Characterized by diverse geographic regions and climate zones, cities, towns and villages in Chile often are separated by difficult terrain and long distances, Sitting atop one of two colliding tectonic plates – the oceanic Nazca and continental South American – the Andean nation, as has come to be known worldwide, is also prone to cataclysmic earthquakes.

Given all this, Chileans are increasingly recognizing, aand taking advantage of, the prospective benefits held out by renewable microgrids, including those in which solar-plus-storage are core elements. Italy’s Enel Green Power numbers among the players participating in Chile’s emerging “green energy” revolution.

On May 31, the Rome-based multinational clean energy services company announced its Enel Green Power Chile subsidiary had commissioned “the world’s first 100% emissions-free ‘plug-and-play commercial-sized microgrid.” Relying on a combination of a 125kWp (kiowatt-peak) solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and 580-kilowatt-hours (kWh) of lithium-ion battery (LiB) (132-kWh) and hydrogen energy storage (450-kWh), the all renewable microgrid is supplying part of the electricity needs of Enel’s Cerro Pabellón geothermal power plant in Chile’s northern Antofagasta region 24×7, management highlights in a news release.

More than 600 technicians work at Enel Green Power’s Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant in the are of Ollagüe in northern Chile’s Antofagasta region. The province of Antofagasta borders the 1,000 kilometer (625 mi) long Atacama Plateau, the driest non-polar desert in the world, the Sahara being no exception.

The Antofagasta region is also home to the vast bulk of Chile’s copper, which has long been the Andean nation’s primary export and source of foreign currency earnings. Sparsely populated, copper and other mining activities dominate the regional, as well as national, economy. Some mining companies active in the region have taken to tapping the region’s abundant solar energy resources to power their mining operations.

Enel Green Power’s Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant at a stretch could be considered mining – mining for clean energy. Tapping Antofagasta’s solar energy resources, and enhancing them with the addition of hydrogen and LiB energy storage capacity, adds to the company’s innovation and “green” energy credentials, as well as marking a world first.

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CARROLL, N.H. — Energy storage technology is still moving faster than state regulators and the markets can accommodate, speakers told the 70th Annual Symposium of the New England Conference of Public Utilities Commissioners (NECPUC) on Tuesday.

“Markets are moving at the pace of entrepreneurs, while states are moving at the pace of bureaucracy,” said Richard Fioravanti of energy consultancy Exponent.

The technology is changing so fast that CAISO recently had trouble qualifying a new lithium-ion battery storage project for California’s ancillary services market.

“You may think of some complicated reason why, but it was actually very simple,” said Jason Allen, vice president of operations and power for AltaGas Services U.S. The company’s 20-MW, 80-MWh facility in Pomona, Calif., holds 12,240 lithium-ion batteries. “We were ramping so fast they couldn’t” get an accurate data reading.

CAISO needs three data points to qualify a project during an ancillary services test: a starting point, one point on the ramp portion of the curve and an end-point.

“I can go from 20-MW charge and 20-MW discharge every 100 milliseconds, or 10 times a second,” said Allen. “It took [almost] two months working with them to get that simple issue worked out. And instead of the 10,000-MW/minute ramp rate, we actually detuned the system to 100 MW/minute and qualified for 36 MW [per minute], which is physically where we’re sitting right now in the market.”

Allen emphasized that his dealings with CAISO were not adversarial. “They have worked very closely with us to resolve the issues,” he said.

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Hybrid systems combining the complementary aspects of more than one technology could “change the energy storage landscape”, with 2.1GW predicted for deployment in less than 10 years, according to a report from Navigant Research.

“Hybrid advanced battery markets: Battery-battery, battery-capacitor, and other hybrid systems: Global market analysis and forecasts” says that by 2026, the installed capacity of such systems will be 2.1GW, an enormous leap from around 78.6MW today. Hybrid energy storage systems “have the potential to change the energy storage landscape and give customers better options to service their needs,” Navigant said.

Navigant defines hybrids as “a stationary ESS that integrates two or more energy storage technologies with complementary operating characteristics”. Most battery-based systems are either designed to offer short bursts of high power or suited to energy-intensive applications that consistently put out low power for longer durations. Using energy storage technologies in applications for which they are not the best fit can result in performance degradation and can have cost implications – it can also lead to safety issues around charging and discharging batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries, for instance, are commonly used in grid-scale storage to respond quickly to grid signals that there is a fluctuation in supply and demand, leading to deviations in grid frequency. These will put out high bursts of power for short times to keep the grid operating at as close to 50Hz (or 60Hz as required) as possible. Conversely, the same battery may not be suited for storing solar PV energy for several hours, perhaps for use at night, where something like a flow battery, capable of storing larger amounts of energy for longer durations may be better.

In a recent interview, the CEO of redT, a company that makes flow batteries (but prefers the term ‘flow machines’) Scott McGregor, told Energy-Storage.News that a theoretical hybrid energy storage system of lithium-ion batteries and vanadium redox flow could be optimal for delivering both high power and high energy functions within the same installation.

While the promise of lithium-flow hybrids sounds enticing, no significant projects along those lines have yet been built. However, recently announced hybrid systems include a flywheel-plus-battery project in the UK and a lead acid battery-ultracapacitor system in Ireland. On a slightly different tack, US engineering giant GE has launched hybrid gas turbine-plus-battery systems, some units of which have already been provided to a California investor-owned utility (IOU).   

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The United States had its largest ever quarter for energy storage deployment this year, deploying 234 megawatt-hours worth of energy storage across the first quarter of the year, representing a more than fiftyfold growth as compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

GTM Research published its latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor in conjunction with the Energy Storage Association (ESA) this week. The report includes two primary figures — 71 megawatts (MW) of new energy storage deployed in the first quarter, a 276% growth over the first quarter of 2016, but a 50% decrease on the fourth quarter of 2016, continuing a long-running trend that sees the first quarter of a new year slowing somewhat on the overactive previous fourth quarter. The second figure is the record-breaking 233.7 MWh of energy storage deployed in the first quarter, a 2% increase over the immediately-preceding fourth quarter, but a mammoth 944% increase over the first quarter of 2016.

“Much of this growth can be attributed to a shift from short-duration projects to medium- and long-duration projects in the utility-scale market, along with a surge of deployments geared to offset the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage. “Although, the industry shouldn’t get too comfortable, as with fulfilment of Aliso Canyon deployments, there aren’t that many 10+ megawatt-hour projects in the 2017 pipeline, indicating that the first quarter may be the largest quarter this year.”

Overall, front-of-meter energy storage deployment accounted for 91% of all deployments in the quarter. Behind-the-meter deployments declined 27% year-over-year, in terms of MWh, and GTM and the ESA pin this slowdown on a pause in California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program. California ranked first in terms of non-residential and utility-scale energy storage deployment, but ranked third in terms of residential deployment, while Hawaii ranked second across the board.

Looking forward, GTM Research predicts that the US energy storage market will grow to approximately 2.6 gigawatts (GW) in 2022. Behind-the-meter energy storage will account for 53% of the annual storage market by 2022, up from 20% of the 2016 market, while California will unsurprisingly remain “the undisputed emperor of the US energy storage market over the next five years.” Filling second place will be battled out between Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas, each likely to represent a significant portion of deployments through 2022.

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Described in a recent report as the “undisputed king” of the energy storage industry, California continues to blaze new trails, now with legislation to boost customer-sited energy storage.

The California Senate recently passed SB 700, which creates incentives for customer-sited energy storage in homes, schools, farms and businesses. Next, the bill moves to the state Assembly.

The 10-year rebate program, called the Energy Storage Initiative, provides up to $1.4 billion and lets the PUC set the total amount, said Laura Gray, energy storage policy advisor with the California Solar Energy Industries Association. It aims to make storage more accessible to consumers.

“California is once again showing its leadership on clean energy. Just as the state revolutionized solar, it has the opportunity to transform the market of customer-sited energy storage,” Gray said. “With this bill California would be the first state to create a market transformational program dedicated to local energy storage.”

Undisputed king for next five years

Separately, GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association (ESA) reported this week that California “will remain the undisputed king of the U.S. storage market over the next five years.”  Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and Texas vie for second place.

California helped drive what proved to be a record-breaking first quarter for energy storage in the United States. GTM and ESA’s latest “U.S. Energy Storage Monitor” reported that 234 MWh of energy storage was deployed, a 944 percent rise over the first quarter last year.

Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage, attributed the big leap in part to a large battery deployment made to bolster reliability following natural gas leaks at California’s Aliso Canyon.

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The first quarter of 2017 was the biggest in history for the U.S. energy storage market.

According to GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor, 234 megawatt-hours of energy storage were deployed in the first quarter, which represents more than fiftyfold growth year-over-year.

When measured in megawatts, it was the third-largest quarter in history, ranking behind only the fourth quarters of 2015 and 2016. Front-of-meter deployments grew 591 percent year-over-year, boosted by a few large projects in Arizona, California and Hawaii.

Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is well placed to reap the benefits of rapid moves towards energy storage in a new renewables environment. The Trump Administration’s withdrawal for the Paris Accords is effectively being ignored by the rest of the world.

My article in March outlined the company’s potential strengths and opportunities. Since then Tesla’s offerings have started to be ramped up by the company. There is little doubt about the potential but also little doubt that this will be a competitive market. For instance a similarly vertically integrated company, BYD Co Ltd (OTCPK:BYDDY), is already making inroads in this area and other Chinese companies may be fierce competitors.

Developments in the US

It is no coincidence that at the Stockholders Meeting this week, Elon Musk focused on the total energy storage offering.

As he referred in his address:

“The beginning of the transition of Tesla to a fully integrated sustainable energy company where you have solar creating energy, then the stationary battery pack, the “Powerwall” and “Powerpack”storing the energy and then that energy being used in the electric vehicle.”

All these applications can be linked together now for the consumer by a mobile phone app.

Doubters have considered that there will not be demand for homeowners to install big expensive batteries in their residences. In the past net metering had meant this was largely the case. If a homeowner saved energy during the day through, say, solar panels, this could be sent back to the grid and therefore there was no point in storing it via an expensive battery.

However utilities in the US are now starting to offer deals to compensate for energy storage. Batteries will start to be used not just for back-up power but will allow for integration with utilities.

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