Yingli Solar has penned an agreement to supply 1.25 GW of their Panda N-type TOPCon PV modules for the Saad 2 PV project being developed by ACWA Power in Saudi Arabia.

The partnership marks another milestone for Yingli Solar, ACWA Power and PowerChina following their involvement in the 575 MW Ibri 2 project in Oman. 

“We are confident that this project’s execution will significantly advance the propagation of renewable energy in the Middle East,” says Yin Xulong, Yingli Solar chairman. 

“In partnership with our collaborators, Yingli Solar will play a pivotal role in the worldwide energy transition. Furthermore, this initiative will bolster Saudi Arabia’s ‘Vision 2030’ renewable energy plan, contributing substantially towards the nation’s clean energy future. In the evolving PV market, Yingli Solar’s N-type Panda TOPCon technology will gain increased prominence.”

The project currently has a total installed capacity of 1,255 MW. 

The project’s EPC is handled by Huadong Engineering and SEPCOIII Electric Power, both under the Power Construction Corporation of China. 

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Both hardly require any introduction: Wärtsilä has a portfolio of more than 3.5GW and 7.5GWh of energy storage projects awarded, contracted or in deployment and was again this year ranked in the top five global system integrators by volumes deployed or contracted according to S&P Global. We speak to the head of Wärtsilä Energy Storage & Optimisation (ES&O), Andy Tang.

IHI Terrasun meanwhile is known for specialising in solar-plus-storage applications and its recent projects include Gemini, currently under construction in Nevada, US, and thought to be the largest single site solar PV and battery hybrid plant in the world to date, featuring 690MWac/966MWdc of PV with 1,416MWh of batteries. We speak with Ray Saka, IHI Terrasun VP of business strategy and services.

Andy Tang, head of energy storage & optimisation, Wärtsilä Energy

Energy-Storage.news: What did 2023 mean for the energy storage industry, both from your own company’s perspective and in bigger picture terms?

The energy storage industry has continued to grow in 2023 – both in terms of the number and size of projects.

Despite this growth, several important hurdles – including the rise in global interest rates – have held the US industry back. Projects are expected to be delayed into 2024 and beyond due to changes in local regulations, uncertainty around how policies like the Inflation Reduction Act/Green Deal will be implemented, and the market looking for stability in interest rates.

How are energy storage projects and different market opportunities evolving, as technologies and stakeholder understanding mature?

Across the board, energy storage projects are scaling up significantly in size. The industry is also drastically expanding geographically. Chile is a good example of a quickly emerging market, where evolving policies and regulatory frameworks are playing a pivotal role in promoting the growth and development of energy storage projects.

Australia is another market that mirrors this change with regulatory support and a surge in energy storage system deployments. We recently completed the second largest energy storage project in Australia with AGL Energy.

Finally, we see tremendous opportunity in Taiwan. We’re approaching a 1GWh+ portfolio in the region.

The last couple of years saw significant supply chain challenges for the industry, particularly around lithium battery and battery materials. Have those constraints eased in 2023 and what sort of supply chain dynamics are you seeing in the industry going forward?

Supply chain constraints have eased significantly compared to the last few years. But many storage integrators, including Wärtsilä ES&O, are pushing ahead with plans to diversify their supply chains with an emphasis on regionalisation. Companies are also taking efforts to establish new lithium mines and advance battery recycling technology to ensure there is enough raw material to meet growing demand. We’re sure to see additional investment in US battery factories as the requirements for domestic tax credits are firmed up. 

Historically, storage and EV companies have had to compete for the same battery supply, but we’re beginning to see a notable shift in the landscape. We’re seeing EV and grid-scale battery R&D paths begin to diverge. Battery manufacturers are recognising that storage needs very high cycle life, but not as much power – whereas EVs are the exact opposite. This shows that grid-scale energy storage is coming into its own as an industry. Battery manufacturers are aligning and reserving battery capacity for us.

What are some major trends in energy storage technologies that readers should keep an eye out for?

One of the key trends that readers should closely monitor is the advancements in safety within storage technologies. We are seeing a noticeable influx of inexpensive products in the market, which is coinciding with an uptick in safety incidents, such as fires.

Over the past year, our focus has been on proactively addressing these safety concerns. We have undertaken several large-scale fire safety tests to evaluate and enhance the safety of our products and continue our 100% safety record.

We recently launched our new Quantum High Energy system with advanced safety features, including active dehumidification to combat moisture and condensation and pre-fabricated fire walls to reduce the risk of unit-to-unit thermal propagation.

We will also be introducing a new predictive battery analytics software suite next year, which uses machine learning algorithms and data modeling to extend battery life, improve revenue, and reduce risk.

What should the industry’s main priorities be in 2024?

Looking ahead to 2024, safety must be the single greatest priority for energy storage companies. Fires at grid-scale storage facilities in 2023 have threatened to slow deployment. The emphasis must be on product design to reduce fires, streamline costs, and ensure smooth deployments. Any company not singularly focused on safety is holding the whole industry back.

Ray Saka, VP of business strategy & services, IHI Terrasun

What did 2023 mean for the energy storage industry, both from your own company’s perspective and in bigger picture terms?

Industry-wide, there is no question there has been great volatility in 2023. When the IRA was passed in 2022, it was clear that it would transform energy storage, but the details of how that change will come about – from the domestic manufacturing rules to the investment tax credit (ITC) guidance- weren’t defined. In 2023, both of those elements have been further clarified, speeding up the expansion of the energy storage space.

There has also been volatility in lithium carbonate pricing. 2022 ended at around RMB570,000 (US$79,785) per tonne with severe drop in price in 2023 ending at RMB96,500. While these swings are caused by availability of supply and demand for electric vehicles (EVs), which take up about 95% of available supply, the energy storage space is impacted directly by price shifts and changes in availability. This impact is substantial because the vast majority of the cost of a storage project is the cost of the battery, and the majority of the battery cost is lithium carbonate.

IHI Terrasun Solutions (IHI Terrasun) has been seeing both impacts: pricing fluctuations lead developers to delay or postpone projects in expectation of a better price and the IRA incentives push up projects in their timeline and bring in more players into the energy storage field. This makes for a great deal of volatility in project development and battery procurement.

How are energy storage projects and different market opportunities evolving, as technologies and stakeholder understanding mature?

The United States looks at a massive deployment of energy storage projects over the next few years because delays and disruptions due to COVID are subsiding and there is an available supply of batteries, with additional manufacturing expansion coming due to the provisions in the IRA.

Projects that were put on hold in 2021-22, are coming back all at once for commissioning in 2024-25. Now the industry will face bottlenecks in financing, availability of independent engineering firms, and trained integration and commissioning teams that know how to deploy battery energy storage. IHI Terrasun has been expanding our Field Engineering and commissioning teams and expanding our procurement consulting services to speed up project contracting and direct-to-developer battery purchase cycles to address these upcoming challenges.

As new players enter the market and established developers look to take on larger numbers of projects, we believe that there will need to be an increase in flexibility in the battery and integration procurement process, along with flexible contracting timelines to support the massive project deployment in 2024/2025.

In addition to new markets opening to energy storage, we’re starting to see ISOs and utilities look strategically at energy storage as a transmission asset. Energy storage is an ideal solution for a lot of the needed functions: congestion relief, peak shaving, blackout prevention, frequency and voltage regulation. It’s a clear benefit to place medium-sized energy storage projects in strategic locations that provide resilience and reliability to the electricity grid.

The last couple of years saw significant supply chain challenges for the industry, particularly around lithium battery and battery materials. Have those constraints eased in 2023 and what sort of supply chain dynamics are you seeing in the industry going forward?

The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have been mostly resolved, and their resolution is coinciding with an ease in demand for electric vehicles, which means there is more lithium carbonate available to devote to energy storage projects.

On the battery front, more manufacturers are coming into large scale battery production, first spurned by the EV market and now into the energy storage space. That is a good thing for the energy storage projects: there is physically more supply coming off production lines and there is more innovation in energy density and safety features as manufacturers work to keep up and exceed each other.

What are some major trends in energy storage technologies that readers should keep an eye out for?

An interesting evolution that we’re following carefully is the increase in energy cell density: 100Ah to 200 Ah now to 300 Ah cells. An increase in energy density means lower cost to achieve the same energy and power or more compact projects for those more urban environments. Like the evolution in computing and solar panels, battery manufacturers are charging ahead with adding more capacity into each container. We’ll see this continue to evolve as manufacturers incorporate more functions – such as fire suppression and more evolved monitoring.

Long-term storage is now starting to sprout in the industry. Grid operators are looking at seasonal storage to keep continuous power supply as we integrate more and more solar and wind. This is a continuation of the duration evolution we’ve seen develop over the last decade: first, PJM was looking for 15–30-minute batteries for frequency regulation, then ERCOT started with 1-hour but is now shifting to 2 hours, CAISO is solidly at 4 hours and even starting to dip into 6-hour and longer options.

As more batteries are integrated into the electricity grid, they can decrease sharp peaks as California saw in September’s heat waves. But utilities want a flat line of generation, which means that while storage right now is able to address peaks and valleys, deployment of longer-term storage will begin to address the ramps up and down that come from renewable energy intermittency.

Some battery vendors have started announcing sodium-based battery technology. That brings even lower costs with potentially similar energy density. Technology innovation will drive down the cost, which is the goal: be most effective as an energy balancing asset. 

What should the industry’s main priorities be in 2024?

Staff up: Addressing trained resources that will be needed for massive deployment.  The US is currently not training enough power engineers to manage the work at utilities to transition our grid nor enough electricians to install those assets.

Prep for a large pool of projects that is coming – IEs and financiers need to be better staffed and resources to be able to provide the necessary support for the marketspace for the developer side of the fence.

PUC level and the interconnection approvers and authorities need to be more efficient in their approval of projects.

Continue the investment into standardisation. IEEE2800 is being developed right now to specify grid operation and testing requirements for inverter-based resources (IBR). With more deployment of large-scale energy storage systems, it’s important for the standards to be well defined so the projects can operate in the most efficient way with the electricity grids. OEMs and hardware providers must take these standards seriously, adopt them, test to them and deploy to the requirements.

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.

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’s been another fascinating year for technologies, markets, regulation and policy and we can’t wait to see what 2024 holds in store. Thanks to all of you for your support, and for your work to make this industry a truly exciting one to cover every day.

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10. Northvolt and Altris develop ‘breakthrough’ 160 Wh/kg sodium-ion battery for energy storage

21 November 2023

Sweden-headquartered battery gigafactory startup Northvolt and technology partner Altris unveiled their collective efforts in developing a sodium-ion battery that they claimed is of ‘breakthrough’ energy density.

Theirs registered 160Wh/kg. For reference, the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2023 lists average lithium-ion battery energy densities ranging from 120Wh/kg to 260Wh/kg.

“Our sodium-ion technology delivers the performance required to enable energy storage with longer duration than alternative battery chemistries, at a lower cost, thereby opening new pathways to deploying renewable power generation,” Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson said.

9. Tesla Megapack on fire in ‘minor incident’ at battery storage site in Australia

27 September 2023

Energy storage system safety remains a key priority of the industry, and of course, of our readers. It remains an unfortunate but unchangeable fact that while fires are rare, even minor incidents like this one attract major attention.

As a 50MW/100MWh BESS project in Queensland, Australia, reached the final stages of commissioning, one of its 40 Tesla Megapack units caught fire. Project owner and developer Genex Power said it was a “minor” incident and characterised the fire as “low intensity” and the fire was contained to the single Megapack without propagating to other units.

8. World’s largest pumped hydro plant project progresses in Queensland, Australia

9 June 2023

While lithium-ion battery technologies dominate new grid-scale energy storage announcements and many people see newer technologies like flow batteries and green hydrogen as contenders in longer duration applications, we shouldn’t forget that pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) still provides the lion’s share of global storage capacity.

In June, we reported that key contracts had been awarded for work on the 5GW Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro Project in Queensland, Australia. Water2Wire, a joint venture (JV) between GHD, Mott MacDonald and Stantec was picked by the state government for Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) duties.

7. Sunrun ‘rapidly transitioning to a storage-first company’, CEO says

6 November 2023

Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun said in an earnings call to explain quarterly results that the company, one of the US’ biggest residential solar PV installers, is “rapidly transitioning to a storage-first company”.

Courtesy of our colleagues at PV Tech, it was noted that Sunrun’s storage attachment rates reached 33% in Q3 2023, well above the national average of 11.1% recorded by Wood Mackenzie. The company saw a 131% year-on-year increase in its storage deployments, with a key focus on the California market.

6. ‘World-first’ grid-scale sodium-ion battery project in China launched

3 August 2023

As seen from the sodium-ion battery developed by Northvolt-Altris also featuring in this list, sodium has been big news for some time in R&D circles.

In Qingdao, China, what is claimed to be the world’s first grid-scale battery storage system based on sodium-ion technology is being installed at a data centre, indicating that sodium as a commercial prospect may soon be big news too.

According to technology provider Great Power, the system at Qingdao North Coast Data Center (QNCDC) boasts an energy density of 150Wh/kg. It will participate in delivering ancillary services in addition to reducing the data centre’s energy costs.

5. Moss Landing: World’s biggest battery storage project is now 3GWh capacity

2 August 2023

Vistra Energy’s lithium-ion landmark at the former gas turbine halls of Moss Landing, California, has become closely associated with the scale-up of the BESS industry. The first phase of 300MW/1,200MWh, was completed in 2020, followed by another 100MW/400MWh phase in 2021.

Completed in June this year, Vistra’s third phase at Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility brought the total output to 750MW and capacity to 3,000MWh. It was highly symbolic of the overall CAISO market in California, which around that time reached 5GW of grid-scale BESS deployments in its service area.  

4. LFP cell average falls below US$100/kWh as battery pack prices drop to record low in 2023

27 November 2023

Some good news, as it was confirmed by BloombergNEF that lithium battery prices fell again in 2023 after the downward trend was bucked in 2022.

Pack prices fell 14% on average from last year to a record low of US$139/kWh and by the end of this decade could be as low as US$80/kWh. Packs made in China are 11% cheaper than those made in the US and 26% cheaper than European-made packs.

BloombergNEF head of energy storage research Yayoi Sekine noted that battery prices have “been on a rollercoaster” in the past couple of years.

3. Enervenue to mass produce newest ‘30,000 cycle’ metal-hydrogen batteries in Kentucky

8 September 2023

The nickel-hydrogen battery technology developed by US startup Enervenue has attracted attention for its claimed superiority and cost competitiveness: capable of 30,000 cycles and intended to be used for short- and long-duration energy storage applications.

Enervenue launched the newest iteration of its Energy Storage Vessel (ESV) device, the 3kWh equivalent to a battery cell powering its technology, which will be built from a new factory in Kentucky, US. The company claimed it has more than 7GWh of booked customer orders for delivery beginning in 2025.

2. Rimac unveils ‘most technically advanced BESS in the world’, SineStack

27 September 2023

Energy storage and electric vehicle (EV) industry interest alike were attracted towards what Rimac, an OEM for high-end EVs, would produce when it turned its focus to stationary energy storage.

And Energy-Storage.news was first to bring you the big reveal in September, as Rimac product engineering manager Roger Moorhouse unveiled SineStack, a BESS solution claimed to have the best cycle life in the industry, at the Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe.  

SineStack also features distributed inverter topology which enables independent control over every 18 cells in a pack per inverter. Rimac will start mass production in 2025 with 300MW annual production capacity from its factory in Croatia, ramping up to 1GWh after a year and subsequently to more than 10GWh.

1. CATL battery storage unit disconnected at Marine Corps installation amid ‘concerns’ about project

11 December 2023

The most-read story came late in the year and we have yet to see what the consequences might be, if any. Battery storage equipment made by CATL, the world’s biggest lithium battery manufacturer, was disconnected at a project delivered for the US Marine Corps by utility Duke Energy.

It comes after years of China-US trade tensions in adjacent industries including solar PV, and with echoes of the way Huawei was eventually locked out of supplying communications infrastructure in the US. But, with Duke Energy having said the battery equipment was connected with “robust network security and safeguards fully in place”, and CATL having said its BESS only contains “passive” devices which do not collect data or connect directly to the grid, it remains to be seen what the outcome will be of the sudden disconnection, coming after Senator Marco Rubio and others accused CATL of close links with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

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Credit: Christoffer Riemer

Altus Power has closed on its acquisition of Project Hyperion, primarily located in the Carolinas and comprised of 121 MW in solar assets. 

Hyperion was acquired from funds advised by Basalt Infrastructure Partners and Soltage. The transaction expands Altus’ Southeast presence and introduces new government and municipal entities into the Altus portfolio.

“We are pleased to welcome new solar customers to the Altus portfolio and look forward to working with these high-quality government and municipal agencies to help them reach their sustainability goals through the use of clean, electric power,” says Gregg Felton, co-CEO of Altus Power. 

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Credit: Markus Braun

TurningPoint Energy (TPE) and Pivot Energy have announced their collaboration on six community solar projects in Maryland, totaling 16.6 MW of capacity. 

The projects, located in Howard, Prince George’s, and Garrett counties, are in the late stages of development and are expected to start construction next year. They mark the first collaboration between TPE and Pivot.

The six projects were developed by TPE under Maryland’s Community Solar Pilot Program, with three of the projects located in a census tract with recent coal closures. Over their lifetime, the projects are expected to generate approximately 20 million kWh annually, says TPE.

Pivot owns the projects and is responsible for overseeing construction and maintaining their long-term performance. Additionally, Pivot will acquire and manage customer subscriptions through SunCentral, their proprietary community solar platform. Baltimore Gas & Electric, Potomac Edison and Pepco customers are eligible to join one of the projects with no upfront costs. 

“We are excited to partner with TurningPoint Energy on these projects in Maryland,” says Luke Rickard, Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships at Pivot Energy. “TPE has been a leader in the Maryland community solar market since the beginning. Partners and projects like these demonstrate how community solar can advance the growth of new energy markets and positively impact local communities.”

For this portfolio of projects, TPE and Pivot have committed a total of $120,000 in planned donations to local organizations. 

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Transmission system operator (TSO) Terna estimates Italy will need 9GW/71GWh of new energy storage to integrate its growing renewables pipeline, an average duration of just under 8 hours.

That duration will be split between battery energy storage system (BESS) and select pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) projects, though even on the BESS side developers have been touting portfolios with durations up to 8 hours.

Eligible technologies Terna has outlined are primarily lithum-ion, PHES, compressed air energy storage (CAES), non-lithium electrochemical storage (other types of batteries etc), power-to-gas-to power storage (green hydrogen etc), electrostatic or magnetic storage and electromechanical flywheel storage. However, other technologies which meet its technical requirements are eligible, and the list will be updated every two years, it has said.

Terna and its regulators have been busy updating the electricity market in Italy to facilitate the rollout of energy storage and developers and operators have been announcing gigawatt-scale pipelines of projects throughout 2023. The latest was UK-based Octopus, announcing a 1.5GW BESS development partnership with local developer Nexta Capital a week ago.

On of the most important reforms is the creation of a new ‘time-shifting trading platform’ where energy storage capacity will be pooled into standardised time-shifting products to be offered to those who need to shift renewable production to periods of lower generation. Storage asset owners will make their physical asset available on the platform, and Terna will assign those assets to execute the time-shifting contracts.

The grid-scale market in Italy was the subject of a deep-dive in a recent edition of Solar Media’s quarterly journal PV Tech Power.

The state aid package is in line with the objectives of the EU’s European Green Deal and ‘Fit for 55’ package, alluding to the EU’s aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. It is similar in structure to one in Greece which started earlier this 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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The report largely focuses on how, with a need for more than 60GW of energy storage by the 2029-2030 financial year expected by India’s national Central Electricity Authority (CEA), competitive tenders have been a vital tool for promoting ESS.

As of November this year, 8GW of energy storage tenders had been held by various national and state government agencies in India, of which over 56% were specifically for pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).

Due to its lower levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), pumped hydro is likely to dominate in tenders, especially in those where longer durations of storage will be required, although IEEFA and JMK Research did not rule out cost declines for batteries turning that dynamic on its head. As longer durations become multi-day or seasonal, the authors saw green hydrogen become increasingly viable.

Source: IEEFA / JMK Research

That said, there are various types of tender structure, and the key proponent leading efforts at national level is the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), which the report’s authors pointed out has tried a variety of different models.

Beginning with tenders for solar-plus-storage plants, there have also been peak power supply tenders, round-the-clock (RTC) renewables tenders, tenders for standalone ESS, as well as a newer structure, firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) tenders.

Tenders appear to be working in their aim of lowering the cost of clean energy storage, with the report finding solar-plus-storage auction winning bid costs had fallen 23% from 2018 to 2022. SECI then-general manager Dr Bharath Reddy took part in a 2022 Energy-Storage.news webinar with consultancy Clean Horizon, discussing many of those early tender activities and their outcomes.

‘Ideal tender structure’: Firm and dispatchable renewable energy

IEEFA and JMK Research found FDRE to be the “ideal” tender design for India, one which can effectively drive coal and other fossil fuels off the energy system and “spark a boom in ESS investment and capacity additions this decade”.

“FDRE tenders, first issued in 2023, are demand profile-driven tenders to ensure firmness and dispatchability of renewable energy, and create a win-win scenario for power developers and offtakers,” Jyoti Gulia, JMK Research founder, said.

“With similar power quality and declining costs of renewable energy and ESS, FDRE can potentially replace thermal [generation], a situation electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs) are already exploring.”

Essentially, request for proposal (RFP) documents in FDRE tenders will specify the demand profile of energy the hosting agency or offtaker wishes to be supplied with. Whereas peak power supply tenders seek energy resources at times of peak demand, and RTC tenders seek 24-hour renewable energy, FDRE tenders are tailored to different types of demand profile.

That said, different tender structures will likely be suited for different circumstances, with RTC tenders returning lower cost tariffs than peak power supply due to their higher utilisation of the ESS resource, for example.

There is still a long road ahead for India to reach the 41.7GW/208.3GWh of battery storage and 18.9GW of PHES it needs by FY2029-2030, and revenues developers can earn from winning contracts in tenders will likely need to be part of a stack that includes other streams like energy trading on power markets.

The government is also directly supporting around 4GWh of standalone energy storage facilities to kick start the market with so-called viability gap funding, and IEEFA and JMK Research pointed out that ESS has been identified as a key component of India’s national transmission plan issued in December 2022 by the Ministry of Power. Meanwhile a tradeable Energy Storage Obligation (ESO) has been added to renewables purchase schemes.

The report’s authors noted that the challenges to overcome include the high Capex cost of ESS, long lead times for project development and transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure that is sub-optimal.

There is also a lack of domestic manufacturing capability, with India’s few ESS manufacturers assembling packs from imported battery cells. As with its dependency on imported solar PV products, the government is seeking to address this dynamic with its Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for setting up 50GWh of advanced cell battery manufacturing in India.  

“India aims to augment its variable renewable energy (VRE) installed capacity (solar and wind) from 117GW to more than 392GW by 2030. This surge in VRE penetration needs to be supported by a simultaneous growth in ESS capacity,” JMK Research’s Jyoti Gulia said.

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Deriva Energy has commenced commercial operation at Pike Solar in El Paso County, Colo., which is set to provide energy to Colorado Springs Utilities through a 17-year PPA.

Pike Solar, located on 1,310 acres south of Colorado Springs, has a 175 MW capacity and is the first solar plant under commercial operation under the new Deriva banner. 

“We are grateful for the support of the local community, state stakeholders, and our dedicated team for bringing this solar plant to completion,” says Chris Fallon, Deriva Energy president. “This is a critical step closer to achieving Colorado Springs Utilities’ sustainable energy goals and look forward to powering homes and businesses with new, clean electricity.”

JUWI completed the development, engineering and construction of the project and will provide operation and maintenance services for Pike Solar. Deriva Energy will own the plant and share operations and maintenance responsibilities with JUWI.

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Corrado De Gasperis

Comstock has secured sufficient supplier commitments to begin commissioning the company’s first PV recycling facility, in the U.S. Southwest, upon receipt of necessary permits.

The company’s Metals division is currently deploying a demonstration commercializing technologies for crushing, conditioning, extracting and recycling metal and mineral concentrates from PVs and other electronic devices. Comstock has received a storage permit and expects to receive the remaining permits by early next year.

“A critical 2023 objective was securing revenue-generating orders for recycling decommissioned solar panels in our first facility,” says Corrado De Gasperis, Comstock’s executive chairman and CEO. “The associated clients are ready to begin supplying decommissioned panels to our demonstration-scale facility on a continuous basis. Our technology and renewable solutions provide a superior alternative to landfilling these polluting materials.”

“We represent a safe, zero-landfill, end-of-life solution for solar installers, landfills, and utility-scale solar developers and generators, serving the entire Southwestern US and beyond,” adds Comstock Metals president Dr. Fortunato Villamagna. 

“Large volumes of end-of-life photovoltaic materials are rapidly becoming available from large solar fields, effectively creating an environmental dilemma for our ecosystem. Comstock’s solution ensures the safe deconstruction, decontamination, separation, and productive reuse of important and precious metals contained in end-of-life photovoltaic materials.”

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The project, dubbed the Richborough Energy Park battery, is owned by asset manager Sosteneo Infrastructure Partners which acquired it from developer Pacific Green in July 2023, as reported by our sister site Solar Power Portal.

Most BESS projects in the UK connect into the lower-voltage networks run by distribution network operators (DNOs) rather than National Grid’s high-voltage network. Benefits of the latter include a more reliable connection and better visibility in National Grid control rooms.

One of the first UK developers to opt for transmission-connected BESS projects was Pivot Power, which was acquired by EDF Renewables.

The BESS project was built on a brownfield site which previously occupied a coal-fired power station. As Energy-Storage.news has previously written, building renewables on sites formerly housing legacy power plants allows for the use of existing grid capacity.

Richborough substation hosts the connection for National Grid own 1GW Nemo Link interconnector with Belgium while the 300MW Thanet Offshore Wind Farm also connects into an adjacent substation on the wider Richborough Energy Park site.

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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