Shell is to acquire German battery storage manufacturer sonnen in a bid to accelerate its home energy services position.

Sonnen is to sit as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shell should the acquisition clear regulatory approvals, and the deal comes less than a year after Shell made an investment in the battery firm.

The companies said the deal stood to accelerate their respective abilities to provide integrated energy services and electric vehicle charging solutions to homes, while also benefitting the provision of grid services via sonnen’s virtual power plant platform.

Mark Gainsborough, executive vice president for new energies at Shell, said full ownership of sonnen would allow it to offer customers more choice over their energy consumption.

“Together, we can accelerate the building of a customer-focused energy system in support of Shell’s strategy to offer more and cleaner energy solutions to customers.”

Shell’s interest in catering for consumers’ home energy needs is well documented and has escalated since it acquired independent supplier First Utility in December 2017.

Its New Energies unit has also become home to a host of other decarbonised and decentralised energy investments over the last few months including solar developers Silicon Ranch and Cleantech Solar and Dutch EV group NewMotion.

After China connected a huge battery to a project combining solar, wind and other generation sources, a US utility project has just been announced which will likewise combine solar and wind with a grid-scale battery.

Oregon utility Portland General Electric (PGE) said yesterday that together with power producer NextEra Energy it plans to construct and connect a 300MW wind park, 50MW solar farm and 30MW of battery energy storage.

Wheatridge Renewable Energy will combine with PGE’s existing resources, helping the utility meet as much as 50% of customer power demand emissions-free. PGE said that the project has been supported from its earliest stages by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who in a tweet yesterday said it spoke of the “#OregonWay spirit of finding solutions” and his pride in the “local folks” who had come together to make it possible.

“Portland General Electric’s decision to join with NextEra Energy Resources in constructing the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility provides both a well-earned economic boost to Eastern Oregon and an important step on our country’s needed path to green energy,” Wyden added in a statement.

The project was an “exciting opportunity” to combine solar, wind and storage NextEra CEO and president Armando Pimentel, who also said that Wheatridge “will allow PGE’s customers to benefit from more renewable energy over more hours of the day and create substantial economic value for the communities that host this project, many of whom stand to benefit for years to come”.

In total, 120 wind turbines made and supplied by GE Power will be installed. Equipment and suppliers have not been selected for the solar and battery storage portions of the project as yet. However, PGE said that in addition to 300 construction jobs being created by the wind farm, up to 175 people will be employed for the PV and battery parks, while around 10 full-time employees will maintain and operated the completed project.

A new energy facility in eastern Oregon will be the first of its kind in the U.S., combining wind power, solar power, and battery storage on a large-scale.

Portland General Electric and NextEra Energy Resources announced plans for the Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility today. The new facility will combine 300 megawatts of wind generation, 50 MW of solar generation, and 30 MW/120 MWh of battery storage.

NextEra plans to break ground this year. The wind component of the facility, powered by 120 turbines, is expected to be fully completed by December 2020. Construction of the solar and battery components is set for 2021.

The Morrow County-based facility will be capable of powering 100,000 homes, and will allow Portland General Electric to reach roughly 50 percent of all its customers’ power needs with emissions-free generation. PGE also released a short promotional video:

A Breakthrough
The Wheatridge facility marks a first for the country, but it will also top a number of lists in Oregon. It will be both the largest solar farm and largest battery storage facility in the state. It will also be one of the largest battery storage facilities in the U.S.

As expected, the announcement came with a number of statements from those involved with the project. NextEra president and CEO Armando Pimentel said,

“This venture will allow PGE’s customers to benefit from more renewable energy over more hours of the day and create substantial economic value for the communities that host this project, many of whom stand to benefit for years to come.”

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D) has a history of supporting clean energy initiatives, including introducing the Clean Energy for America Act in 2017. (Oregon is also a member of the U.S. Climate Alliance, which recently gained another member.) Wyden said of the new facility.

The 10 MW grid-connected system, owned by AES and Mitsubishi Corporation, will pave the path for wider adoption of grid-scale energy storage technology across India. It uses the Advancion energy storage platform from Fluence, a joint venture formed by Siemens and AES.

Speaking at the launch, Praveer Sinha, CEO and managing director of Tata Power said: “Grid-scale energy storage will pave the way for ancillary market services, power quality management, effective renewable integration and peak load management of Indian grids.”

The project, at Tata Power Delhi Distribution’s substation in Rohini, will provide grid stabilization and protect critical facilities for 2 million consumers served by the company.

Battery-based energy storage enables electricity to be stored and delivered within milliseconds, reducing grid instability and enabling more energy to be captured and delivered on demand.

The first of many?

Fast-ramping energy storage like the Delhi system can be built within months to provide critical flexibility wherever it is needed on India’s grid. By comparison, older technologies such as pumped hydro storage can take years to build and are highly dependent on geographical locations. Battery-based energy storage also uses no water and produces no emissions from its operations.

India has the ambitious goal of installing 225 GW of renewable energy by 2022. Battery-based energy storage provides the flexibility and agility to better integrate intermittent solar and wind energy resources into India’s electric grid and ensure high-quality power for consumers.

“Battery-based energy storage has an essential role to play in helping India realize its vision for a more sustainable energy future,” said Andrés Gluski, AES president and CEO. “AES has been committed to delivering safe, reliable and affordable power in India for the last 27 years and we’re proud to bring the country’s first major grid-scale energy storage solution online, and open the market for the use of battery storage technology in India.”

In nearly all regions of the United States, peak annual electricity demand comes in the afternoon on the hottest days of the year, when air conditioners in homes and offices are cranked to the maximum. It’s one of the main technical challenge for utilities and grid operators, which must sign contracts with power plants to ensure that they have sufficient capacity on hand to meet only a few hours of demand, and it can be hard to predict just how much they will need.

In Southern California, one company has come up with a solution to marry peak electric demand with cheap overnight electricity prices. And in an field where interconnected software and high-tech chemical batteries dominate, their solution is both simple and oddly tangible: making ice.

Earlier this month Ice Energy completed the first phase of project to deploy over 1,200 ice-making and cooling machines at businesses and industrial facilities across the territory of utility Southern California Edison (SCE).

And while there have been larger single-site thermal storage projects, such as the molten salt system at the 300 MW Solana Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plant in Arizona, Ice Energy says that when complete this will be the largest distributed thermal energy storage system in the nation.

By 2021, almost half (49%) of institutional investors expect to increase their exposure to assets supporting and participating in the energy transition, according a new study by Aquila Capital. This transition involves the progressive replacement of fossil fuels by renewable sources of energy production.

The new research reveals the fast-growing popularity of the energy transition among institutional investors and the most attractive opportunities it currently presents. Nearly two-thirds (63%) cited energy storage (e.g. batteries) as offering the greatest investment potential. This was followed by electricity transmission (45%), which involves building and operating the links from power plants to substations, and the inter-connectors between energy grids (41%).

“These findings underline the growing appeal of the energy transition among institutional investors and the opportunities that they find most appealing,” said Susanne Wermter, Head of Investment Management Energy & Infrastructure EMEA, Aquila Capital. “Indeed, 82% of investors said they would be attracted by a multi-asset class fund mandated to invest in renewable energy generation, storage, and transportation.”

According to Aquila Capital, energy storage is becoming particularly appealing because of the growing role it will play in maintaining the supply of renewable electricity to Europe’s energy mix. Aquila Capital believes that cost reductions, technology development and improving regulations will continue to strengthen the investment case for storage moving forward.

The study identifies several factors that make participating in the energy transition more interesting financially for investors. The most important of these, cited by 68% of investors, is the increasing share of renewable sources in the energy mix, followed by the restructuring and decentralization of energy grids (62%).

India is presenting a potential investment opportunity of $50 billion in battery storage facilities that could help integrate renewable energy into the grid, replace polluting diesel-fueled power and boost electric mobility, the head of American energy firm AES Corp. said.

“We think India is going to be a big market for energy storage,” Chief Executive Officer Andres Gluski said in an interview Tuesday. He spoke after AES completed the country’s first 10-megawatt battery-storage system to support the grid in national capital New Delhi.

Built in partnership with Mitsubishi Corp. for almost $9 million, the project will demonstrate the benefits of energy storage to clients, regulators and the government, Gluski said. AES has built similar pilot projects in many other markets too, he said.

India’s goal to build 175 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2022 is seen as a big opportunity by AES to use battery storage to integrate fluctuating green power into the grid, as well as replacing diesel-fueled power plants.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has approved A$6 million of funding for the country’s first compress air energy storage (CAES) project.

US-firm Hydrostor will convert a disused zinc mine in South Australia into a below-ground air-storage cavern. The 5MW /10MWh demonstration plant will provide load shifting, frequency regulation and grid security. The Angas mine is currently a brownfield site in a state of “care and maintenance”. The company had been looking for a site in Australia since summer 2017.

The latest funds add to A$3 million it has received from the South Australian Government’s Renewable Energy Technology Fund.

“While being a commercial demonstration at this stage, Hydrostor’s innovative way to store energy with air could add to Australia’s grid-scale storage capability, complementing pumped hydro and batteries,” said Darren Miller, CEO, ARENA.

“Compressed air storage has the potential to provide similar benefits to pumped hydro energy storage, however it has the added benefits of being flexible with location and topography, such as utilising a cavern already created at a disused mine site,” added Miller.

South Australia has become a hotbed for emerging energy storage technologies. A major blackout event in the territory in 2016 exposed the grid’s unsuitability for a modern power generation mix. Since then, the Tesla “100 days” battery install, lithium battery trials and the world’s largest virtual power plant have all been deployed.