of Ørsted Onshore. “The Power-to-X project with Maersk will expectedly be powered by approx. 1.2 GW of new onshore wind and solar PV, which in itself represent a significant investment in the region, while also helping Ørsted reach its target of 17.5 GW of installed onshore capacity in 2030.”

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Dunwoody College of Technology has launched its Power & Construction Engineering Technology program. The program provides an online bachelor’s completion degree option for electrical graduates looking to advance into positions as solar energy systems engineers, electrical construction or design engineers, senior project managers, estimators, or drafters.

Power & Construction Engineering Technology is a specialized electrical engineering degree that focuses on the built environment – from vertical and horizontal buildings to infrastructure, including utilities. Graduates with a two-year degree in electrical construction or electrical design are eligible to transfer into the online program with part- and full-time options.

“At Dunwoody, we work closely alongside partners to understand the skills and training needed to fulfill the hiring pipeline ensuring that our students are the strongest candidates for the job,” states Polly Friendshuh, dean of construction sciences and building technology.

“Through extensive industry research, we identified a need for electrical and solar system engineers and are proud to offer the Power & Construction Engineering Technology program to current and future students,” Friendshuh adds. “Innovative pilot programs like this one help transform our learners into leaders and students into collaborators and creative problem solvers.”

Image: Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

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UL has created a certification service for energy storage equipment subassemblies to evaluate for compliance to UL 9540, the Standard for Energy Storage Systems (ESS) and Equipment. Image: PRNewsfoto/UL.

Science safety leader UL has created a certification service for energy storage equipment subassemblies (ESES) to achieve UL 9540, allowing large storage assets to procure certified components when building systems.

UL 9540, the most widely used product safety standard certificate for energy storage, has been available to energy storage systems (ESS) for a while.

This move creates a way for the systems’ component subassemblies to be certified before assembly into a full ESS.

An energy storage system’s typical subassemblies would include the connection/metering subassembly, power conversion subassembly, the battery modules, and auxiliary service components like those for ventilation, air condition and fire safety.

UL, full name Underwriters Laboratory, recently certified three subassemblies for NHOA Energy (formerly Engie EPS). The company’s head of certification and quality L. Costanza said that achieving the certification to UL 9540 for its subassemblies allowed the installation of high-density 40-foot containers in two utility-scale storage systems in California and Massachusetts.

“Through the new Energy Storage Equipment Subassemblies Certification, a DC storage system manufacturer has an easier and faster path toward Certification to UL 9540. This is another example of how our cost-effective and time-sensitive certification strategies deliver the utmost flexibility and superior certification methods, accelerating time to market,” said Maurice H. Johnson, a product manager for batteries and energy storage systems in UL’s Energy and Industrial Automation group.

Alongside UL 9540, UL is also known in the energy storage sector for UL 9540A, a large scale fire test for BESS. It is the industry standard certification for fire safety in stoage alongside NFPA 855 from the National Fire Protection Association.

The national lab also works with battery producers to explore chemistries of new battery technology, most recently Redflow’s zinc-bromine redox flow battery.

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Sungrow BESS units at a recent project in Japan. Image: Sungrow.

PV inverter manufacturer Sungrow’s energy storage division has been involved in battery energy storage system (BESS) solutions since 2006. It shipped 3GWh of energy storage globally in 2021.

Its energy storage business has expanded to become a provider of turnkey, integrated BESS, including Sungrow’s in-house power conversion system (PCS) technology. 

The company ranked in the top 10 global BESS system integrators in IHS Markit’s annual survey of the space for 2021. 

Aiming at everything from the residential space to large-scale — with a major focus on solar-plus-storage at utility-scale — we ask Andy Lycett, Sungrow’s country manager for the UK and Ireland, for his views on the trends that might shape the industry in the years to come. 

What are some of the key technology trends that you think will shape energy storage deployment in 2022?

Thermal Management of battery cells is of vital importance to the performance and longevity of any ESS system. With the exception of the number of duty cycles, and the age of the batteries, it has the greatest impact on performance.

The lifetime of batteries is greatly affected by the thermal management. The better the thermal management, the longer the lifetime combined with higher resultant usable capacity. There are two main approaches to cooling technology: air-cooling and liquid cooling, Sungrow believe that liquid cooled battery energy storage will start to dominate the market in 2022.

This is because liquid cooling enables cells to have a more uniform temperature throughout the system whilst using less input energy, stopping overheating, maintaining safety, minimising degradation and enabling higher performance. 

The Power Conversion System (PCS) is the key piece of equipment that connect the battery with the grid, converting DC stored energy into AC transmissible energy.

Its capability to provide different grid services in addition to this function will affect deployment. Because of the rapid development of renewable energy, grid operators are exploring the potential capability of BESS to support with power system stability, and are rolling out a variety of grid services. 

For example, [in the UK], Dynamic Containment (DC) was launched in 2020 and its success has paved the way for Dynamic Regulation (DR)/Dynamic Moderation (DM) in early 2022.

Apart from these frequency services, National Grid also rolled out the Stability Pathfinder, a project to find the most cost-effective ways to address stability issues on the network. This includes assessing the inertia and Short-Circuit contribution of grid-forming based inverters. These services can not only help to build up a robust network, but also provide significant revenue for customers.

So the functionality of the PCS to provide different services will affect the choice of BESS system. 

DC-Coupled PV+ESS will start to play a more important role, as existing generation assets look to optimise performance.

PV and BESS are playing important role in the progress to net-zero. The combination of these two technologies have been explored and applied in lots of projects. But most of them are AC-coupled. 

The DC-coupled system can save the CAPEX of primary equipment (inverter system/transformer, etc), reduce the physical footprint, improve conversion efficiency and decrease PV production curtailment in the scenario of high DC/AC ratios, which can be of commercial benefit.

These hybrid systems will make PV output more controllable and dispatchable which will increase the value of the generated electricity. What’s more, the ESS system will be able to absorb energy at cheap times when the connection would otherwise be redundant, thus sweating the grid connection asset. 

Longer duration energy storage systems will also start to proliferate in 2022. 2021 was certainly the year of the emergence of utility-scale PV in the UK. The scenarios that suit long-duration energy storage including peak shaving, capacity market; improvement of the grid utilisation ratio to reduce transmission costs; easing peak load demands to reduce capacity upgrade investment, and ultimately reducing electricity costs and carbon intensity.

The market is calling for long term energy storage. We believe that 2022 will kick off the era of such technology. 

Hybrid Residential BESS will play an important role in the green energy production / consumption revolution at household level. Cost -effective, safe, Hybrid residential BESS which combine the roof’s PV, battery and a bi-directional plug-and-play inverter to achieve a home micro-grid. With the rise in energy costs biting and technology ready to help make the change, we expect rapid take-up in this area. 

Sungrow’s new ST2752UX liquid-cooled battery energy storage system with an AC-/DC-coupling solution for utility-scale power plants. Image: Sungrow.

How about in the years between now and 2030 — what might some of the longer-term tech trends influencing deployment be? 

There are several factors that will affect energy storage system deployment between 2022 to 2030.

The development of new battery cell technologies that can be put into commercial application will further push forward the rollout of energy storage systems. In the last few months, we have seen the huge jump in the raw material costs of lithium which leads to a price increase of energy storage systems. This may not be economically sustainable.

We expect that in the next decade, there will be lots of innovation in flow battery and liquid-state to solid-state battery field developments. Which technologies become viable will depend on the cost of raw materials and how quickly new concepts can be brought to market.

With the increased speed of deployment of battery energy storage systems since 2020, battery recycling has to be taken into consideration in the next few years when achieving the ‘End-of-Life’. This is very important to maintain a sustainable environment.

There are already many research institutions working on battery recycling research. They are focusing on themes such as ‘cascade utilisation’ (making use of resources sequentially) and ‘direct dismantling’. The energy storage system should be designed to allow ease of recycling.

The grid network structure will also affect the deployment of energy storage systems. At the end of 1880s, there was a battle for dominance of the electricity network between AC system and DC systems.

AC won, and is now the foundation of the electricity grid, even in the 21st century. However, this situation is changing, with high penetration of power electronic systems since the last decade. We can see the quick development of DC power systems from high-voltage (320kV, 500kV, 800kV, 1100kV) to DC Distribution Systems.

Battery energy storage may follow this change of network in the next decade or so.

Hydrogen is a very hot topic regarding the development of future energy storage systems. There is no doubt that Hydrogen will play an important role in the energy storage domain. But during the journey of hydrogen development, existing renewable technologies will also contribute massively. 

There are already some experimental projects using PV+ESS to provide power to electrolysis for hydrogen production. ESS will guarantee a green/uninterrupted power supply during the production process.

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Vistra’s large-scale battery storage project at Moss Landing, California, which repurposed a natural gas plant site. Image: Vistra Energy.

There is still plenty of educating decision-makers on storage’s place on the grid to do for other US states to follow in the footsteps of early-movers like California and Texas, and it goes beyond overcoming technical challenges.

That was the message from speakers on the ‘Evolving Grid’ panel discussion at Berkeley Lab’s virtual National Energy Storage Summit yesterday (9 March).

Kelly Sarber, CEO of consultancy Strategic Management Group & Board Member for storage association NY-BEST, started by explaining how California and Texas’ grids had achieved their GW-plus levels of storage deployment.

“It’s because those markets value the revenue stacks that developers can benefit from like resource adequacy, voltage or frequency support, backup peak power etc as well as being able to upgrade the transmission without necessarily investing in that transmission using very well-placed energy storage,” she said.

Energy storage experts have a big role to play in educating states’ decision-makers about storage’s place on the grid, she said. That would then allow them to replicate the early-movers ways of incentivising investment in the sector.

Haresh Kamath, Director of Energy Storage and DER Integration at research organisation Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) echoed this, saying: “We really have to make sure that the decision-makers are educated about the potential here to try to understand how energy storage fits in, not just from a technical standpoint, but also from a business and regulatory standpoint.”

Something all panellists touched on was the breadth of stakeholders that will be involved in the deployment and integration of energy storage into the grid at scale, and the challenges that involves.

Julia Souder, Executive Director of the Long Duration Energy Storage Association of California, highlighted one specific way of maximising the results of discussions between those different stakeholders:

“I think what also needs to happen is there needs to be a lot more funding from government and other sources to help improve the technical capacity of stakeholders, so that when we are discussing benefit cost ratio, or risks, or modelling, it’s a level playing field.”

There is also a need to get long-duration storage projects in the ground at full-scale by 2026 meaning they need to be kicked off in the next 12-15 months, said Ben Bollinger, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Malta Inc, a electro-thermal energy storage system technology provider.

But as well as new technologies and deployments, leveraging existing capacity in clever ways can also increase the amount of storage on the grid.

Christian Belady, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft said that the company has gigawatts of energy storage which provides backup power for servers and hence mostly sits idle. Microsoft is looking at ways it can participate those assets in the grid ancillary services market, he said.

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Inside display model of Eos’ zinc hybrid cathode battery, 2018. Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media.

Eos Energy Enterprises has entered a master supply agreement with energy developer Bridgelink, through which up to 500MWh of Eos’ zinc battery storage systems could be deployed at projects in Texas, US. 

Bridgelink Commodities, a division of Bridgelink mainly focused on energy trading and operations and maintenance (O&M) activities, has committed to purchasing an initial 240MWh of Eos Znyth battery storage technology.

The deal could expand to the half gigawatt-hour figure over a three-year term. That would take the total value of the order up to US$150 million, Eos said in a release yesterday. 

Eos listed on NASDAQ in 2020 after a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. Chief commercial officer Balki Iyer said that the Bridgelink deal grows the battery company’s backlog to a figure in excess of US$200 million and “rapidly approaching 1GWh” of orders. 

Eos is targeting US$400 million in booked orders for 2022 and considers its pipeline of commercial opportunities at present to stand at a value of more than US$4 billion.

In November last year, it announced another big sale to solar EPC company Blue Ridge Power, which is buying 300MWh of Znyth systems for multiple projects this year and next.

Bridgelink, which is developing more than 8GW of renewable energy projects, will use Eos’ proprietary zinc hybrid cathode batteries to reduce curtailment of generated renewable energy and provide balancing and resiliency services to Texas’ ERCOT grid.   

Texas has been identified as the leading US state for planned solar and battery storage capacity additions over 2022 and 2023 by the US government’s Energy Information Administration. 

Bridgelink Commodities is a Qualified Scheduling Entity (QSE) to the ERCOT market, which means it can submit bids and offers on behalf of resource entities (RE) or load-serving entities (LSE) — including electric retail utilities. 

Bridgelink managing director William Flaherty said that Eos’ battery storage units, which come in three-hour duration increments, but can be stacked together to create long-duration energy storage with up to about 12-hours’ duration, were a perfect solution for his company’s needs. 

“ERCOT is a dynamic market that requires long-duration storage technology to achieve success in this evolving environment,” Flaherty said, adding that Eos’ zinc-based battery is safe, requires low operating expenditure and is made in the US.

Eos had noted that the deal with Bridgelink was at the letter of intent stage when reporting financial results in late February. The company has offered 2022 revenue guidance of US$50 million and recently got its programme of expansion underway at a manufacturing facility in Pittsburgh, ramping up to 800MWh annual production capacity. Eos secured a long-term supply deal for the zinc-bromide used in its battery electrolyte from sources in the US with chemicals company TETRA late last year.

In a recent Guest Blog for this site, Zinc Batteries Initiative trade group manager Dr Josef Daniel-Ivad described the metal as being versatile, abundant and promising for energy storage across a range of applications and different technologies.

“Now with 30 years of innovations under their proverbial battery belts, zinc battery developers are innovating their way around the challenges and are poised to compete effectively with their less safe and sustainable competitors,” Dr Daniel-Ivad wrote.

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