The exemption will end no later than 1 July 2024, with stakeholders to be given at least a month’s notice for when the call to tenders will be reopened.

In a deliberation published last week (25 January), the CRE noted: “a clear improvement compared to 2021 in terms of the conditions it had defined. The competitive situation in the secondary reserve market is better today, both from the point of view of certified volumes as well as the number of players involved and the diversity of assets that can participate in this market.”

The ‘conditions’ which caused a postponement of the auction were primarily the sky-high energy prices in 2021 following the easing of Covid-19 lockdowns across the globe, as consultancy Clean Horizon explained to Energy-Storage.news at the time.

Alongside the high prices, the CRE’s deliberation noted there were fewer providers for secondary reserve when it decided to postpone the procurement. It said that a growth in the number of providers and the types of assets available will offer an additional guarantee that the call to tenders will be successful in getting a good price.

Specifically, the CRE cited that 100MW of battery energy storage systems (BESS) and demand response providers were certified for secondary reserve in January 2024, almost double the equivalent number in late 2021.

EU countries are in the process of making the secondary reserve/aFRR a cross-border market with different joining dates for member states, which Clean Horizon also wrote about for Energy-Storage.news in 2022.

BESS technology is among the best-suited technologies for services like aFRR because of how fast it can respond to operator signals, and BESS has gradually been displacing the historic provider of such services – thermal gas plants – in most mature energy storage markets.

France had just under 900MW/900MWh of BESS online by the end of 2023 according to data from LCP Delta, and should deploy around 300MW a year over the next few years. Alongside ancillary services and trading opportunities, large-scale BESS is also being monetised through low-carbon capacity market contracts, with 253MW of projects winning in a 2020 auction.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 20-21 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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Cogency, a climate solutions-focused consultancy hired by Akaysha Energy, announced last week via business networking site LinkedIn that the approvals had gone through and “permits granted with zero objections”. This came, Cogency said, despite a market atmosphere in which “governments across Australia are being criticised for delays in approving renewable energy projects”.

Planning approval for Elaine in western Victoria was received within six months, and for Palmerston within four months, Cogency said.

“These approvals demonstrate the benefits of robust design, detailed technical work and comprehensive stakeholder engagement,” the company added.

Elaine BESS is sited within Victoria’s designated South West Renewable Energy Zone (South West REZ), one of six mixed clean energy technology, multi-gigawatt centralised renewable energy generation and transmission centres the state government is fostering the development of.

Set to host large-scale solar PV and wind facilities, the South West REZ will also feature a 300MW/650MWh BESS project from major Australian utility generator-retailer Origin Energy, supplied by Fluence, as reported by Energy-Storage.news earlier this week. More projects of its type can be expected to spring up in the REZ, as well as in the dozens of similar REZ facilities being planned or built across the Australian states.

The Palmerston project in Tasmania’s approval by the Northern Midlands Council came shortly after a 288MW solar PV project was approved in mid-December by the council, in development through local company TasRex.

Akaysha Energy was acquired by an arm of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, in 2022. In December, it took a Final Investment Decision (FID) on a 205MW/410MWh project in Queensland, and received key Generator Performance Standard (GPS) certification for another 150MW/300MWh facility in the state.

In addition to its projects in Australia, which also include the under-construction Waratah Super Battery in New South Wales (NSW), the developer recently formed a partnership with Japanese conglomerate Itochu Corporation to take on the nascent BESS market in that country.

Meanwhile, according to various news reports, the 477-tonne ‘superload’ carrying transformers to the 850MW/1,600MWh Waratah Super Battery was photographed on its way to Akaysha Energy’s project site this week.

‘Navigating an evolving landscape’

Firm Power, an Australian developer which has a claimed pipeline of 3.6GWh in development worth more than AU$2 billion (US$1.31 billion) capital investment value, said a week ago that it had received a trio of approvals.

Much like Cogency’s announcement, Firm Power’s claimed the approvals were noteworthy given some of the challenging circumstances for pushing battery storage development through approvals channels.

Firm Power got planning approvals for two BESS sites in New South Wales (NSW), which will form part of Hunter Dispatchable Energy System (HDES). This will be a so-called “distributed stand-alone battery system,” aggregating the capabilities and capacities of a number of large-scale assets.

The approved projects are Beresfield Battery Storage, planned to be 170MW output, and Awaba, which is smaller at 50MW. Expected capacities or durations are not listed on Firm Power’s pages about the projects on it website.

Beresfield went from “exhibition to determination” in just six months, the company said, while the two projects passed through the NSW process for ‘state significant’ projects which Firm Power described as “challenging”. Likewise, 2023 was described by the company as a “challenging year for renewable energy planning approvals” in New South Wales.

The Hunter region was described by New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet in 2022 as being at the heart of the state government’s electricity strategy roadmap, with the prior approval of a 500MW BESS project, and plans for large-scale green hydrogen hubs in the area.  

Firm Power got approval for another project in the state just before the end of 2023, getting development approval for its 200MW Abermain Battery project in Queensland.

Finally, fellow developer ACE Power said a few days ago that it has received approval for its applications to connect two projects totalling 303MW to the grid and National Electricity Market (NEM).

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) granted the company permission to connect its 103MW Kerang project in Victoria and 200MW Yabulu project in Queensland to the transmission network directly through existing substations.

ACE Power received  AEMO’s key 5.3.4A&B approval letters in “close succession,” marking the company’s first. The projects will operate in grid-forming mode, providing inertia to help balance the system and keep stable. ACE’s senior development manager and BESS lead claimed them to be among the earliest of their type to get approvals in Australia.

“This outcome is the culmination of over 12 months work, and considerable engineering input from our respective consultants as we navigated an evolving landscape in respect of how grid-forming inverter technology is assessed by AEMO and the network service providers (NSPs),” ACE Power’s Shane Humphreys said.

The AEMO approvals “significantly” de-risk the two project, Humphreys said, with the developer now shifting its focus towards getting the projects into construction by the second quarter of this year: “…and ultimately bringing forth the network and consumer benefits that come with the deployment of advanced BESS inverter capabilities”.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 1st Energy Storage Summit Australia, on 21-22 May 2024 in Sydney, NSW. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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Ontario leads Canada’s provinces for energy storage adoption, but at this stage has only a couple of hundred megawatts of mostly industrial behind-the-meter (BTM) systems, providing peak shaving applications as well as some pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) facilities.

The province is, however, currently partway through making the country’s biggest-ever energy storage procurement to date, tendering for about 2,500MW of energy storage alongside about 1,500MW of gas in its expedited LT1 tender for long-term capacity.

Electricity demand in Ontario is growing at an unprecedented rate and this growth is expected to continue. The Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) has projected a need for generation capacity to grow from about 42GW today to 88GW by 2050, more than doubling. That mid-century point is also Canada’s targeted date by which it will get to net zero emissions.  

The provincial government last year released ‘Powering Ontario’s growth’, a plan for providing “reliable, clean and low-cost power”. It said nuclear and hydroelectric power are the lowest-cost generation sources in Ontario today, but that the province would be holding competitive solicitations for resources, including wind, solar PV, hydroelectric, biogas and energy storage.

Upon the release of that plan last year, Energy Storage Canada executive director Justin Rangooni told Energy-Storage.news that the government had recognised “the critical role clean energy storage resources must play in ensuring reliability, resiliency and helping to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions”.

LDES for Ontario modelled as 10-hour duration resources

The new report from Dunsky notes that consensus has been reached over Ontario’s need to rapidly scale up non-emitting generation and aims to show how LDES can help enable its integration on the grid.

While definitions of ‘long-duration’ vary, Dunsky modelled its analysis on an assumption the term represents resources of 10-hour duration, applying it to the different scenarios provided by the IESO in its ‘Pathways to decarbonization’ study.

The report modelled three scenarios for Ontario’s future energy system: the first involves the uncertainty of new nuclear generation and hydrogen-fired turbines coming online; the second includes new nuclear coming online but hydrogen struggling; and the third consists of nuclear resources deployed at scale, but capacity shortfalls becoming pronounced due to higher-than-expected peak demand and other factors like import capacity constraints.

While natural gas is considered the most likely backup generation for managing capacity shortfalls, Dunsky noted that reliance on natural gas has environmental downsides while the need to purchase fuel would also subject Ontario ratepayers to the risk of commodity price volatility.

Ontario needs to deploy up to 6GW of LDES – in other words at least 60GWh – “starting in 2032”, under the first scenario. In the second and third scenarios, that rises to 10GW and 18GW respectively.

For example, energy system planning in IESO’s study largely assumes Ontario’s fleet of peaking power plants will be replaced with hydrogen turbines, but LDES in combination with wind generation is a cost-effective alternative, the Energy Storage Canada-Dunsky report found.

Deploying 6GW of LDES could provide between CA$11 billion (US$8.18 billion) and CA$20 billion in savings to ratepayers over its lifetime relative to IESO’s baseline scenario, according to the authors. It would be an immediate, and “no regrets” move for the system operator to incorporate LDES into its future planning and explore all the available options.

Ontario’s government recently ordered energy company TC Energy to develop a “potential long-term revenue framework” for a proposed LDES asset – a 1GW pumped hydro plant – after energy minister Todd Smith decided the planned project did not represent a viable investment.

Elsewhere in the world, energy markets and grids that are going to higher levels of renewable energy penetration are starting to make their own determinations about long-duration energy storage. It is however still early days for the system.

Solicitations for LDES resources have been held in the US and Australian states of California and New South Wales, while in the UK, the government is currently taking industry consultations on a framework to stimulate investment into the technologies, proposing a cap and floor mechanism and focusing on non-lithium technologies.   

You can read Energy Storage Canada’s ‘Long duration energy storage opportunity assessment’ report here.

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The US market played a major role in contributing to that performance, LG ES said, claiming that it has been able to capitalise on rising market demand for both EVs and stationary storage by its proactive approach to establishing operations in the country.

In remarks to accompany its Q1 2023 financial results, LG ES leadership said the production of LFP cells in the US would be a “major growth engine” for the company.

That move to put production lines serving OEMs into the American market began long before the 2022 passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but the IRA’s tax credit incentives in particular are strongly boosting the business case for batteries in the US, both on wheels and in containers or buildings.

LG ES is building multiple production plants across the country, including in partnership with major automotive manufacturers like GM and most recently Honda. The focus on the much bigger EV market is obvious, but LG ES’ new US plants include its split-purpose gigafactory in Arizona, which will produce cylindrical cells for EVs as well as a dedicated 16GWh production line for ESS.

“…because we have already secured regional battery production and value chain in this critical market environment, we will be committed to turning this into opportunities so that we can have competitive security as a global first mover when demand covers,” company executives said in an earnings call to discuss results.

Once its various US projects are ramped, LG ES can expect to avail of IRA tax credits for between 45GWh and 50GWh of its annual production, the company claimed.

In the ESS space, it has started “producing lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells in earnest”, while company leadership also noted the recent launch of LG Energy Solution Vertech, the battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator business which came about following the acquisition of NEC Energy Solutions.

LG Energy Solution Vertech was unveiled in September 2023 at the RE+ trade show in California, US, and in December the parent company announced that the integrator already had 10GWh of customer contracts secured or in its near-term pipeline.

LG ES does not break out the numbers for its ESS division, although representatives have told Energy-Storage.news that the company intends to do so in future. The company has only begun issuing quarterly and yearly financial reports since its US$10.7 billion IPO which concluded in early 2022.

An LG ES executive from its ESS battery planning division said that the company expects the global energy storage market “to sustain a strong growth of around 30% worldwide, driven by [the] US market” during 2024. The company is active in Europe, evidenced by today’s news that it will supply the BESS for Estonia’s first-ever grid-scale project, but the US is its major focal point.

“Solid demand is expected for the power grid in the US thanks to the IRA policy. For residential, growth is expected again, mostly led by the US market,” the executive said.

“Now, the company will keep responding actively in the US market which is our main market and especially for the power grid and we will also try to secure a stable pipeline, by agreeing on large volume [orders] with the strategic customers, so that we will also be able to sustain our profitability.”

BloombergNEF said there was around 34% growth in the global BESS market, during 2023, with the research and analysis group forecasting a 27% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of demand through 2030.

LG ES planning lithium-sulfur battery production by 2026-2027

CFO Chang Sil Lee said that LG ES’ 78% year-on-year rise in annual operating profit was achieved through cost reduction measures and improvements in yield and productivity combined with IRA tax credit recognition.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, LG ES reported an estimated KW250.1 billion of its total KW338.2 billion profit came from tax credits. Back in September Energy-Storage.news heard from the company that through its onshoring plans, it will be well placed to achieve 60% domestic content by 2027, meaning that it will meet and exceed a 55% threshold for attaining higher rate tax credits that will be in place from that year. The company noted in its earnings call that it has adjusted its supply chain arrangements to meet Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulations for IRA-eligible raw materials.

LG ES said volatility in raw material costs contributes to a less favourable environment in the short term. While the industry has welcomed the return of falling costs after price spikes from 2021 and especially in 2022, it also means the average selling price (ASP) of batteries has fallen.

Quarter-on-quarter, the company’s revenue fell 53.7% which was largely attributed to the lagging impact of raw materials prices expanded, and what LG ES described as “key EV customers’ conservative holding of year-end inventory and prolonged impact of major metal price fall” being reflected in lower ASPs.

Taking the example of lithium hydroxide, executives said the price has fallen about 80% since its peak in 2022, averaging at US$14 per kilogramme.

There has also been a relative slowdown in the EV market. That has been most pronounced in Europe, but also in the US to an extent, and LG ES said growth in EV battery demand during 2024 would be slower than that of the ESS market, in the ‘mid-20s’ range of percentage growth.

Going forward, LG ES discussed its three-pronged strategy for improving profitability based on: ‘technology leadership’, ‘cost competitiveness’ and ‘future readiness’.

It has made investments in and signed contracts with upstream raw materials companies and formed partnerships on recycling, is pursuing high levels of product differentiation, innovating on raw materials and factory automation and developing new battery technologies. The company said it aims to have developed ‘semisolid’ and lithium-sulfur battery products by 2026-2027.

LG ES did also say it wanted to maintain a nimble approach to its investments, including in the US, perhaps with a view to the known unknowns such as the outcome of the presidential election or industry-specific headwinds of that type that buffeted the industry during the pandemic such as supply chain disruptions.

“We will remain flexible and proactive as we keep closely monitoring the changes in the market environment and customer demand. When and where we see the need to adjust the pace, we will do so in close consultation with customers. So to sum up, overall, our investment strategy and direction remained largely unchanged,” executives said.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 6th Energy Storage Summit USA, 19-20 March 2024 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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It will come online at the start of 2025, when Estonia and the other Baltic countries Lithuania and Latvia will disconnect from Russia’s grid. The complex is located close to the border with Russia in the northeast of Estonia.

The procurement, launched in June last year, saw local firms Diotech OÜ and Solar Wheel OÜ win a joint tender with LG Energy Solution enlisted to supply the BESS units.

The BESS will participate in various electricity market activities but most importantly will help to cover the frequency containment reserve (FCR) need in the Baltics.

‘We are honoured to contribute to Eesti Energia’s energy plan for desynchronisation (disconnecting from Russia’s grid) in the Baltic countries,’ said Kyuwon Heo, Head of Grid ESS Europe at LG Energy Solution. 

Estonia is targeting an exit from electricity production from shale gas and a 40% renewable energy mix by 2030.

The BESS is the first large-scale project in the country but smaller-scale projects are being supported through a grant programme, including a 4MW/8MWh BESS.

Eesti Energia and a consortium of private companies are also launching separate, large-scale pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) projects, though these would come online in the late 2020s.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 20-21 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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The BESS project will be in Yllikkälä, near Lappeenranta city, and will be next to the 30MW/30MWh Yllikkälä Power Reserve, Neoen’s first BESS in Finland which is already online.

System integrator Nidec ASI will provide the BESS, power conversion equipment and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for the project, which will connect to grid operator Fingrid’s Yllikkälä substation and is expected to come online in the first half of 2025.

Neoen will be the long-term owner and operator of the project, which builds on its substantial wind presence in Finland.

Market and regulations driving a move to 2-hour durations

The project is noteworthy not just for its size but its 2-hour duration, in a market where projects have typically been largely 1-hour and focused almost entirely on targeting the country’s different ancillary service revenue opportunities (mFRR, aFRR, FCR-N, FCR-D, and FFR).

Henri Taskinen, CEO of Finland-headquartered BESS optimisation firm Capalo AI, explained that this move is down to a new regulation from Fingrid and an increase in electricity market trading opportunities.

“The market is shifting to longer duration (mainly 2-hour) BESS for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Nordic TSOs developed a new regulation for batteries, which went live on 1 September, 2023. The regulation addresses ‘Limited Energy Reservoirs,’ meaning under 2-hour batteries, and largely affects 1-hour systems,” Taskinen said.

The regulation effectively limits the amount a 1-hour BESS can bid into ancillary services when compared to a 2-hour (or more) system.

An example Taskinen cites is a 10MW/10MWh battery, which would be limited to bids of 5MW for FCR-N (from 10MW prior) and 8.3MW for FCR-D up and down when bidding simultaneously (previously 10MW as well). A 2-hour BESS would not face these constraints which is a major reason the market is shifting to 2-hours.

The new regulation appears similar to rules which the grid operator in Texas, US, tried to implement but were recently shot down by its energy regulator (Premium access).

The other factor is market-driven. As seen in other European markets with more BESS online like Germany and the UK, opportunities for BESS in energy trading are growing as volatility increases which is increasing the business case of 2-hour systems.

Taskinen: “This is one key factor to consider when acquiring BESS assets and choosing the right optimiser and market access partner. Longer duration assets earn more revenues from wholesale market volatility when optimised intelligently. We believe the revenue stack will shift to wholesale, as seen in Germany.”

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 20-21 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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As the energy storage market matures, there is a discernible trend suggesting increasing investor comfort with associated risks. While tolling arrangements and floor prices act to provide a predictable income, the merchant model, where revenues are tied to market prices, introduces an element of risk but also the potential for higher returns.

As stakeholders gain a deeper understanding of the risk-return dynamics within the battery storage sector, a more balanced and informed investment landscape emerges. This trend signifies a maturing market where investors are progressively embracing the potential of grid-scale battery assets while strategically managing associated risks.

In this webinar we explore:

Key considerations for securing financing and investment for BESS assets

Trends in price floors and insurance products

Commercial perspectives around operating and optimising battery storage assets

The importance of market forecasting, revenue stacking, dispatch optimisation, and auction bidding strategies in ensuring that battery storage assets achieve their full value potential

Speakers:

Scott Berrie, asset development director at GridBeyond

Charles Pearce, head of commercial products at Zenobe Energy

Henry Easterbrook, CEO at Fig Power

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Register to view the webinar in full and receive presentation slides from the on-demand section of Energy-Storage.news in the coming days, where you can also watch all of our other webinars, free.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 20-21 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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The asset is being built at the site of AES Indiana’s Petersburg Generating Station coal-fired power plant and the last remaining coal-burning plant in its portfolio.

With parent company AES having committed to exiting coal, the 2,146MW plant’s coal-fired units will be closed down in 2025, and AES has proposed to convert the facility to gas, in addition to developing hundreds of megawatts of wind, solar PV and batteries in the area.

The project will connect to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) grid and the ISO’s wholesale markets. AES Indiana, which was formerly known as Indianapolis Power & Light (IPL), has around half a million customers in Indianapolis and Central Indiana, said it will be online during the 2024-2025 MISO winter season when demand typically peaks.

The utility issued a request for proposals (RFP) in February 2022 for complete delivery of the system on a turnkey basis i.e., not a power purchase agreement (PPA) or other third-party contract. The BESS will be connected through a new substation to AES Indiana’s transmission lines.

Energy holding company AES Corporation is a part-owner of global battery storage system integrator Fluence. No announcement has been made yet as to the supplier or integrator for the Pike County project.

Midwest US has fundamental drivers for strong BESS demand

In AES Indiana’s most recently filed integrated resource plan (IRP) from 2022, the long-term roadmap for its investments and activities for which it must get IURC approval, the utility determined that it would add up to 1,300MW of wind, solar PV and battery storage to its resource mix by 2027. That’s from around 400MW today.

The utility received criticism for choosing to partly replace the coal generation capacity with natural gas but argued that a mix of renewable energy resources and natural gas would be the best combination to maintain reliability of supply throughout the year and meet peak demand which is increasing.

AES Indiana’s evolving resource mix, as included in its 2022 IRP filed with the IURC. Image: AES Indiana

MISO and the US Midwest, in general, have been traditionally very dependent on coal for power generation. Michigan recently passed a state-level energy storage deployment target of 2,500MW by 2030, becoming the first among Midwestern states to adopt a 100% clean energy standard for 2040.

On the occasion of that clean energy legislation passing, towards the end of last year, Jeff Bishop, then-CEO of US BESS developer Key Capture Energy (KCE), told Energy-Storage.news Premium that Michigan had set the pace for a Midwestern energy transition.

The Midwest’s need for energy capacity to meet the shortfall in supply as coal plants retire and the increase in demand as electrification grows mean that it has the fundamental drivers to be one of the biggest markets for battery storage in the US, Bishop said.

Both Energy-Storage.news and our colleagues at PV Tech have reported on a number of large-scale battery and solar PV projects respectively from the Midwest region in the past couple of years and while still relatively rare versus more mature markets in the desert Southwest in particular, announcements do appear to be picking up.   

MISO added energy storage to its wholesale market portfolio in late 2022, adopting the definition of electric storage resources (ESR) used by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). MISO modelled its portfolio with 4-hour lithium-ion battery storage in mind, leading to developers proposing  BESS projects of that duration, such as AES Indiana’s Pike County project.  

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 6th Energy Storage Summit USA, 19-20 March 2024 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

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The BESS project was highlighted in a three-year plan released by the Qianjiang Municipal People’s Government in November 2023, which said it should be ‘completed’ before the end of 2024.

Its three-year plan said the project would be 100MW/200MWh while SMM and other outlets’ articles this past week reported it to be 50MW/100MWh.

Either way, it would be by far the largest BESS online using sodium-ion technology, which many in the industry agree is the most commercially mature alternative technology for BESS to lithium-ion.

The sodium-ion BESS is being developed by Datang Hubei Energy Development, which is owned by the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), SMM told Energy-Storage.news. It said the project would total investment of RMB200 million (US$27.8 million).

It is part of a wider, national-level effort to build large-scale energy storage demonstration projects, including those using flow battery technology. Two years ago, Energy-Storage.news reported on the first phase of a 200MW/800MWh vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) coming online.

Recently published statistics from China’s National Energy Administration said that the country’s capacity of so-called “new-type energy storage” hit 31.39GW by the end of 2023. The administration said that 22.6GW was deployed in the past year alone, with lithium-ion BESS technology making up 97.4% of new capacity additions.

Read all our coverage of developments in the sodium-ion battery sector here.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 2nd Energy Storage Summit Asia, 9-10 July 2024 in Singapore. The event will help give clarity on this nascent, yet quickly growing market, bringing together a community of credible independent generators, policymakers, banks, funds, off-takers and technology providers. For more information, go to the website.

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The BESS will share an interconnection with the wind farm and increase stability both locally and nationally through providing ancillary services such as fast frequency reserve (FFR), while also being able to ‘black start’ the wind farm if there is a power outage or grid failure.

Energy-Storage.news last week spoke to flexibility services provider Flextools (Premium access) about upcoming changes to Sweden’s flexibility services market (which includes ancillary services) as well as the energy storage market more generally, where 200MW of BESS is expected to come online in 2024.

Very high ancillary service prices in the Nordics have been driving the energy storage market, with more wind and solar coming online and hydropower plants – the historic provider – re-assessing their provision of these fast-acting services.

The ancillary service markets are not expected to saturate for several years, at least in Sweden, meaning most projects deployed in the country are still only around 1-hour duration.

Looking further ahead, developer Sustainable Energy Solutions Sweden Holding AB (SENS) has secured a land lease agreement for a BESS project outside the city of Eskilstuna, with planned power of 40MW. SENS is one of the most active developers in the Swedish market, with a 550MW portfolio of solar and BESS projects including 40MW and 50MW projects it secured land for late last year.

The firm said construction on its projects generally starts 10-12 months after the lease agreement is signed, meaning construction could start as early as end of the year.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 9th annual Energy Storage Summit EU in London, 20-21 February 2024. This year it is moving to a larger venue, bringing together Europe’s leading investors, policymakers, developers, utilities, energy buyers and service providers all in one place. Visit the official site for more info.

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