The UK Government has launched a consultation to determine how best it can alter planning policy frameworks to support developers and businesses seeking to build energy storage facilities in England.

Launched on Monday (14 January), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) consultation asks developers, investors and other energy storage sector stakeholders how policy can help stimulate the construction of co-located renewable arrays and storage systems.

Specifically, the consultation aims to garner opinions on whether BEIS should alter current regulation surrounding large-scale storage projects with a capacity of 50MW or more. Currently, these projects are required to pass through the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime, while smaller developments are processed through local planning frameworks.

The consultation proposes that the 50MW “cap” is removed, allowing all storage projects, regardless of capacity or output, to be sent to local authorities for planning committee approval.

It additionally recommends that storage projects co-located with other forms of generation should only need to pass through the national planning system if the capacity of each aspect exceeds 50MW.

According to BEIS, such moves would spur the uptake of renewables and storage without distorting investment decisions.

“Our findings so far indicate that the 50MW capacity threshold, which triggers the need for a proposal to be brought into the NSIP regime, does not in itself distort storage developers’ sizing and investment decisions to a significant degree,” the consultation document states.

The consultation closes on March 25, with respondents encouraged to submit their evidence online, by email or by post. Any policy changes resulting from the consultation will apply to England only. 

Industry reaction

The launch of the consultation has been welcomed by the Renewable Energy Association’s head of policy Frank Gordon, who said: “A future UK electricity system with high energy storage deployment will reduce the need to produce ‘peak’ demand from fossil fuels, accelerate decarbonisation by improving the efficiency of wind and solar generation and reduce the need for costly grid reinforcement.

The debate over energy storage replacing gas-fired peakers has raged for years, but a new approach that shifts the terms of the argument could lead to an acceleration of storage deployments.

Rather than looking at peak demand as a single mountainous peak, some analysts now advocate a layered approach that allows energy storage to better match peak needs. The idea is beginning to gain traction with some states and utilities.

“You don’t have to have batteries that run to infinity.”

Ray Hohenstein

Market applications director, Fluence

Some developers of solar-plus-storage projects say they can already compete head-to-head with gas-fired peakers. “I can beat a gas peaker anywhere in the country today with a solar-plus-storage power plant,” Tom Buttgenbach, president and CEO of developer 8minutenergy Renewables, recently told S&P Global.

Others disagree. Storage is not disruptive for generation, but will be disruptive for transmission and distribution, Kris Zadlo, executive vice president and chief development officer at Invenergy, told the audience at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference last spring. Invenergy develops generation, energy storage and transmission projects.

But there is another path that avoids the pitfalls of positions on either end of the all-or-none approach. “Do the analysis of the need itself,” Ray Hohenstein, market applications director at Fluence, told Utility Dive. If the need is only two hours in duration, it may be best served by a two-hour battery. “You don’t have to have batteries that run to infinity.”

Storage vs. fossil fuel peakers

Energy storage has several benefits over traditional fossil fuel peaking plants, Hohenstein said. It is instantaneous, it has no emissions and requires no fuel, and has limited infrastructure needs. It can also help the grid absorb higher levels of renewable generation by soaking up excess output, such as solar power at noon. But the one thing energy storage cannot do, he said, is provide limitless energy.

So, instead of looking at replacing an individual peaker, Hohenstein advocated a “duration portfolio” approach that uses energy storage to shave peak load.

Last summer, my family and I visited London.

I’m not much of an Ikea customer in the States, but there are a handful of the iconic retailer’s giant stores in the London area too.

In the name of research, I wandered into one. The way I figure, if you want to know what “mainstream” looks like, Ikea — with more than 300 stores on both sides of the Atlantic — is a good place to start.

What caught my eye?

Ikea’s “energy storage system.”

Basically, it’s a big ol’ battery that, when hooked up to a handful of solar panels (which Ikea also sells), allows a homeowner to store electrical power for use at night and on cloudy days.

As I’ve written before, energy storage — for utilities and homeowners — is a gigantic opportunity for investors. We ignore it at our wallet’s peril.

Energy Storage = Profits

It’s the missing link in our “electrified” digital economy.

Fossil fuels are easily stored, of course, but provide an increasingly smaller mix of America’s energy needs.

Wind and solar provide an ever larger share — but what does a utility (or homeowner) do when there’s no wind, or no sun?

Energy storage is the answer.

In the Total Wealth Insider model portfolio, I already have one stock in this sector that’s up more than 40%, with more on the way.

Investors like ValueAct’s Jeffrey Ubben describe a 21st-century electrical grid — with energy storage at its center — as “an Amazon-like opportunity. You haven’t had electricity as a growth business in a long, long time.”

It’s worth noting that the world’s largest solar energy storage plant was just switched on in Hawaii.

With the ability to store 100 megawatt-hours’ worth of power for up to five hours straight, utility executives say the plant provides as much as 40% of the island’s evening peak power via stored solar energy.

According to researchers at Wood Mackenzie, the amount of energy-storage deployments tripled on a year-over-year basis for two quarters in a row.

In Q3 last year (Q4 numbers aren’t out yet), utilities and homeowners together deployed roughly 150 megawatt-hours’ worth of energy storage.

Renewable energy developer Invenergy has initiated commercial operations of a utility-scale battery storage system located in Knoxville, Iowa, for MidAmerican Energy.

The 4 MWh lithium-iron phosphate battery system is housed in two truck-sized steel containers at a MidAmerican Energy substation.

The utility can use the system in concert with wind and solar power generation, by storing energy produced when wind speeds and sun exposure are high and using it later. MidAmerican Energy owns an expansive portfolio of wind-powered generation capacity.

This is the fifth utility-scale advanced energy storage project Invenergy has developed, and the first where the company acted as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) provider.

“We are excited by the new opportunities for battery storage that we are seeing around the country,” said Kris Zadlo, senior vice president responsible for storage development at Invenergy.

El Paso Electric Company, a Texas electric utility, has revealed the winning bids for its 2017 request for proposals, including a total of 200MW of utility-scale solar and 100MW of battery storage.

Announced on Boxing Day, El Paso Electric revealed the winning bids for its competitive 2017 All Source Request for Proposals for Electric Power Supply and Load Management Resources.

The company announced that winning bids included a total of 200MW of utility-scale solar resources, another 100MW of battery storage, and the construction of a 226MW natural-gas unit at the Company’s Newman Power Station.

In addition, El Paso Electric also revealed that it would seek to purchase between 50MW to 150MW of wind and solar generated power.

“These technologies provide a mix of carbon-free renewable and clean burning natural gas generation that will enable us to meet the growing need for power in our region in a safe, clean, reliable, and cost-effective manner,” said Mary Kipp, El Paso Electric President and Chief Executive Officer.

“This balanced combination of resources will work with our existing energy portfolio as we move to retire aging, less efficient plants while continuing to meet our customers’ changing energy needs.”

No specifics were given regarding the solar and battery storage projects, while the natural gas combustion turbine generating unit intended for El Paso Electric’s Newman Power Station is expected to begin operation in 2023 and incur a cost of US$143 million.

California’s rising adoption of solar power has fundamentally altered traditional dynamics on its electric grid. In response, the state’s electricity providers are moving ahead with rate changes that will have a significant impact on electricity costs and the financial performance of behind-the-meter solar photovoltaics (PV) on commercial and industrial facilities in the state.

Since delivering electricity during periods of high demand is cost-intensive, utilities in California have long implemented time-of-use (TOU) rates that followed the grid’s traditional load curve — which ramped in the morning, peaked in the mid-day hours, and gradually decreased in the afternoon into the evening. Higher rates were applied during “on-peak” and “part peak” hours to accommodate the cost of the mid-day peak, while lower rates were applied during “off-peak” hours at night and in the early morning.

The rapid growth of solar in the state’s generation mix has upended the traditional load curve. On a day-to-day basis, solar power production rises through the morning hours and peaks around noon before tailing off in the late afternoon/early evening hours. At scale, this reduces the demand for natural gas in the mid-day hours. However, as solar power diminishes in the late afternoon, utilities experience a spike in demand for power from traditional sources from the late afternoon and into the early evening — a trend which has been referred to as the “duck curve” since a report by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) publicized the graphic below:

The duck curve represents a challenge to the grid for multiple reasons:

• Lost revenue: The decline in mid-day demand has eaten into a strong source of revenue for natural gas generators, while an abundance of solar power has lowered electricity prices across the board — occasionally resulting in negative prices.
• Higher costs: Supplying the demand spike in the mid-afternoon/early evening hours requires the use of natural gas peaker plants, which are expensive to run.

Traditionally, TOU rates accounted for the costs to meet the daily peak in demand. The more electricity customers used during on-peak hours, the more money they spent on TOU rates. Now that the peak in demand has shifted to a later period in the day, California’s utilities are adapting their TOU rate schedules accordingly. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) shifted on-peak hours for its summer season to 4 p.m.-9 p.m., from its previous schedule of 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) are expected to implement the same schedule for on-peak hours in 2019.

While a tranche of seven solar-plus-storage projects under proposal in Hawaii would see renewable energy make its biggest competitive play against fossil fuels in the US island state so far, a project just completed will deliver energy well into the evening at just US$0.11 per kWh.

Energy-Storage.news reported earlier this month that Hawaiian Electric Company-awarded contracts for 1,048MWh of energy storage to pair with 262MW of PV and has now put them up for approval before the regulator, the Hawaii Public Utilities’ Commission (PUC).

Those projects have garnered attention already for their low cost – ranging from US$0.08 per kWh to US$0.12 per kWh under long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) – and the relative long duration of storage – four hours – that each will be equipped with.

Meanwhile, toward the end of last week, AES Distributed Energy announced the completion of Lāwa’i Solar and Energy Storage Project on the island of Kaua’i for local provider Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). The facility, which AES has dubbed a “PV peaker plant”, is a 28MW PV power plant and 100MWh of lithium battery energy storage, allowing for five hours of storage.

An AES spokeswoman confirmed to Energy-Storage.news that energy from the plant will be sold to KIUC for the price agreed two years ago when the project began development: US$0.11 per kWh. Recent reports have put a figure on fossil fuel-generated electricity, usually from diesel, on Hawaii’s islands at around US$0.16 per kWh. Over 3.5 million fewer gallons of diesel would be imported onto Kaua’i as a result of the project’s contribution, AES has said. Energy-Storage.news reported in June that the low price had been secured on a 25-year term PPA. 

S&P Global reports the cost of solar with battery backup dropped precipitously in 2018. In a few cases in the sunny Southwest region of the United States, several tenders for solar plus storage came in at under $30 per megawatt-hour last year. Stand alone prices for installed battery storage — based on a 20 megawatt-hour system with 4 hours of storage — dropped 40% from the previous year to $357 per kilowatt-hour and are expected to keep falling. Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects a further 52% reduction by 2030.

Such tumbling prices have led Wood Mackenzie to forecast that as the market for solar plus storage matures, it could put more than 6,400 MW of new natural gas-fired peaking capacity in the US at risk by 2027. “I can beat a gas peaker anywhere in the country today with a solar-plus-storage power plant,” says Tom Buttgenbach, CEO of developer 8minutenergy Renewables. “Who in their right mind today would build a new gas peaker? We are a factor of two cheaper.”

Progress in battery storage was uneven around the world last year. South Korea has put significant incentives in place, which have led to a boom in that country. So much so, in fact, that Korean battery manufacturers have dedicated much of their production to meeting that demand at the expense of automakers hungry for EV batteries and residential storage products.

“When you see projects now being planned at over 1 GWh in scale, when only 18 months ago a 300 MWh installation was something to behold, you know you have entered a new era,” says Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.. “It has been quite interesting to watch the battery makers’ dilemma of where to send the lithium ion cells. Of course they have contracts to honor with automotive producers, but the order inquiries from [energy storage] producers have been incredible.”

Some CleanTechnica readers have been wondering why Kia  and Hyundai have such low production targets for their newest EV offerings. The clamor for battery cells to meet the energy storage demand may be part of the reason for those low numbers.

“Even though progress was uneven, there was a much greater consensus in 2018 over the importance of energy storage, even in the near term, in major markets,” says Logan Goldie-Scot, head of energy storage at Bloomberg NEF. “In 2017, there were still a lot of people talking about how energy storage was not necessarily a competitive solution and was going to be limited. I hear those conversations much less now. Energy storage is now becoming more integrated into resource plans.”

New York — As liquid air energy storage company Highview Power prepares to launch two US projects this year, an official said Thursday, the company has teamed up with engineering firm Citec to help scale its storage facilities from 50 MW/500 MWh to multiple GWh.

“We will be starting two projects between 50 MW and 100 MW in the US this year,” Javier Cavada, Highview CEO, said in a phone call.

Though Cavada could not discuss specific locations or customers, he said Highview is looking at the wind corridor that runs through the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s territory, as well as California, Texas and New York.

“It’s ideal to mix the technology with renewable generation, but it can be located anywhere,” Cavada said.

UK-based Highview Power has chosen Finland-based Citec as its engineering partner to help Highview modularize its GW-scale cryogenic energy storage system, according to a Wednesday statement. Highview said Citec will help it “easily and cost-effectively” scale the capacity of its plants up or down.

The economy of scale “is steep” so the larger the system the cheaper it gets, Cavada said.

The technology uses liquid air as the storage medium and can currently deliver 20 MW/80 MWh to more than 200 MW/1.2 GWh of energy. Air is cooled and stored as a liquid, then converted back to a gas to generate energy that powers turbines producing electricity.

In April 2018, Highview launched a grid-scale demonstrator plant that converts waste heat from landfill gas engines at the Pilsworth Landfill in Bury in the UK into power.