Arevon’s North Carolina Haywood Solar Project

Arevon Energy has celebrated the start of construction on the company’s 192 MW Ratts 1 Solar Project, located in Pike County, Ind. 

In addition to the Ratts 1 project, the company developed and has started construction on the nearby 73 MW Heirloom Solar Project. 

Local leaders; landowners; partners and stakeholders; the project’s construction contractor, Primoris Renewable Energy; and the Arevon project team attended the groundbreaking ceremony. 

“Ratts 1 Solar is a significant addition to Arevon’s growing portfolio of Midwest projects and an important step forward for a cleaner future for Indiana,” says Tommy Greer, chief commercial officer at Arevon. 

“We are proud to host this groundbreaking and to celebrate the advancement of solar energy in Pike County.”

In addition to Ratts 1 Solar and Heirloom Solar, the company announced a $352 million financing package to build the 228 MW Posey Solar Project in Indiana, with construction underway. 

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Julia Bell

CleanCapital has established a development partnership with Arena Renewables, with the companies set on bringing grid-critical assets to markets that include Illinois and Maryland.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work together to finance and develop a portfolio of distributed solar projects focusing on community solar and corporate offtake. Arena Renewables will develop the projects, with CleanCapital providing a mix of debt and equity instruments to support Arena Renewables’ growth and operations, as well as own and operate projects long-term.

“We are excited to enter into this partnership with Arena Renewables because, at the core, they are dedicated to bringing more clean energy megawatts onto the grid to serve communities in need,” says Julia Bell, CIO at CleanCapital. 

“The Arena team brings over three decades of experience in renewables, utilities and real estate along with their credibility and execution of solar and storage projects.”

CleanCapital’s pipeline totals 2 GW of solar and 8 GWh of energy storage. 

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe acted as counsel for CleanCapital on the transaction.

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The move would take NHOA fully into private ownership and result in its delisting from the Euronext Paris Exchange. In an interview with Energy-Storage.news Premium published in July, Giuseppe Artizzu, head of NHOA’s energy storage business line, said the move would be a “financial efficiency driver.”
However, an ad hoc committee of NHOA’s Board of Directors said earlier this week (19 August) that it had some reservations about the fairness of the parent company’s offer to purchase shares at €1.10 (US$1.22) per share.
Based on preliminary analysis by an independent expert and its financial advisor, the board suggested that the value should be higher due to the potential of two of NHOA’s e-mobility infrastructure businesses, including a joint venture with automotive OEM Stellantis and a fast and ultra-fast EV charging division.
TCC responded by increasing the price to €1.25 per NHOA share after its Board of Directors met on 20 August. TCC said the new price represented a 114% premium over the closing share price (€0.58) on 12 June, the day before the takeover was announced, prompting a jump to €1.06 at closing on 13 June.
TCC’s board also said the new price reflects significant premiums over volume-weighted average prices up to 180 days before the tender offer announcement.
Negotiations will resume between the two parties on that basis. NHOA shares remain suspended from trading in the meantime, with an updated draft offer document to be filed with the French regulator, AMF, by mid-September 2024, meaning the tender offer and subsequent squeeze-out process will continue longer than originally planned.
NHOA Energy, the company’s battery energy storage system (BESS) business line, reported an 11% year-on-year fall in revenues for the first half of 2024. Releasing its half-year results in July, the system integrator attributed this to a market-wide fall in the price of BESS.
NHOA Energy clocked €90 million in revenues for H1 2024, while EV charging solutions arm Atlante’s rose 7% to €124 million, and its JV with Stellantis, Free2Move, doubled its revenue year-on-year to €32 million.
Despite the drop, NHOA Energy was EBITDA positive for the period by €4.4 million, and BESS projects deployed and in operation rose 344% from H1 2023 to more than 1GWh, while it cited a further gigawatt-hour currently being in construction.  
In the ESN Premium interview, NHOA Energy CEO Artizzu said the listing of the company’s shares was by that point “almost counterproductive” with low volumes of trading, and that after the squeeze out the integrator would be better able to leverage TCC’s balance sheet to go for big gigawatt-hour scale projects. Despite its impending removal from the stock exchange, it would remain in NHOA’s best interests to maintain a degree of “financial visibility,” the CEO said.
“If we want to be a bankable provider, we need to give visibility, so it is going to be in my interest to ensure that enough visibility is given to the market on our financial reports.”

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The project is equipped with Sungrow SG3600UD-MV solar PV inverters, with each unit of 3.35MW, with 78 units enabling the metered output of 255MW of power, according to a Filing Receipt logged with the regulatory Public Utility Commission (PUC) of Texas. The document notes that the project is eligible for Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) for the 255MW net eligible generation.
Food and beverage giant Nestlé is the sole tax equity investor of the project and will also acquire the renewable energy generated from the solar PV plant, in which Enel owns 100% of the equity.
This is not the first time both companies have partnered for a solar-plus-storage project in Texas. Last year, Enel NA and Nestlé partnered on the Ganado project, in Jackson County, with both an investment and 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA).
Stephen Pike, head of Enel North America’s renewable energy business, Enel Green Power North America, said: “The Stampede project will add more power generation to the grid at a time when demand is rising from electrification and data centers. Furthermore, its flexible battery storage system will help step in to stabilize the grid when conditions tighten.”
Enel’s interest in ERCOT market
This is the latest solar-plus-storage project in Texas powered by Enel. Earlier this year, the company started operations at the Fence Post project in Navarro County, as covered by our sister-site PV Tech. Similar to the Stampede project, it has an 86MW BESS installed along with 297MW of solar PV capacity.
On top of its latest solar-plus-storage projects in Texas, Enel brought five BESS projects online in ERCOT last year. The five projects combined for 369MW/555MWh of energy storage. In the past few years, Enel has been increasing its operational capacity for BESS projects, and setting itself as the largest BESS owner-operator in the the ERCOT, Texas market.
Energy-storage.news recently spoke with its CEO, Paolo Romanacci, about the status of the ERCOT market and more overall the BESS industry in the US. Romanacci highlighted the need for an increased domestic manufacturing industry (Premium access).
With nearly 5GW of large-scale BESS online in ERCOT, Texas is one of the leading markets for BESS in the US. In a recent conversation with Modo Energy (Premium access), one of the trends in the ERCOT market is that revenues are becoming more concentrated in a small number of days.

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Formed in 2021, CC Power is a joint powers agency representing the interests of nine California community choice aggregators (CCAs) established to take advantage of economies of scale when it comes to power procurement.
Fixed US$/kW/month price for 15-year term
The Tumbleweed LDES project was selected as part of an RFO issued in October 2020 by a group of CCAs seeking to procure up to 500MW worth of long-duration energy storage (LDES) resources.
Following the formation of CC Power early in 2021, the joint powers agency continued the work on the RFO that was already underway, negotiating and securing an ESSA with REV for its Tumbleweed project in January 2022, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.
Over the following three months, the agreement was approved by the eight CCAs participating in this particular ESSA: CleanPowerSF, Peninsula Clean Energy, San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, RCEA, Sonoma Clean Power and Valley Clean Energy.
Under the terms of the initial agreement, each CCA was set to receive a portion of capacity from the 69MW/552MWh agreement for a fixed US$/kW-month price for a period of 15 years under a tolling agreement with full capacity rights.
The agreement between CC Power and REV Renewables was first amended towards the end of 2021, increasing the contracted capacity from 69MW/552MWh to 75MW/600MWh.

According to an agenda packet for the upcoming RCEA meeting, REV informed CC Power early this year that the Tumbleweed project was no longer economically viable at the original contract price, citing an increase in equipment costs and “uncertainty related to tariffs on Chinese imports depending on the 2024 presidential election outcome”.
As reported by Energy-Storage.News and detailed in a Fact Sheet issued by the White House on May 14 2024, the Biden Administration plans in 2026 to increase the tariffs paid on non-EV batteries imported into the US from China by 17.5%.
The administration plans to also increase the tariff on certain battery components and minerals imported from China used to make batteries, including natural graphite that makes up the anode in the majority of modern-day lithium-ion batteries.
The news has been met with a mixed reaction from the industry, with market intelligence firm Clean Energy Associates (CEA) predicting the potential tariff increases could increase costs for US BESS integrators by 11-16%.
15-21% price increase indexed to import tariff rate
In order for the project to remain viable, REV and CC Power have renegotiated the terms of the Tumbleweed ESSA. These amendments include a 15-21% contract price increase indexed to the import tariff rate on Chinese goods up to a cap, along with increased penalties for REV Renewables if it’s unable to deliver the contracted resource adequacy (RA).
REV will also allow CC Power to purchase RA from the partially built project for around 1.5 years before the contracted commercial operation date (COD) at below-market rates.
Sharing of IRA benefits would make Tumbleweed feasible
Under the terms of the amended agreement, CC Power will no longer receive a share of the tax benefits expected to be handed to REV as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
According to the meeting packet, REV Renewables determined that due to unexpected project cost increases, coupled with the new tariff uncertainties, sharing of tax benefits with CC Power would make the project “financially infeasible”, even with the renegotiated contract price increase.
RCEA noted that the conceding of tax benefits would be minimally offset by the expected savings from procurement of RA in advance of the contracted COD, as described above.
Amendments in RCEA’s best interests despite additional cost
RCEA noted that, despite the additional costs associated with the amended ESSA, moving forward with the renegotiated contract was still the best option for addressing compliance needs in a timely manner.
Although RCEA expects the amended contract to cost an additional US$1.5 million, it noted that this figure could be closer to US$2.5 million in a worst-case scenario where batteries weren’t imported in time, a maximum tariff on Chinese imports is brought into effect, and other CCAs default on the deal.
The Board of Directors at CC Power was expected to vote on the amended contract at a meeting yesterday, which will then be followed by votes from participating CCAs to decide whether they want to continue to be a part of the ESSA.
One of the CCAs represented by CC Power, Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), is then set to discuss the ESSA amendments today, at a regular Board of Directors (BOD) meeting. Energy-Storage.news will follow up to report the outcome of those meetings in due course.
CC Power selected a second 8-hour duration lithium-ion BESS project for a contract in March 2022, a 50MW/400MWh asset in development by Onward Energy with an expected commissioning date in 2025, ahead of the Tumbleweed project.
600MWh California BESS goes into delayed commercial operation
In other California BESS news, the battery storage portion of Arevon Energy’s Vikings Energy Farm was brought online this month, according to upcoming BOD meeting materials from the project’s power offtaker San Diego Community Power (SDCP).
Under the terms of the original PPA between SDCP and Arevon, the Vikings project was expected to come online in June 2023. However, after widespread Covid-19 and supply-chain procurement issues, the two parties made several amendments to the project’s offtake agreement.
These changes included reducing the BESS size from 150MW/600MWh to 145.5MW/582MWh and pushing the contracted online date by 10 months to April 2024. Despite these changes, the BESS still missed its amended contracted online date by four months.
As reported in Energy-Storage.News in November 2023, Arevon financed the Vikings project using a combination of debt financing alongside a tax credit transfer under the IRA, thought to be among the first times a developer in the US has utilised credit transferability.

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The ministry released a statement a day prior to the application window’s opening. Energy minister Vladimir Malinov said the investments, worth up to BGN1,153,939,700 (US$657.4 million) “will guarantee the security and stability of the Bulgarian electricity system.”
Tender bids must be submitted electronically, with more information available on this portal.
Each bidder can apply for up to BGN148,643,080 in financial support, with up to 50% of the eligible costs to be covered. However, no application can receive more than BGN371,607.70, not including tax, per megawatt-hour of usable energy storage capacity.
Project costs incurred after the day the scheme was announced, 25 June 2024, will be recoverable. At the time of its announcement, the government invited public comment on the initiative, as reported by Energy-Storage.news.
EU’s post-pandemic recovery efforts supporting scheme
The scheme is funded by the European Union (EU) post-COVID Recovery and Resiliency Facility (RRF) and is part of Bulgaria’s National Recovery and Sustainability Plan (NRSP).
Back in 2021, as the EU’s European Commission (EC) was considering applications from the bloc’s 27 Member States for their share of up to €672.5 billion (US$749 billion) in funding through the RRF, the European trade association for energy storage, EASE, had warned the EC that leaving energy storage out of the scope of support would be a big mistake.
Since then, along with the funds for Bulgaria’s RESTORE scheme, the EU has approved state aid and incentive schemes to support energy storage in various other countries.
They include a €350 million scheme in Spain, grants worth €150 million in Slovenia and a €1.1 billion Hungarian government state aid plan to support large-scale energy storage as well as schemes in Romania and Greece.
‘Europe’s largest distributed energy storage tender’
Meanwhile, in Poland, state-owned power company Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) said it would apply for funding from the nation’s KPO Recovery and Resilience Fund worth €60 billion as it began tendering for a large-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) of 263MW and at least 900MWh capacity in June.
Earlier this month, PGE, which is a retail utility as well as a public power generator, also launched what the company claimed is Europe’s largest tender for distributed energy storage facilities to date.
On 13 August, PGE said it is seeking to deploy 26 systems, with capacities ranging from 2MW to 10MW, for a total of 107MW/214MWh of electricity storage.
“The project of building distributed energy storage is a market response to the demand of local distribution systems for the possibility of storing surplus renewable energy and then using it when demand exceeds its supply. This will not only support the stable operation of the grid but will also contribute to the optimisation of prices on the energy market,” PGE management board president Dariusz Marzec said.
“Increasing the potential of the flexibility sources of the National Power System, including the number and capacity of energy storage installations, is the most effective support for the development of renewable energy sources.”
See more information on the PGE tender.
In a sponsored article for Energy-Storage.news last December, Silvestros Vlachopoulos and Jon Ferris from consultancy LCP Delta wrote about the prospects for energy storage market development across Eastern Europe, highlighting Poland as the country with the greatest immediate potential due to the start of capacity auctions.
While that has so far been the case in initial auction rounds, de-rating factors proposed by the government for forthcoming auctions could destabilise and otherwise negatively impact market growth, Energy-Storage.news heard in June from Michał Maćkowiak, managing director of the Poland arm of BESS developer Harmony Energy.

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It is worth noting that the project received approval from Indonesian authorities in 2021.
The AAPowerLink project is set to deploy between 17GW and 20GW of solar capacity and between 36.42GWh and 42GWh of energy storage to connect Australia’s Northern Territory with Singapore via 4,300km of subsea cable and supply power to the territory’s capital, Darwin, and the surrounding region.
The project aims to deliver up to 4GW of green electricity to Darwin’s green industrial customers over two stages of development. 900MW will be provided in stage one and approximately 3GW in stage two. 1.75GW will also be supplied to customers in Singapore.
Once complete, it will be capable of delivering up to 15% of Singapore’s total electricity needs via a 2GW high-voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cable, Sun Cable said. Electricity supply is anticipated to commence in the early 2030s.
In Singapore, Sun Cable is working with the Singapore Energy Market Authority on the conditional approval application for the project’s subsea cable interconnector component. Sun Cable is also engaging with the Indonesian government on regulatory and permitting matters to prove that the subsea route includes knowledge and hydrographic data sharing.
To read the full version of this story, visit PV Tech.

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It is built around ten miles from the busy Houston Ship Channel at the city’s port, on the site of H.O. Clarke, a now-closed fossil fuel plant owned by Houston Lighting & Power (HL&P). The Greater Houston monopoly utility also no longer exists, having been dissolved and split into separate entities as the Texas energy market was deregulated.
As such, Callisto I is in an important strategic location for helping manage energy supply and demand imbalances in the metropolitan region and could, in the future, be expanded to add another 400MW/800MWh of battery storage, Jupiter Power said.
In December 2023, the company closed a US$65.2 million financing agreement with First Citizens Bank’s Energy Finance business towards the project’s construction.
That followed up collaboration between the two the previous summer, for two Jupiter Power ERCOT projects totalling 160MW/320MWh, in which First Citizens acted as Lead Arranger for a US$70.4 million loan financing.
At the time, Jupiter Power CEO Bowman said Callisto I “answers the call from the Texas Legislature to build more dispatchable power in ERCOT and near major load centres where consumers need it the most.”
It is the Blackrock-owned developer’s ninth ERCOT BESS project to date, and the first outside of West Texas. As with the other assets in Jupiter Power’s 1,375MWh ERCOT fleet, it will play into the ERCOT wholesale market to earn revenues for its role in helping balance the grid and manage demand.
ERCOT has around 5GW of battery storage connected to it, and that installed base continues to go up rapidly, with the US national Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently publishing data forecasting 6.4GW of new additions during 2024.
Senator Schwertner: ‘Essential that Texas has a diversified energy portfolio’
“Callisto I is the first energy storage project at this scale in the City of Houston and will help meet Houston’s growing power needs while also increasing resiliency from extreme weather events,” Bowman said this week.
It comes as Texas and much of the US Southwest face some of the hottest periods of the year, which means peaking electricity demand and market volatility.
In an interview for Energy-Storage.news Premium in late July, market intelligence firm Modo Energy’s ERCOT market lead Brandt Vermillion noted that “pretty extreme” weather last summer contributed to high energy storage revenues in the grid operator’s service area, which averaged around US$200,000/MW for 2023. Meanwhile, volatility in the market is likely to increase, with revenues becoming “more concentrated into a small number of days.”
“That means an increase in volatility where prices are either going through the roof or batteries aren’t making much money at all,” Vermillion said.
Jane Stricker, VP of Greater Houston Partnership, the city’s biggest chamber of commerce, and executive director of its Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), noted that as Houston’s first large-scale transmission-connected BESS, Callisto I “will help address peak power demand and is another great example of our region’s leadership in scaling and deploying impactful solutions for an all the above energy future.”
State senator Charles Schwertner offered a similar sentiment, adding that “it is essential that Texas has a diversified generation portfolio.”
“Batteries play an important role within that portfolio to help address demands in times of need,” said Schwertner, who is also chairman of the Senate Committee of Business and Commerce.

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Ancillary services to maintain grid frequency
CAISO procures energy and ancillary service needs through auction-based day-ahead and real-time energy markets, with all ancillary services procured as part of the system operator’s day-ahead market.
Although REV’s 40MW Vista Energy Storage project provides CAISO with both energy and ancillary services, the recent investigation carried out by FERC’s Office of Enforcement comes from alleged incorrect information CAISO received from the IPP relating to the Vista project’s ability to provide ancillary services, specifically when it came to grid regulation.
Regulation is a type of ancillary service used by CAISO (as well as other grid operators) to maintain its grid frequency at around 60Hz. This is achieved by reducing or increasing the total amount of energy on the grid through the charge or discharge of battery storage projects which CAISO administers through regulation up and down awards.
If a developer wants a project to participate in the ancillary services market, it must hand over control of the project’s output to CAISO’s automated control algorithm. Developers receive a fee for their project being available during specific times to provide ancillary services.
Optional SoC forecasting for participating assets
When a developer submits a bid into the CAISO day-ahead market, it has the option of forecasting its expected state of charge (SoC) at the beginning of the next day, known as the initial state of charge. Market engines used by CAISO will then use this figure to determine whether a battery is given a regulation up or down award.
Under CAISO rules, batteries sized like the Vista project (with a maximum state of charge limit of 38MWh and 85% charging efficiency) may receive a regulation down award only if the initial state of charge is 4MWh or less.
Once given a regulation award, CAISO will charge or discharge the battery to ensure it is able to provide the regulation ancillary service for at least 30 minutes, known as the ancillary service state of charge constraint.
CAISO will pay the developers of the batteries for the charging/discharging to maintain specific charge levels.
REV Renewables ‘knew, or should have known’
The FERC settlement filing explains that REV predicted the initial state of charge of its Vista project would be 4MWh or less, even though the project had been given a 36MW or larger regulation up award for the final hour of the day.
The settlement filing stated that REV “knew, or should have known”, that as the project had been given a regulation up award, the ancillary service state of charge constraint would mean the project’s actual state of charge would be around 20MWh during the final hour of the day, and not 4MWh or less, like REV had forecasted.
REV predicted Vista’s initial state of charge to be 4MWh or less over 33 consecutive days, resulting in the project being granted a regulation down award for the first several hours each day across the period.
As the battery actually had around 20MWh of charge each day, there was a conflict between the operation of regulation down, which sought to charge the battery, and the ancillary service state of charge constraint, that sought to do the opposite and discharge the battery.
Under CAISO rules at the time, the system operator was required to pay REV for the charging of the battery, amounting to a total of US$1.45 million. REV also received US$185,000 for the actual regulation down awarding.
US$2.67 million settlement to the treasury and CAISO
FERC’s Office of Enforcement concluded that REV had violated certain CAISO rules in providing an inaccurate initial state of charge figure, concluding that the Vista project was not “reasonably expected to be available and capable of performing at the levels specified”.
As part of the settlement, REV agreed to pay a US$1 million civil penalty to the US Treasury and a larger US$1.67 million to CAISO. REV also agreed to complete compliance training and submit one annual compliance monitoring report to FERC’s Office of Enforcement.
Although the developer acknowledged the facts within the settlement agreement, REV stated it “neither admits nor denies the alleged violations” put forward by the Department of Enforcement.
NextEra CAISO market infringements
FERC’s Department of Enforcement also carried out a separate investigation into NextEra Energy subsidiaries, NextEra Energy Resources (NEER) and NextEra Energy Partners, and the manner in how they provided CAISO with ancillary services from portions of their Arlington Energy Center, Blythe Solar, Desert Sunlight and McCoy Solar hybrid projects between January 2022 and September 2023.
Crucially, the point of interconnection (POI) limit for each of these co-located facilities is below the combined solar and battery potential maximum output. When the combined output of these projects reached their POI limit, logic controllers programmed by NextEra would curtail the battery facilities, allowing the solar facilities to continue delivering energy to the CAISO grid.
Up until the end of 2021, this wouldn’t have been an issue. However, in December 2021, CAISO changed its regulations prohibiting co-located battery facilities from deviating from dispatch instructions when providing ancillary services, something which NextEra claims it wasn’t aware of.
According to the settlement agreement, there were 3,835 five-minute intervals during which the battery facilities at the mentioned NextEra projects deviated from dispatch instructions while holding ancillary services awards.
The Department of Enforcement claimed that NextEra earned approximately US$381,724 in revenue during the 18-month period from energy produced by the solar facilities when, under the procedural changes enacted in December 2021, they should have been curtailed.
Full cooperation from NextEra
The settlement agreement noted that NextEra fully cooperated with FERC during the investigation, and has since corrected its software to amend this issue.
As part of the settlement, NextEra agreed to pay a civil penalty of US$105,000 to the US treasury and US$381,724 to CAISO.
REV Renewables in lawsuit with system integrator
LS Power-owned REV Renewables claims that its Vista project was the largest in the US at the time of energization in 2018, and has continued to progress other battery storage projects across the country over the past few years.
This includes its 200MW Diablo Energy Storage facility located in Contra Costa County that was brought online in 2022, which happens to now be the center of a contract dispute with systems integrator Fluence – as reported in Energy-Storage.News at the end of last year.
REV is seeking a US$230 million refund from Fluence citing a catalogue of “defects, deficiencies and failures” at the Diablo project.

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Last week, planning permission was granted for a 47.5MW project near Mannington, Dorset, near England’s South coast.
EDF Renewables, the clean energy subsidiary of French state-owned energy company EDF, already manages a portfolio of 150MW of BESS projects in operation across the UK. The company states that it plans to deliver up to 2GW of transmission-connected BESS projects in the coming years, with 400MW of capacity already consented.
Simone Sullivan, head of storage at EDF Renewables UK said: “Our upcoming project pipeline will strengthen the UK’s capacity to integrate more renewables and will allow the grid to be more flexible and resilient by managing electricity supply and demand.
Battery storage is critical to enhancing our energy security and to achieving the new government’s 2030 targets. We have a strong momentum behind our projects, helping the UK to reap the benefits of cost-effective, clean renewable energy and a modern, flexible grid.”
According to the UK’s electricity system operator, National Grid ESO, between 20-30GW of additional BESS capacity is required to meet 2050 net zero goals outlined in ESO’s Future Energy Scenarios.
Recent analysis from Solar Media Market Research indicated installed BESS capacity in the UK will rise to 7.4GW/11.6GWh by the end of 2024, a substantial increase from the current operational capacity of 4.6GW/5.9GWh.
To read the full version of this article, visit Solar Power Portal.

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