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Australian generator-retailer Origin to build AU$400 million BESS at Victoria peaker plant

The 650MWh project will have a 2-hour duration with 300MW output and will also be equipped with grid-forming capabilities via advanced inverters.

“Origin’s strategy is to accelerate renewable energy and storage in our portfolio and we expect large-scale batteries and other storage technologies to play a vital role in Australia’s energy transition,” Origin Energy CEO Frank Calabria said today (29 January).

Origin has selected Fluence to supply its battery energy storage system (BESS) technology for the Mortlake Battery project. Energy storage system integrator and services provider Fluence’s GridStack modular, scalable BESS solution, based on its sixth-generation Fluence Cube technology will be deployed, with the two companies’ contract including a 15-year service agreement.

Meanwhile, Fluence’s asset performance management software Nispera will optimise the battery storage system’s operation.

Fluence said in a release yesterday that site preparation and civil works will commence after the completion of design and procurement activities, with the BESS expected to go into commercial operation late in 2026.

Being sited within the Victorian government’s designated South West REZ, it will be able to capture abundant, surplus energy generated by an expected proliferation of large-scale wind and solar PV plants in the area. At the same time, it will be able to leverage existing electricity transmission infrastructure at the Mortlake peaker facility.

The Origin BESS is also among eight projects totalling 2GW/4.2GWh across Australia which are being supported with funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to equip them with advanced inverter technologies.

This is what will enable the planned ‘grid-forming’ function of the 300MW Mortlake system. Grid-forming BESS projects deliver inertia to the network which helps keep its operation stable. Traditionally inertia has been provided by the rotating mass of turbines in thermal power plants, which are being retired and replaced by renewables.

Earlier this month, Fluence announced that it has now deployed, or has under contract, in excess of 20GWh of grid-connected battery storage worldwide from the 47 different markets the company is active in. That includes its most recently contracted BESS in Australia prior to Mortlake, the 500MW/1,000MWh Liddell Battery Project in New South Wales for AGL, another of Australia’s major generator-retailer (‘Gentailer’) utility companies.

BESS project at retiring Eraring coal plant underway in NSW

“With the proliferation of wind and solar farms, particularly in Victoria’s South West Renewable Energy Zone, the Mortlake battery will help keep the grid stable and support more renewable energy coming into the system as the market continues to decarbonise,” Origin CEO Frank Calabri said.

Mortlake is Origin’s second committed utility-scale battery storage project. Its first is currently under construction at the site of Eraring in New South Wales (NSW), the only coal-fired power plant in the Gentailer’s portfolio of generation assets.

Eraring is scheduled for closure in 2025, a date that Origin brought forward by seven years from an original plan due to coal’s diminishing competitiveness in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM). Origin took its Final Investment Decision (FID) to proceed with building the first 460MW/920MWh phase of its BESS project at the site in April last year. Interestingly, at that time, the company also estimated the first phase at Eraring to cost around the same AU$400 million sum it would be investing into Mortlake.

While Origin has said the Eraring BESS could go to as much as 700MW/2,880MWh if market conditions support it, the 2,880MW coal plant’s capacity and services to the system will also be replaced by a mix of other technologies including a virtual power plant (VPP) and 3GW of peaking capacity.

With coal traditionally accounting for Australia’s biggest share of generation by far, the country’s energy transition will ultimately hinge on a smart mix of technologies and planning, from transmission network buildout to rooftop solar PV adoption.

In a recent article for our quarterly journal PV Tech Power (Vol.37), Stephanie Bashir, CEO of consultancy Nexa Advisory, wrote about the coordinated efforts required and highlighted the vital role grid-scale battery storage must play in enabling the transition to happen on time and at least cost.

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.

Friday Briefing: Protection and production, big in China and braggawatt-hours in Europe

The new policy comes against the backdrop of more than 4,400 applications for over 200GW of licenses to put energy storage at solar PV and wind power plants around the country received by the national Energy Markets Regulatory Authority (EMRA).

EMRA has thus far granted pre-licenses to 25,630MW of those applications, across 493 projects.

That in itself is exciting news but it was really interesting to see EMRA chief Mustafa Yilmaz firmly state on 29 December that the regulator would not “allow anyone to abuse” investment processes in the fledgling renewables-plus-storage sector.

“The rules of our market are clear and everyone must comply with these rules. Pre-license cannot be transferred, and shares or shares cannot be transferred, except for the exceptions specified in the regulation. If this is done, the pre-license will be canceled and the guarantee given by the company will be forfeited,” Yilmaz said.

Yilmaz said that at a meeting of the EMRA board that day, one company’s pre-license had been cancelled due to an unsanctioned transfer of shares, which the president said he hoped would be the last time, adding that once pre-licensing is completed, companies “must obtain a license and complete the investment,” or they will lose that opportunity.

The punitive level of tax on LFP – applicable to racks and modules as well as to cells – is also partly designed to protect the Turkish energy sector and by extension its population from bad actors, Can Tokcan said.

With China the world’s manufacturing hub of LFP today, the rules will of course impact imports from Chinese makers first and foremost. While that may sound protectionist, the reality is that China has top-class manufacturers and it also has very cheap manufacturers.

Tokcan said that the rules will therefore have a triple-pronged intention: to encourage Turkish LFP manufacturers to ramp up their own investments and production capacities, to stop developers from using the cheapest Chinese cells they can find, while the taxes paid will go into the national coffers.

On a related in theme, the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) trade association has made a few recommendations to its country’s government ahead of the release of India’s Union Budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year on 1 February.

Among those recommendations, which you can read about here, were that import duties be placed on imports of cells and supply chain components, which would include raw and processed materials. This would boost the competitiveness of domestic producers, IESA said.

At the same time, IESA requested that the government double the 50GWh target for advanced battery cell manufacturing through its Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to 100GWh. Through PLI, India is supporting the construction of gigafactories around India. Yesterday, IESA got an unexpected present when, still ahead of the budget’s unveiling, an extra 10GWh was added to the scheme.

The examples from Turkey and India indicate that both governments see that supporting domestic competitiveness is about both carrot and stick, perhaps in the same way that the US has put tariffs on imported Chinese modules while at the same time offering generous tax credit and other incentives to encourage investment at home.

China’s 22.6GW year

Well, if we talk about supporting domestic industry then the obvious place to look at is China. There’s of course a lot to be said about that, but let’s focus on the demand side rather than the supply side for a moment.

China’s official state news agency Xinhua announced yesterday that “new-type” energy storage capacity hit 31.39GW by the end of 2023, according to the National Energy Administration. That was after 22.6GW was deployed in the 12 months of last year alone, representing a near-tenfold increase since 2020. According to an NEA official, of that, 97.4% are lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery storage systems.

Coming back to our original theme, it’s reasonable to infer that this would likely not be possible had China not put so much investment into low-carbon technologies including solar PV and batteries over the past few years.

As Can Tokcan acknowledged in our interview on Turkey’s taxes, many of those Chinese companies make high-quality goods. As analysis firms S&P Global and Wood Mackenzie both said during this year, further up the value stream, Chinese system integrators are now also ranking among the top in the world, often diversifying from manufacturing into project work.

You may also remember that BloombergNEF head of energy storage analysis Yayoi Sekine told Energy-Storage.news recently that in compiling the firm’s inaugural Tier-1 BESS supplier list, BloombergNEF found “a significant uptick of lesser known suppliers, especially from China”.

It’s getting a bit ridiculous now

In last week’s Friday Briefing, we also talked about how we’ve already seen project announcements on a gigawatt-hour scale in several markets.

As journalists here at Energy-Storage.news, companies and their public relations representatives will always try and make their announcements and commentaries stand out from the forests of releases landing in our inboxes each week.

That’s part of the game, I suppose. Within that, it’s understandable that the size of projects has become something of a bragging game. As one source (hello, Yann!) told me: “in solar, we had ‘braggawatts’. In energy storage, maybe it’s ‘braggawatt-hours’!”

Well, that is indeed all well and good, but sometimes this sort of battery-based space race to the top can get a bit ridiculous. One inexperienced PR representative told the world that their client’s 30MW project was “perhaps” the biggest battery storage project in the world. This was in the middle of last year, and of course, it wasn’t anything like the biggest.

Well, we’re perhaps just as excited as anyone else to see a ‘biggest project’ announcement. Given how new this industry is, we can expect them to come frequently for a long while yet. Sorting through the claims and figuring out who really does have the megawatt-hours to ‘braggawatt-hour’ about, is another matter entirely. With projects often announced at very early stages of development, it’s also not easy to call which claimed biggest projects will go online first, or will even go ahead at all.

Energy-Storage.news senior reporter Cameron Murray had a look at some of the recent claims coming from European developers and investors and had this to say:

“Various companies have claimed they are working on Europe’s largest BESS. Any project being developed or built that is larger than two 99MW/198MWh Harmony Energy projects that currently hold the title, can justifiably make the claim if they ignore likely commercial operation dates (COD).

In the UK, two projects around 300MW/600MWh are currently under construction, from Zenobē Energy and SSE Renewables (though neither has specifically made the claim of having the largest project underway).

TotalEnergies acquisition target Kyon Energy claimed the ‘largest European BESS’ title for a 275MWh project in Germany it got planning approval for in November, and utility and independent power producer (IPP) Engie last week claimed the same for a 200MW (MWh undisclosed) project in Belgium while the designers of a 200MW/800MWh project for Enel in Italy recently did the same.

These projects are set to come online between late 2024 and 2025.”

Worth noting that this week we did get another ‘biggest’ BESS come online. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it’s in California, at developer Terra-Gen’s Edwards & Sanborn solar-plus-storage project, which features 3,287MWh of battery storage, alongside 875MWdc of solar generation capacity. And yes, that’s legit, surpassing the 3GWh capacity of Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility, also in California. In Chile meanwhile, an even bigger project in the Atacama desert will feature 4.1GWh of batteries, albeit like Edwards & Sanborn and Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility it is being built in phases and is still at a fairly early stage of that process.

Happy Friday!

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.

Zenobē Energy to start construction on 300MW/600MWh BESS in Scotland

The two-hour duration BESS will be used to reduce the cost of wasted wind generation in Scotland and therefore reduce energy prices for consumers.

In a statement, the company confirmed it will work with several suppliers to deliver the BESS site. This includes SMA Solar Technology AG, which will provide battery inverters and medium voltage power stations, with Wärtsilä appointed as the BESS supplier.

Omexom will provide a balance of plant works and GE Grid Solutions, a business of GE Vernova, will deliver two 180MVA transformers to the project.

Zenobē Energy topped the list of venture capital (VC) funding deals in the energy storage sector last year according to research firm Mercom Capital, thanks to its US$1 billion fundraise from new and existing investors finalised in September.

Race to build the biggest BESS in Europe

The Kilmarnock South project is one of the largest BESS in Europe currently under construction, slightly smaller than a 320MW/640MWh one in Yorkshire that SSE Renewables started building in November 2023.

Various recently-announced projects have been claimed as the ‘largest BESS in Europe’ (though note neither Zenobē nor SSE did for theirs). The largest online by MWh capacity are two 99MW/198MWh systems in the UK both owned by Harmony Energy.

German developer Kyon Energy claimed the title for a 275MWh project it got planning approval for in November, utility and independent power producer (IPP) Engie has recently claimed the same for a 200MW (MWh undisclosed) project in Belgium, part of a trio it proposed last year.

Another 200MW project, with an 800MWh capacity being built in Italy by another utility and IPP Enel for a 2024 commissioning, was also recently claimed as the biggest in Europe by its designers.

Dutch developer Giga Storage recently claimed it was developing the largest project in Europe, a 2,400MWh system in Belgium, with construction to start this year.

Part of this article was taken from one originally posted on our sister site Solar Power Portal.

Regulator quashes ERCOT’s proposed state-of-charge rules for BESS

By codifying a temporary rule, NPRR 1186 would have meant battery energy storage system (BESS) resources on the ERCOT grid would need to hold – operators argued – more capacity than required when providing ancillary services (such as ERCOT Contingency Reserve Service, Reg-Up and Reg-Down, Responsive Reserve Service or spinning reserve).

The rules also meant BESS technology was having its energy supplies monitored and mandated in real-time in a way no other resources are. Operators said it was an unnecessary limitation on their ability to operate considering penalties already exist for failing to provide contracted ancillary services, for all types of resources including batteries.

Although the Commission’s commentary on NPRR 1186 and its reasons for rejecting it are not on its filings register, commissioner James Glotelfty was quoted in local press saying:

“This presentation that ERCOT put together shows me one thing, really, and that is that every resource fails. So, singling out ancillary services providers of battery storage is discriminatory. Gas plants fail. Nuclear plants fail. Coal plants fail.”

Companies that submitted filings opposing NPRR 1186 in the lead-up to the Commission’s decision last week were BESS operators Engie, Aypa Power, Eolian and Plus Power (co-filed) and Jupiter Power, as well as environmental organisation Sierra Club. Others that commented earlier in the stakeholder process opposing include operators Spearmint Energy and Key Capture Energy and energy trader Aspire Power.

The only filing in support of NPRR 1186 was oil and gas major Shell, which operates thermal power plants in the state (alongside some BESS). Thermal power plants were historically the main provider of ancillary services, but have increasingly been displaced by BESS which are faster-reacting, cheaper and (obviously) less polluting. ERCOT expects the capacity of BESS on its grid to grow to 9.5GW by October 2024.

Read all the filings related to NPRR 1186, including the companies’ letters opposing or supporting it, and the Commission’s final decision, on its website here.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th 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.

Manufacturers, materials dominate Mercom 2023 list of top VC-funded energy storage companies

Mercom found there was a decline of 28% year-on-year (YoY) in the total sum of corporate funding, with US$19 billion raised across 120 deals in 2023, versus US$26.4 billion in 2022 from 124 deals.

It remains to be seen which will be the blip and which the trendsetter – this time last year, Mercom Capital proclaimed 2022 to have seen corporate funding at an all-time high, representing a 55% uplift from 2021’s US$17 billion total.

Mercom’s numbers for corporate funding into energy storage companies, 2019-2023. Image: Mercom Capital.

Analysis provided with the new report reiterated what the firm said at the time: 2022’s figures were skewed by the inclusion of LG Energy Solution’s US$10.7 billion IPO.

Conversely, VC money flowed into energy storage companies like never before in 2023. Tailwinds such as the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax credits for domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies including batteries provided positive signals to investors, Mercom Capital CEO Raj Prabhu said.

VC funding rose 59% YoY to US$9.2 billion in 2023, across 86 deals, compared to US$5.8 billion across 96 deals the previous year. Again the dynamics make for an interesting YoY comparison, with 2021 seeing US$8.8 billion VC funding in the space. Prabhu had said the drop between 2021 and 2022 was a sign of increasing maturity in the sector.

Since then, the IRA tax credits have, as regular readers of this site will know, ushered in wave after wave of investment into US-based battery production and latterly also materials extraction and processing to feed the new gigafactories.

2023 also saw declines in the level of debt and public market financing within energy storage, as well as in the volume of M&A transactions recorded, according to Mercom.

Debt and public market financing fell 52% even though the number of deals went up, with US$9.8 billion committed through 34 deals in 2023, versus US$20.6 billion from just 28 transactions during 2022. In that year, there were 28 M&A deals, whereas in 2023, there were just 15.

While VC funding was lifted up by industry-specific tailwinds, the decline in debt and public market and M&A financings and transactions may be attributable to more general headwinds such as high interest rates, Mercom’s CEO said.

“Energy storage companies saw their highest VC funding in 2023, largely thanks to the IRA’s investment tax credit (ITC) and other incentives like manufacturing credits for battery components,” Prabhu said.

“Despite this positive trend, M&A activity lagged due to high asset valuations, elevated interest rates, and investor caution.”

Quarter-on-quarter, corporate funding into energy storage companies dropped 55% between Q3 and Q4 2023, from US$8.2 billion across 35 deals in Q3 to just US$3.7 billion from 26 deals.

VC top five list unchanged since October

Mercom also made available its ranking of the top five VC funding recipients in the sector during last year, finding it unchanged since the Q3 2023 list it put out in October last year.

Zenobē Energy, an infrastructure investor and developer in battery energy storage system (BESS) and electric fleet mobility assets based in England, UK, remained at the top of the list, having raised a total of US$1.084 billion through financing from its main existing investor, Infracapital, and US$750 million from new investor, US private equity firm KKR.

The funding was announced in September. Zenobē has already made its start on 2024 financing activities with reports this week that the developer-investor has raised £147 million towards a large-scale battery storage project in Kilmarnock, Scotland.

Coincidentally, also this week, Zenobē head of commercial products Charles Pearce appeared as a guest on Energy-Storage.news’ webinar with flexibility trader and optimiser GridBeyond, discussing Zenobē’s strategies for monetising its BESS assets on the Great Britain (GB) grid.

The session, which took place 23 January, will be available to view at the on-demand webinar section of Energy-Storage.news in the coming days.

Battery recycling and materials specialist Redwood Materials’ billion dollar Series D placed it second, with South Korea’s SK On raising US$944 million. French battery manufacturing startup Verkor, making a bid to be the first major battery producer in Southern Europe, was in fourth with US$905 million raised.

China’s Hithium, revealed to be on BloombergNEF’s inaugural Tier-1 BESS supplier list and a manufacturer of lithium batteries as well as complete BESS solutions, rounded out the top five with US$622 million raised in a Series C.

CompanyBusiness areaCountryAmount (US$ millions)Funding typeZenobē EnergyDeveloper-investorUK1,084UndisclosedRedwood MaterialsMaterials processing, recyclingUS1,000Series DSKBattery manufacturerSouth Korea944UndisclosedVerkorBattery manufacturerFrance905Series CHithiumBattery and BESS manufacturerChina622Series CData: Mercom Capital.

Solar PV corporate financing increased by 42%

Mercom Capital also produces quarterly reports on corporate financing in the solar PV sector, with the most recent emerging a few days before its energy storage counterpart.

Solar’s corporate financing activity went in a different direction to storage in 2023, with a 42% increase recorded versus 2022 totals. You can read coverage of that report over at our sister site PV Tech.

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.

Tesla deployed 14.7GWh of energy storage in 2023

It’s also more than double the 6.5GWh of storage deployments Tesla reported for 2022. It’s also nearly 10x the 1,651MW of storage deployments recorded by the company in 2019. For context, Germany’s total cumulative installs as of the end of 2022 stood at 6.5GWh across all market segments, rising to 11.2GWh by the end of last year.

CEO Elon Musk noted in an analysts’ call to discuss results that he has been saying for some time – as reported by Energy-Storage.news – that Tesla Energy could be expected to grow at an even faster rate than the automotive business, “…and it is doing that,” Musk said.

Along with next-generation electric vehicles (EVs) and self-driving EVs, energy storage will be among the key offerings driving Tesla’s “next growth wave,” according to the CEO. In reporting for Q3 2023 a few months ago, Musk had said energy is becoming Tesla’s “highest margin business,” and a bright spot in what was otherwise a fairly downbeat quarter.

Something else Musk has said in the past, is that demand is such that Tesla’s battery products sell out as they come off the production line.

The company has built a dedicated factory in Lathrop, California, to cater to that demand. Another company executive on the call, whose name wasn’t given, said that: “Megapack continues to see strong demand signals globally, driving consistent growth trajectory through ’24 and ’25.

The exec said that the ramp-up of Lathrop is underway and will continue through this year, for Tesla to reach 40GWh of annual Megapack production capacity, doubling its current 20GWh annual production capability by the end of 2024.

Deployments did see a bit of a dip sequentially: 3,202MWh deployed in Q4 last year represented a 30% decrease compared to Q3 2023. The company said it expected to see some volatility in deployments on a sequential basis, which could be impacted by “logistics and the global distribution of projects at any given time”. Nonetheless, year-on-year, the Q4 2023 figure compares favourably to the 2,462MWh recorded in Q4 2022.

That said, when it comes to the energy business, batteries are doing the heavy lifting in contributing. Tesla’s solar business continues to shrink.

It made just 41MW of deployments during Q4 2023, the lowest of any quarter last year, while no quarter in 2023 even got close to Q4 2022’s 100MW of installs. Put into year-on-year context (see chart below), the difference is stark.

Chart: Jonathan Touriño Jacobo for Solar Media using figures from Tesla’s financial release.

Tesla doesn’t break out the revenue figures for its energy business, including both storage and generation one on line its reports, although based on the above, it can be reasonably inferred that again, storage makes the far bigger contribution.

Generation and storage revenue was US$1.43 billion for Q4 2023 and US$6.035 billion for the full year. The combined segment’s revenues have nearly quadrupled since 2019, when US$1.53 billion was reported. The 2022 figure was US$3.9 billion.

Overall, including all other business segments including automotive (US$82.4 billion) and services (US$8.32 billion), Tesla earned US$96.77 billion in revenue in 2023, for a total gross profit of US$17.66 billion and a total GAAP gross margin of 18.2%.

Unsurprisingly, Tesla is on the inaugural Tier-1 battery energy storage system (BESS) provider list from BloombergNEF which the research and analysis group has just produced. Some notable recent and ongoing projects for the company include developer Strata Clean Energy’s 255MW/1,020MWh Scatter Wash project in Arizona which has just begun construction and Plus Power’s 185MW/565MWh ‘shock absorber’ for the grid in Oahu, Hawaii, which went into operation a few weeks ago.

PPA signed for Grenergy’s Oasis de Atacama project in Chile, featuring ‘world’s biggest’ BESS

The company signed the PPA with an unnamed “international utility with an investment grade credit rating”, and the utility will acquire power generated at this phase of the project for 15 years. Grenergy has already completed PPAs for other phases of the project, with Chilean energy company EMOAC signing a 15-year deal, and Grenergy has now completed contracts worth €2.7 billion (US$2.9 billion) at the project.

To read the full version of this story, visit PV Tech.

Field buys two BESS projects in Scotland totalling 100MW/200MWh

Field plans to bring a further 400MWh of battery sites online over the next two years, now including this acquisition, meaning the firm now has over 4.5GWh of projects in development or in exclusivity with partners.

Aiming to be fully operational in the next two years, both sites will contribute a range of services to the grid, including balancing electricity supply and demand across the grid.

As a country, Scotland currently lacks the transmission network infrastructure necessary to deliver surplus green power to areas of demand.

Field hopes to help plug this gap in network infrastructure with the two sites, storing clean electricity when excess supplies are available and minimising the need for curtailment.

Energy-Storage.news recently caught up with Field’s technical director Chris Wickins to discuss grid and market mechanisms in the UK (Premium access).

See the full version of this article on Solar Power Portal.

Iberdrola to deploy six co-located BESS totalling 300MWh in Spain with PERTE funding

Each 25MW/50MWh lithium-ion system, they will be deployed in the regions of Castilla y León, Extremadura, Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia at existing solar PV plants. The company said the projects would share the same grid interconnection point as the PV plants.

While it didn’t specify, this presumably means the BESS will be primarily shifting solar PV generation into the evening hours when generation tails off but demand on the grid remains relatively high.

Other developers/IPPs with BESS projects that received grant funding from the PERTE tender include Naturgy, Enel Green Power and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV). Energy-Storage.news provided a detailed look at where winning projects were located within Spain in our coverage of the auction results.

Some 186MWh of the energy storage projects awarded funding are located in the Canary Islands.

Iberdrola didn’t reveal which company would provide the lithium-ion BESS units for the six projects. It has in the past enlisted Spain-headquartered power conversion specialist firm Ingeteam, including for a 20MWh BESS unit at a green hydrogen plant in Ciudad Real, announced in May 2022.

Fluence-supplied 60MW/80MWh Taiwan BESS starts operations

Fluence provided the BESS units while Taiwan-headquartered industrial and electrical conglomerate TECO Electric & Machinery Co. (TECO) was the local partner for the project.

Fluence said it is Taipower’s largest BESS project to-date, part of the utility’s move to have 1,000MWh of energy storage on its network by 2025.

A large amount of offshore wind is expected to be deployed in Taiwan in the coming years, and energy storage will play a crucial role in integrating its intermittent generation into the electricity grid.

Wind-dominated energy grids typically mean opportunities for energy storage are more around ancillary services, while solar-dominated grids provide more opportunities for load shifting, and so far most large-scale BESS in Taiwan have primarily targeted the ancillary service market, which explains their short duration.

A recent example was a 311MWh BESS in Taiwan from EV and BESS firm NHOA, which was specifically designed for a new ancillary service called E-dReg.

The project is Fluence’s second in the country, and was first announced in April 2022. Fluence’s first was a 6MW/6MWh system for independent power producer (IPP) Ina Energy, also deployed through a partnership with TECO.

A few months later, Fluence partnered with power electronics and engineering firm Rich Electric for a 100MW/100MWh system, its largest.

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.