[Graeme]

The Top 10 Energy Storage Stories of 2014

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')here’s no doubt that 2014 was a breakout year for grid energy storage -- and if the industry plays its cards right, it could lay the groundwork for a lot more breakout years to come. Over the past twelve months, we’ve seen the creation of some of the first utility contracts for distributed, behind-the-meter battery deployments at a mass scale, many of them linked with rooftop solar. Prices for lithium-ion batteries keep falling, and new technologies are coming in to fill the gaps. And despite some well-publicized flameouts, the industry is moving past pilot stage and making a play for full-scale commercialization.

So what were the biggest energy storage stories of the past year? Here are our top ten picks, starting with the state that set the bar for developments this year -- California. There’s no other place in the world that’s pushing the market in so many different directions. Indeed, the state's 1.3-gigawatts-by-2020 mandate, which seemed bold when passed in 2013, is now being surpassed in the near term by projects from transmission scale to distributed, behind-the-meter solar and EV-linked systems.

1) If we had to pick one California grid storage event of 2014 as the most important, it would be Southern California Edison's Local Capacity Procurement (LCR) for its power-constrained West Los Angeles Basin region. In a big show of support for energy storage as a cost-effective, long-term resource, SCE in November procured 250 megawatts of storage, more than five times its mandated requirement. SCE’s picks also included a broad mix of storage assets, from distributed batteries and ice-making air conditioners, to the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery, and a tight focus on solving very local distribution grid needs, as well as achieving the utility’s long-term goals.

[Graeme]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'F')rom 2 different posts:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '2')GW of energy storage.

[Graeme]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide used for energy storage products

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')hemists and engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) have discovered a fascinating new way to take some of the atmospheric carbon dioxide that's causing the greenhouse effect and use it to make an advanced, high-value material for use in energy storage products.

This innovation in nanotechnology won't soak up enough carbon to solve global warming, researchers say. However, it will provide an environmentally friendly, low-cost way to make nanoporous graphene for use in "supercapacitors" - devices that can store energy and release it rapidly.

Such devices are used in everything from heavy industry to consumer electronics.

The findings were just published in Nano Energy by scientists from the OSU College of Science, OSU College of Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of South Florida and the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Albany, Oregon. The work was supported by OSU.

In the chemical reaction that was developed, the end result is nanoporous graphene, a form of carbon that's ordered in its atomic and crystalline structure. It has an enormous specific surface area of about 1,900 square meters per gram of material. Because of that, it has an electrical conductivity at least 10 times higher than the activated carbon now used to make commercial supercapacitors.

[Graeme]

German Solar Power Storage System Prices Drop 25%

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')rices for German solar power storage systems have reportedly fallen 25% since the spring. The data come from the German Solar Industry Association (BSW-Solar).

Also according to BSW-Solar, approximately 15,000 German households now use battery storage combined with solar power, and that number has been growing faster and faster as the costs have come down. As an example of that, KfW, Germany’s development bank, approved 32% more funding applications for home storage in the third quarter of this year than in the second. Needless to say, I think word is getting around that this is a smart move for many now that storage costs have fallen.

“This is a nice Christmas present for the Energiewende, Germany’s energy transition, and for all operators of solar power systems. Affordable solar storage systems mean that operators can now fulfill their wish for more energy independence and can count on stable electricity prices in the long term,” says Carsten Körnig, Managing Director of BSW-Solar.

“Due to technological advances and growing demand, the average prices for battery storage systems have fallen by around 25 percent between the first and the second half of 2014,” the BSW-Solar press release states.

Solar power storage isn’t only growing in Germany, though. For sure, it is growing at a nice rate in Japan and Australia. Furthermore, the US solar + storage market is projected to see strong growth in 2015 and the following years. This is partly driven by the continued drop in solar power prices, but also a quick drop in battery storage prices.

[Graeme]

Grid Batteries for Wind, Solar Find First Customers

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')everal new types of battery, each capable of cost-effectively storing the energy output from a wind or solar farm, are finally being hooked up to power grids. The so-called grid batteries could lower the cost of renewable energy by eliminating the intermittency problem that arises when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

On Wednesday, Aquion Energy, a Pittsburgh-based startup that makes one such battery, announced that the technology will allow a small electricity grid in Hawaii to run around the clock on solar power.

Conventional batteries would be too expensive or unreliable to use for grid-scale storage. The new batteries coming online use materials and manufacturing processes that not only lower costs but should also allow them to last for decades (see “Storing the Sun” and “A Battery to Prop Up Renewable Energy Hits the Market”).

Similar grid-battery projects are taking off in California, propelled by new regulations designed to accommodate shifts in renewable energy (see “A Battery Made of Iron Could Improve the Economics of Solar and Wind Power”). Last month, Ambri, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that makes batteries out of molten metal, announced that it would connect its batteries to the grid for the first time later this year in a series of pilot projects in Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, and Alaska (see “Ambri’s Better Battery”).

The new battery technologies aren’t yet cheaper than natural gas plants—the current technology of choice for backing up renewables—in all situations. That’s largely because the batteries are being produced in low volumes.

[Graeme]

Trends in Residential Solar Energy Storage

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he global market for grid-connected residential photovoltaic (PV) solar installations with energy storage is predicted to grow tenfold to reach more than 900MW in 2018, up from just 90MW in 2014, according to IHS Technology. That is tremendous growth, but with global installed PV capacity estimated at about 133GW in 2013, energy storage installation has to overcome many technical hurdles and market challenges before we see widespread adoption.

Fueling the growth that this market has recently experienced is a combination of things, not the least of which is falling prices. Sam Wilkinson, Associate Director for the Power and Energy Group at IHS and the author of the IHS research report said that he “absolutely expects battery prices to continue falling.” He attributes the cost drop mostly to falling prices of lithium-ion batteries, which will fall a further 35% through 2018. A number of countries are investing in R&D, which will bring advance battery technologies. The electric vehicle market is also helping to drive improvements in technology while driving down costs through economies of scale, Wilkinson noted.

[Graeme]

Grid-Scale Energy Storage Is Expected To Generate More Than $68 Billion In Revenue Between 2014-2024, According To Navigant Research

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he revenue generated worldwide by grid-scale energy storage between 2014–2024 is predicted to total $68.5 billion, as per a recent report from Navigant Research.

The report — which analyzed the global market for utility-scale energy storage for bulk + ancillary service applications — notes that despite the start-stop nature of the market’s growth over the last few years, it seems to be on the verge of a sea change, with significant growth expected in the near-future.

This growth is expected to come, unsurprisingly, via the actions of grid operators looking to diversify assets/infrastructure as a means of balancing loads with the rise of distributed generation.

“Developing energy storage that is viable for grid applications has been a goal of vendors and grid operators for a number of years,” states Anissa Dehamna, a senior research analyst with Navigant Research. “Recently a number of factors, including the falling price for lithium-ion battery systems, have begun to converge to bring that goal close to fruition.”

While the dominant storage technology as of right now is incumbent pumped storage (with regard to installed capacity), changes are afoot, as the report notes. Lithium-ion, flow battery, compressed air, and power-to-gas technologies are all looking likely see a significant uptick in use over the years ahead.

[Graeme]

The Battery Revolution: A Technology Disruption, Economics and Grid Level Application Discussion with Eos Energy Storage

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ecent advancements in energy storage technology could finally make renewables, such as wind and solar, truly viable economic alternatives to fossil fuels when it comes to generating power. The ability to store power bridges the reliability gaps that occur with renewables, when, on any given day, the sun just doesn’t shine bright enough or the wind doesn’t blow hard enough to feed the hungry power grid.

So what is this amazing new technology? It’s batteries – yes, batteries.

But we aren’t talking about any old battery here; rather, we are talking about super batteries with the ability to store megawatt-sized loads, enough to power entire neighborhoods or towns if need be. While you could theoretically achieve the same result by stringing together the type of batteries used to power your laptop or smartphone, the cost of doing so would be economically prohibitive. But entrepreneurial companies, such as Ambri and Eos Energy Storage, are pursuing the next generation of battery technology, with the aim of bringing storage costs down significantly for utilities.

So what is considered to be a reasonable cost? The analysts at Citibank believe that battery storage costs should be between $230/kWh to $150/kWh to be financially attractive enough to see these mega-batteries deployed in large numbers across the power grid. They say the industry should reach this level somewhere around 2030 and expects 240GW of power storage capacity to be deployed by then, which would be worth around $400 billion.

The folks over at Eos believe the future is now. They say that they can produce battery systems with the ability to reach costs as low as $160/kWh – storing power efficiently and inexpensively. Investors are now clamoring to get a piece of Eos. On Monday, the company announced that it had secured $15 million in financing from AltEnergy LLC, an energy technology and infrastructure focused investment firm, with plans to raise an additional $10 million with strategic investors, for total gross proceeds of $25 million.

With such industry interest in battery technology, I sat down with Philippe Bouchard, vice president of business development at Eos, to discuss grid-level storage and how technology is fuelling this new revolution in batteries. The following interview has been edited and condensed for publication.

[Graeme]

37 Battery Storage Companies To Watch

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s I wrote in my piece on cleantech trends from 2014 and expected cleantech trends in 2015, the battery storage market is really blossoming. There are now quite a number of battery startups and battery departments within big corporations that seem to have promising products arriving on the market or soon to arrive on the market. There are also some that have been on the market for years but are now getting a lot more competitive.

I’m going to run down my list of companies to watch right here, but this page will also be updated as new battery companies pop onto the radar or fall off of it. I’m probably missing a few too, so feel free to drop them in the comments below the article for me to add them.

[Graeme]

4 Things to Watch For in the 2015 Energy Storage Market

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he energy storage market really began to heat up in 2014, but 2015 promises a faster pace and bigger scale, according to Ravi Manghani, senior energy storage analyst with GTM Research. Here's what to keep an eye on in this year.

California’s energy storage roadmap

Everyone is watching the deals brought on by California’s AB 2514, which called for 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage. This year will see a lot of action around the bidding process to procure that capacity, but it will still be a while before those bids turn into deployments.

Keep an eye on California and its energy storage roadmap, which was released in December. The document calls for high-, medium- and low-priority items for the California Public Utility Commission and Independent System Operator to consider.

Among the highest priorities are examining opportunities for storage to defer or displace distribution upgrades; clarifying wholesale rate treatment and net energy tariffs; clarifying existing transmission and distribution interconnection processes; and evaluating the potential for a streamlined or "fast track" distribution interconnection process for storage resources.

Also in California, keep an eye on San Diego Gas & Electric’s energy storage procurement as part of its local capacity requirement RFO. It won’t be as big as Southern California Edison’s, but storage could come in at far more than the minimum 25 megawatts. Manghani says the figure could easily be double or triple that.

Oncor

[Graeme]

Calculating the True Cost of Energy Storage

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ith regard to energy storage systems, many people erroneously think that the only cost they should consider is the initial – that is, the cost of generating electricity per kilowatt-hour. However, they are not aware of another very important factor.

This is the so-called LCOE, levelized cost of energy (also known as cost of electricity by source), which helps calculate the price of the electricity generated by a specific source. The LCOE also includes other costs associated with producing or storing that energy, such as maintenance and operating costs, residual value, the useful life of the system and the round-trip efficiency. Some of these factors will be discussed in this article, so if you want to get a solid grasp of the matter, check the information provided below.


The good news is, flow batteries can be charged and discharged a million times without wearing out. Hence, cycling is not an issue with this type of battery, and you should keep this in mind before selecting an energy storage system. Think twice about whether you want to use batteries that wear out too quickly because their useful life depends on the number of times they are charged and discharged. Or would you rather use flow batteries, the LCOE of which is much lower than that of standard batteries?

So, what do we have so far?

LCOE = Round-trip efficiency + maintenance costs + useful life of the energy system.

These are three of the most important factors that determine the LCOE. Make sure you consider all the factors that determine the true cost of energy storage systems before you buy one.

[Graeme]

Here's How the US Solar-Storage Market Reaches $1B in 3 Years

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')TM Research projects a $1 billion U.S. market for battery-backed solar PV systems by 2018. But that growth won’t come evenly -- and which of the 40-plus contenders in solar storage will succeed remains an open question.

GTM Research’s new report, The Future of Solar-Plus-Storage in the U.S., lays out some key success factors for companies seeking to capture a share of this new market, which is set to grow fiftyfold to 318 cumulative megawatts installed by 2018. In dollar terms, solar-storage investment will grow from $48 million in 2014 to about $1 billion in 2018 -- and in terms of penetration, nearly one in ten commercial and industrial solar installations will come with batteries by then, according to the report.

Most of the growth will be in California, the current leader in solar PV and grid batteries, and other states with grid storage incentives or utility-driven procurements underway, like New York and Hawaii. These are also key target markets for the four of the country’s top ten residential solar installers now offering energy storage, notably SolarCity and NRG Energy -- but the commercial and industrial (C&I) sector offers much more promise of steady payback. The following chart shows state-by-state breakdowns for C&I solar-storage installations over the next four years.

[Graeme]

This Dutch Innovation May Solve The Energy Storage Problem

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') few weeks ago I attended a small, commercial, energy storage conference in Brussels organized by Energywise where I heard a most intriguing talk on building a large pumped storage hydro scheme in Holland.

The talk was delivered by Dr. Jan Huynen, the president of SOGECOM who struck me as being a very serious energy engineer. The project is nearing fruition, with a €1.8 billion price tag and 1.4 GW of supply for 6 hours yielding 8 GWh per daily cycle, this is no toy. Holland is of course totally flat!

Is this just another Green pipe dream? Or does it offer a solution to the apparently intractable problem of energy storage?

There is of course nothing new about pumped storage hydro. But all existing schemes use natural relief and elevation to create the head required to store gravitational potential energy that creates pressure and power. What makes Flat-land Large-scale Electricity Storage (FLES) unique is that the whole system is located underground (Figure 1). This of course adds cost but also, as we shall see, it offers substantial benefits.

[Graeme]

I don't like promoting commercial products but this might be necessary for those in the business:

Navigant Research Leaderboard Report: Energy Storage System integrators

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s battery prices for stationary storage continue to decrease, more scrutiny is being applied to other areas in the value chain. One area of critical importance for the energy storage market is energy storage systems integration (ESSI). This is particularly important in the utility and commercial storage segments, which are growing quickly but often require customization and lengthy interaction with the end user. Certain vendors are now differentiating themselves on technical capabilities, business models, or financing offers. Whereas ESSI players were rare 3 years ago, today new entrants are populating the market. In fact, several of the players assessed in this report are in stealth mode or are specialists in another area of the value chain—in short, they are not ESSI players.

Systems integrators possess the technical and experiential capability to physically integrate hardware and software components into a working energy storage system (ESS) that meets an end user's requirements. It is the ESSI vendor's responsibility to ensure that the system delivers a return on investment. All of the vendors assessed in this study are consistent across both strategy and execution. Players that have differentiated themselves include firms with strong, compelling, and scalable models and ESSI offers. These firms may not offer the most highly differentiated technical solutions, but they have well-thought out strategies with innovative offers that are responsive to observable market demand.

This Navigant Research Leaderboard Report examines the strategy and execution of 12 leading energy storage systems integrators. These ESSI players are rated on 12 criteria: vision, go-to-market strategy, partners, production strategy, technology, geographic reach, sales, marketing, and distribution, product performance, product quality and reliability, product portfolio, pricing, and staying power. Using Navigant Research's proprietary Leaderboard methodology, vendors are profiled, rated, and ranked with the goal of providing industry participants with an objective assessment of these companies' relative strengths and weaknesses in the global ESSI market.

Top 10 Vendors:

1. AES Energy Storage
2. NEC Energy Solutions
3. RES Americas
4. LG CNS
5. Younicos
6. Green Charge Networks
7. Sharp
8. Greensmith Energy Management Systems
9. ZBB Energy
10. S&C Electric

[Graeme]

IRENA launches energy storage technology roadmap

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he International Renewable Energy Agency has published a technology roadmap aimed at accelerating the deployment of electrical storage for renewable energy.

‘Renewables and Electricity Storage’, believed to be the first roadmap of its kind for storage, identifies a number of priority actions where it believes industry and governments worldwide can work together in supporting the growth of electrical energy storage (EES).

The roadmap estimates that to meet international renewable energy targets, some 150GW of battery storage and 325GW of pumped hydro storage will be needed. IRENA’s ‘REmap 2030’ report believes a doubling of renewable generation in the electricity system to 45% if possible by 2030, but only with the support of enabling technologies such as storage.

“Now is the time to think about integrating large-scale battery storage into the global energy system,” said IRENA director general Adnan-Z Amin. “This roadmap is a starting point for all policy makers seeking to integrate greater storage capabilities, which is necessary to ensure the world is ready for the next phase of growth for renewable power systems.”

The document identifies 14 actions across five priority areas. These include electricity storage to support renewables in islands and remote areas, consumer-located storage for self-consumption in countries with high shares of rooftop PV, generator and grid-located storage for countries with grid infrastructure constraints and system analysis tools for countries preparing to transition their power sector towards renewables.

[Graeme]

Tesla Already Forcing Down Battery Storage Prices In Australia

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he release of the Tesla battery storage concept at the end of April has certainly changed the discourse around battery storage, and caused some to rethink their energy business models. And it appears it is already having an impact on prices in the nascent Australian battery storage market.

Two wholesale pricing announcements have caught the eye in recent weeks. One is the pricing on the 7.2kWh Legato product from AU Optronics that AGL Energy is making available to consumers in Queensland this month.

[Graeme]

The First Energy Revolution: Tesla Energy Changes Everything

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')esla Motors CEO Elon Musk recently introduced Tesla Energy, a suite of stationary battery products designed to help wean the world off fossil fuels. While a battery introduction may not seem like a world-changing event to many, it actually heralds the beginning of the First Energy Revolution and will begin to remake the world as we know it.


The recent April 30th announcement by Elon Musk introducing Tesla Energy along with its suite of stationary battery products is a development several orders of magnitude larger than even the Gigafactory itself (though it depends on the Gigafactory as a foundational component). This is because this announcement heralds the beginning of cheap, ubiquitous electric power storage for homes and businesses, while scaling up to the megawatt levels necessary for utilities. Our houses, our companies, and our commercial infrastructure already rely on electric power, and this effective and efficient storage component has been a significant missing piece of the clean, renewable, and reliable energy picture. Other stationary battery products have already hit the market, but none offer the combination of cutting edge technology, extreme low-cost, infinite scalability, and sheer product volume that Tesla Energy’s product line will deliver.

Our past energy paradigm was largely based on central power generation from large power plants, which often need to be situated far from our homes, businesses and institutions. As a central resource, fossil fuel power generation has been subject to numerous single failure points which often lead to widespread outages. With relatively few generation points, it was also subject to energy market manipulations for those seeking ever greater profits.

Tesla Energy’s stationary battery systems support a decentralized power generation architecture. In this evolved design, the current centralized power-generation plants (controlled by a few key organizations) are replaced by thousands of smaller power-generation systems that feed a smart, self-repairing power grid. Instead of the whole grid being at risk of failure due to a critical issue at a single central facility, thousands of battery-backed power generation points feed the smart grid from all directions, ensuring that the grid as a whole stays up, even if a fault develops. With local, institutional and large utility battery backup systems in place, the smart-power grid as a whole becomes robust, reliable, and fault-tolerant.

[Graeme]

PUMPED HYDRO ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ydro power is not only a renewable and sustainable energy source, but its flexibility and storage capacity also make it possible to improve grid stability and to support the deployment of other intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. As a result, a renewed interest in PHES and a demand for the rehabilitation of old, small hydro power plants are emerging globally.

This is one of the conclusions of an interesting paper called “Pumped hydro energy storage system: A technological review” by Shafiqur Rehman et al. The authors review the existing global Pumped Hydroelectric Energy Storage (PHES) capacities, technological development, and hybrid systems (wind-hydro, solar PV-hydro, and wind-PV-hydro) and recommend the best possible options.

Why we need PHES

Renewable and clean energy sources such as wind, solar, wave, tidal, biomass, municipal waste, etc., are intermittent in nature and hence are unable to produce continuous and nameplate capacities. So to hook wind or solar power, for example, with the grid and assure quality power supply, large energy storage systems are required.

PHES is important because it can help countries more efficiently integrate their variable renewable power, like wind and solar, into the power system. It does this by providing a dynamic response and offering critical back-up during periods of excess demand.

[Newfie]

Whenever I read these kind of stories I think about Nature and how it transforms solar into stored energy through photosynthesis. Nature has been working on this problem for a few billion years and has developed a self replicating energy capture and storage system that requires no maintence and which automatically adjusts to changing conditions.

Why isn't that just good enough?

[Graeme]

Advanced Energy Storage Demand to Quadruple in China in 10 Years

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') new report projects that China's advanced energy storage market will be four times its current market value by 2025, worth $8.7 billion and totaling 31 gigawatt-hours.

This "advanced energy storage" market identified by Lux Research covers more sophisticated electrochemical systems, such as lithium-ion cells and flow batteries, and excludes older chemistries such as lead-acid.

The title of the report, Clearing the Haze: Demystifying Energy Storage Opportunities in China, reveals some of the top drivers for energy storage in the country.

As the push to cut air pollution increases, the Chinese government has exceeded its own aggressive targets for renewable energy in an attempt to wean the country off coal.