North America has well over 20 GW of utility-scale PV with hundreds of MWs coming on yearly. Energy storage can help maximize the production of both existing and new utility-scale PV installations. In this free guide, Dynapower — the leading manufacturer of utility-scale inverters with over 350 MWs installed worldwide — provides a comprehensive overview of the three systems for coupling solar with storage — AC-coupled, hybrid plus storage, and a new approach DC-coupled with a converter. In addition to a system overview of each solution, Dynapower provides an analysis of the value streams each system type can bring online for installation owners to boost production and revenues.

All told Dynapower provides an overview of six energy storage enabled value streams — Clipping Recapture, Curtailment & Outage Recapture, Low Voltage Harvesting, Capacity Firming, Energy Time Shifting, and Ramp Rate Control.

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Arguing that energy storage is “critical to ensuring a resilient, reliable, cost-effective and sustainable grid”, the Energy Storage Association joined with 52 other organisations to plead the place of storage in the Trump’s administration’s infrastructure priorities.

Penning a letter to Congress, the coalition of energy storage advocates asserted that any dialogue on enhancing and rebuilding infrastructure and modernising the grid must involve energy storage systems. Signing the letter alongside ESA’s leadership were companies and groups including Johnson Controls, Lockheed Martin, 24m Technologies, AES Energy Storage, LG Chem, Enel Green Power North America, Green Charge, Greensmith, National Electrical Contractors Association, Panasonic, Parker Hannifin, Siemens, Stem, Sunverge, UL and several others.

“If you want to talk about grid resiliency, energy storage is part of that conversation. If you want to talk about load modulation, demand response, storage is a part of that conversation,” Matt Roberts, executive director of ESA, told Energy-Storage.News back in February, noting the significant opportunity for storage in the federal government’s expressed priorities.

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“Energy storage systems are critical to ensuring a resilient, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable grid,” a letter sent on April 3 by the Energy Storage Association and 52 industry organizations admonished the leaders of the U.S. Congress – asking the lawmakers to see energy storage as a policy priority when they discuss infrastructure projects in the coming months.

Addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin-1^st District), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California-12^th District) , the correspondence emphasized that energy storage systems are “fuel neutral” – and therefore, would support any generation resource connected to the grid, whether fossil fuel or renewable.

What’s more, the signatories said, the U.S. has a leading global industry position to protect. Indeed, in the fourth quarter of 2016, alone, the nation deployed 141 MW of energy storage – and experts expect the market to grow by tenfold over the next several years.

As costs of the technology decline and adoption rates climb, the global industry is expected to surge to more than $240 billion annually by 2040, “and if the U.S. competes to stay at the forefront, it can employ and support hundreds of thousands of Americans,” the letter said.

But it is not just about dollars and cents, the association and the industry principals stated. Energy storage deployment enjoys bipartisan support because of the direct and tangible benefits that it delivers on the grid. They pointed out that both Republican and Democratic governors have implemented programs supporting early storage deployments.

“For example, utilities in Texas, Utah, and New York have proposed energy storage as a smart, cost-effective complement to their wires and substations,” the letter detailed, providing the following other examples:

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Since the invention of electricity there is always a challenge to store it for future use. With the technological advancement, battery storage has offered a way to store energy chemically-especially renewable energy, so that it can be used at the point of demand or to balance grid. Amid surge in solar and wind power generation and their intermittent nature, the battery storage demand has increased manifold, and now batteries are big enough to give power backup to mega cities.

As the renewable energy share rises in the energy mix, there is an increased focus on energy storage projects in recent years. They are expected to play a key in the global transition to renewable energy.

In a report by GlobalData estimated the installed capacity of global battery energy storage system (BESS) from 1.5 Gigawatts (GW) in 2015 to over 14 GW by 2020, as many projects are scheduled to be commissioned over the period.

The report projected the US to continue to lead the BESS market over the next five years, reaching a market value of approximately $1.7bn by 2020.

BESS prices are also forecast to decline by about 50% over the 2015 to 2020 period, due to technological innovations, improvement in manufacturing processes, and increase in competitiveness.

Here are the biggest battery storage projects across the globe:

1. The Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System

AES is planning to build the Alamitos Battery Energy Storage System in Long Beach, California. It will have 300 MW of interconnected and 600 MW of flexible, zero-emission battery energy storage.

The company claims it as the world’s biggest storage resource, which is expected to enable efficient use of renewable energy resources, lowers costs and emissions, and offer increased reliability to the electrical grid.

The company is already developing a 100MW battery storage facility at the Alamitos Power Center. In November 2014, AES Southland was awarded a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) by Southern California Edison (SCE) for the storage plant.

2. EDF Energy Renewables West Burton 49MW Battery Storage Project

In August last year, EDF Energy Renewables has secured a contract from the UK’s National Grid to build 49 MW of battery storage project at its West Burton Combined Cycle Gas power station in Nottinghamshire.

The contract was part of a new 200 MW frequency response system to improve the reliability of the UK grid. EDF Group has applied for planning permission for the battery storage units at EDF Energy’s West Burton.

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Researchers from the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are making available the most detailed component and system-level cost breakdowns to date for residential photovoltaic (PV) solar systems equipped with energy storage-and quantifying previously unknown soft costs for the first time.

The report, titled “Installed Cost Benchmarks and Deployment Barriers for Residential Solar Photovoltaics with Energy Storage: Q1 2016,” was written by researchers from NREL, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Energy Department.

“There is rapidly growing interest in pairing distributed PV with storage, but there’s a lack of publicly available cost data and analysis,” said Kristen Ardani, lead author of the report and a solar technology markets and policy analyst at NREL. “By expanding NREL’s well-established component- and system-level cost modeling methodology for solar PV technologies to PV-plus-storage systems, this report is the first in a series of benchmark reports that will document progress in cost reductions for the emerging PV-plus-storage market over time.”

Declining costs in customer-side energy-storage products have opened the door for batteries to improve the value and flexibility of residential PV systems while falling costs in PV technologies have been driving the growing adoption of combined PV and storage solutions. However, gaps remain in developing an in-depth understanding of the costs of combined PV and battery systems and in effectively communicating their value proposition.

Through in-depth analysis of those costs and barriers to adoption, the report’s authors provide technology manufacturers, installers, and other stakeholders with invaluable information to help guide their efforts to identify cost reduction opportunities. In addition, the analysis informs decision makers on market factors that are headwinds to further growth.

The analysis covers alternating current (AC)- and direct current (DC)-coupled systems for residential use, as well as retrofitting batteries to installed arrays, and the costs of enhancing the resiliency benefits of the combined system by switching to a battery with greater capacity. Both systems are designed to provide back-up power for critical loads in the event of a grid outage, and they enable a typical customer to optimize self-consumption of PV electricity-including peak-demand shaving and time-of-use shifting.

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PUNE, India — According to a new market research report, “The Thermal Energy Storage Market, By Technology, Storage Material, Application, End-User, and Region – Global Forecast To 2022,” published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from an estimated $3.67 billion in 2017 to $6.20 billion by 2022, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11 percent from 2017 to 2022.

The global market is witnessing a significant growth due to rising impetus on renewable energy generation such as concentrated solar power, increasing demand for thermal energy storage systems in HVAC, and government incentives for thermal energy storage systems.

The sensible heat storage segment is expected to hold the largest share of the thermal energy storage market, by technology, during the forecast period. 

The sensible heat storage segment led the overall thermal energy storage market in 2016. Sensible heat storage of thermal energy has a number of residential and industrial applications. Underground storage of sensible heat in both liquid and solid storage medium is also used for typically large-scale applications such as district heating and cooling systems. Increased applications of sensible heat based thermal storage in the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific is projected to drive the market during the forecast period.

Molten salt is expected to hold the largest market share of the thermal energy storage market, by storage material, during the forecast period. 

Molten salts have high boiling points, low viscosity, low vapor pressure, and high volumetric heat capacities. A higher heat capacity corresponds to a smaller storage tank volume. Molten salt can function as a large-scale thermal storage method that would allow other energy sources, such as solar, to become more feasible by smoothing out the fluctuations in demand and weather. Looking to the future after depleting carbon-based fuel, the successful demonstration of molten salt storage for solar power, provides an edge for tapping into the desert areas to meet power demands. The Middle East and Africa market is driven by the implementation of concentrating solar projects based on molten salt storage material.

The Middle East and Africa is the largest market for thermal energy storage. 

In this report, the thermal energy storage market has been analyzed with respect to four regions, namely, the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East and Africa. The Middle East and Africa is estimated to be the largest market for thermal energy storage by 2022. Heat thermal storage and molten salt thermal storage are major technology types employed in South Africa. The majority of thermal storage projects are present in Northern Cape in the country. South Africa is endowed with enormous solar and wind resources. This will drive the thermal energy storage market in the country during the forecast period.

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Between the political bickering following a spate of blackouts in South Australia and the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeting that he had a fix, and then the South Australian government announcing that it will build a grid-connected battery storage facility, interest in renewable energy storage has never been higher.

While lithium ion batteries sold by Tesla and others are perhaps the most widely known storage technology, several other energy storage options are either already on the market, or are fast making their way there.

All are hoping to claim a slice of what, by all indications, will be a very large pie. The Australian Energy Market Operator forecasts that more than 1.1m new battery storage systems will be installed in Australian households by 2035. And, according to a 2015 report by the Climate Council, battery storage capacity is expected to grow 50-fold in under a decade.

“The market for storage is huge,” says Kevin Moriarty, the executive chairman of 1414 Degrees, an Adelaide-based thermal storage company hoping to win South Australia’s 100MW storage system tender. The South Australian system will be the largest in Australia so far but Moriarty describes it as “a drop in the ocean” compared with what will be needed as Australia transitions away from carbon-dioxide emitting fossil fuels.

The need for energy storage solutions is the natural consequence of an energy grid that has an increasing amount of renewable energy sources. Solar powerplants don’t produce energy when the sun doesn’t shine and windfarms grind to a halt when the wind doesn’t blow.

At the grid level, the resulting fluctuations in supply, combined with demand that can rapidly spike during hot weather, for example, can play havoc with the steady 50Hz electricity supply needed to power everything from microwaves to factory production lines.

Traditionally, fossil fuel-powered turbines are used to rapidly respond to load changes. If switched on when needed, electricity output ramps up or down so that there is enough electricity, at the right frequency, to supply demand.

Renewable energy storage systems, which include batteries and thermal storage systems, run from small household units to power plant and grid-scale technologies. What they aim to do is enable electricity to be released into the system when it is needed – so-called load shifting – rather than only when solar collectors or wind turbines are operating.

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Solar cells are constantly getting better at collecting energy from sunlight, but their ability to store it isn’t improving quite as fast. Made from graphene and with a fern-inspired fractal structure, engineers at RMIT University have developed a new prototype electrode that could enable solar harvesting and storage systems that are thin, flexible and have high capacity.

While the sun is attractive as an energy source, solar-powered devices usually have to fall into two categories: those with big bulky setups, or smaller ones that don’t need as much power. The RMIT team’s new electrode is designed to bridge that gap, with a better energy density inspired at the microscopic level by the repeating pattern (called a fractal) seen in the veins of a species of American fern.

“The leaves of the western swordfern are densely crammed with veins, making them extremely efficient for storing energy and transporting water around the plant,” says Min Gu, co-author of the study. “Our electrode is based on these fractal shapes – which are self-replicating, like the mini structures within snowflakes – and we’ve used this naturally-efficient design to improve solar energy storage at a nano level.”

Compared to conventional batteries, supercapacitors can be thinner, more durable and output power much faster, meaning they have the potential to eventually spawn thin, flexible power sources for wearable electronics or even cars. Storage capacity is their downside, but RMIT’s new electrode, with a higher energy density granted by its fractal pattern, is designed to address that very problem.

“The immediate application is combining this electrode with supercapacitors, as our experiments have shown our prototype can radically increase their storage capacity – 30 times more than current capacity limits,” says Gu. “Capacity-boosted supercapacitors would offer both long-term reliability and quick-burst energy release – for when someone wants to use solar energy on a cloudy day for example – making them ideal alternatives for solar power storage.”

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Construction will soon be underway on a gigantic solar farm in South Australia that’s set to be the biggest of its kind in the world – thanks to 3.4 million solar panels and 1.1 million individual batteries.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year, at which point the huge plant should outdo all other solar farms in terms of overall battery capacity – although other solar facilities are larger in terms of land area.

Overall capacity will be 330 megawatts (MW) of power, enough to keep the lights on in tens of thousands of homes, with at least 100 MW of storage capacity for holding energy, according to the site’s developer, the Lyon Group.

“Projects of this sort, renewable energy projects, represent the future,” South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill told reporters after the announcement of the solar farm last week.

Once finished, the plant will cover 4,000 square metres (43,056 square feet) and cost an estimated $1 billion to construct, the Australian Associated Press reports.

The facility will then be able to provide roughly 330 MW power for just over 18 minutes, or 100 MegaWatts of power for 1 hour – handy bursts of electricity that will help get the state through any future blackouts.

The use of renewable energy in South Australia is a much-debated issue right now locally, with recent blackouts prompting new discussions over how the area should meet its energy needs in the years ahead.

Even Elon Musk has offered to lend a hand, saying that Tesla’s Powerwall 2 batteries could fix the reliability problems in a mere 100 days.

The company’s batteries are already storing energy for a huge number of communities across the globe; when the Sun sets or the winds drop, the energy stored in the batteries gets released.

The good news is that South Australia has an abundance of wind and sunshine that can be tapped to provide energy – the state is currently the country’s biggest user of renewable energy – but the supply isn’t constant all year round.

That’s where the new facility now being built in South Australia comes in. 

“At times of need, the battery could ensure the entire state does not face outages,” Lyon Group partner David Green told The Advertiser last year, when the plans were proposed.

The South Australian government says the new project is one of several in the pipeline designed to help it hit its target of doubling renewable energy output by 2020.

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