At the dual conference, practice-oriented approaches take centre stage. During the session “Linking Climate Protection and Business: The CEO’s View,“ Dr. Christian Fischer, managing director at Robert Bosch GmbH, will be talking about the company’s efforts to reach worldwide carbon neutrality by 2020. Matthias W. Send from the energy provider ENTEGA AG will likewise share his insights. In another keynote, Dr. Volker Hille, Head of Corporate Technology at Salzgitter AG, will explain how the company aims to reduce its CO2 emissions by employing hydrogen and wind power. In the “International Markets” session, Rory McCarthy from Wood Mackenzie, an international management consultancy, will present the results of a modelling of the Central European energy markets’ flexibility needs.

“The upcoming conference bridges the gap between the discourse on climate protection and corporate management, a highly fascinating and relevant thematic field, particularly for managers,” says Dr. Andreas Moerke, who took over as head of Energy Storage Europe this year. “Participants can also expect a comprehensive scientific programme within the framework of IRES in Düsseldorf, and representatives of storage manufacturers will furthermore meet at the German Energy Storage Association’s workshops.”

Professor Peter Droege, EUROSOLAR President and Chairman of the IRES Organising Committee, states: “We are delighted that in 2020 almost 150 selected top-level German as well as international experts from almost 20 countries will present their latest findings and innovations in over 22 different thematic sessions. The ESE and the IRES have a great social and economic impact: Without a rapid switch to renewable energies, climate stabilisation is inconceivable. Investors and companies around the world are on the right track for purely economic reasons. Storage systems are the prerequisite for the regenerative world.”

All storage solutions under one roof

The conference sessions will again cover a wide range of electrical and thermal storage technologies as well as numerous effective storage and decarbonisation projects. Thermal storage, sector coupling, the topic hydrogen and successful concepts as well as business models incorporating storage use will also be main points.

In cooperation with IRES, the Energy Agency NRW is also organising a lecture series in German on the topic of “Structural change – What will the energy regions of the future look like and what role will storage play?”

Commercial energy storage ‘pioneer’ Stem Inc and NEC have announced a master supply agreement and wide-ranging partnership that will see the latter’s equipment and solutions used in solar-plus-storage projects in Stem’s pipeline.

NEC’s Roger Lin and Stem Alan Russo talked to Andy Colthorpe about the dynamics of that deal and why the two entities: one in the behind-the-meter, storage-as-a-service industry delivering projects on a business model of sharing revenues and electricity costs avoided with the customer and the other, known for its work on larger projects connected to the utility side of the meter, came together to pool their capabilities and ambitions.

Energy-Storage.news: NEC has done solar-plus-storage projects already and so has Stem Inc, but both companies are perhaps better known for their standalone energy storage projects. Presumably you have both observed a broadening of the business case for adding energy storage to solar that makes this new partnership a timely one?

Alan Russo, Stem: We’ve seen increasingly that the market was moving towards solar that had storage. That really comes from behind-the-meter customer-sited stuff and the front-of-the-meter, sort of, ‘virtual net-metered’ projects which are owned by independent power producers (IPPs). We recognised that developers were struggling with that question: ‘what do I do with a battery?’

That is the area that the industry is trying to figure out as fast as possible because of regulatory incentive structures that are incentivising the deployment of storage for grid-scale applications.

Roger Lin, NEC: Solar-and-storage is obviously a big story nowadays. The fundamentals have always been the same: that the sun comes up and goes down, you have clouds, you can’t always consume that electricity being generated at exactly those times. Putting storage with solar just makes sense, it’s very simple.

What’s changed is the policy and business models that have been driving that. There have been localised pockets of advances in solar-storage, so there’s the advent of the solar-storage PPA that has been out there for at least a year and a half now, with maybe half a dozen different variants on that, all valuing the addition of storage to solar, not just for the sake of storage but for the sake of control, for the sake of dispatchability, to deliver the power when you need the power. Those things didn’t exist before.

Century-old electric technology company GE kicked off 2019 with yet another reorg.

The workhorse Power division was split up, to start. Though still a top supplier of the world’s natural-gas turbines, the division had turned into a money-loser as renewables adoption surged. Meanwhile, an expanded Renewable Energy division materialized with some 40,000 employees and billions of dollars in revenue. And GE’s up-and-coming energy storage business took up residence in that new division under the Renewable Energy Hybrids brand.

Previously, energy storage had nestled under Power, and before that it lived in the ill-fated Current unit, catering to commercial energy services. Years earlier GE tried and then abandoned a sodium-nickel-chloride battery manufacturing play called Durathon.

As the first year under the new arrangement draws to a close, GTM sat down with GE Renewable Energy Hybrid Solutions CEO Prakash Chandra to hear how the industrial giant is leveraging energy storage to grapple with a changing energy market.

“There’s never been a lack of commitment to storage,” Chandra said. “I think we’ve tried to muddle through what is the best way to play in the space so we can add the most value in the entire value chain of storage.”

The Durathon effort, which looks quixotic from today’s perspective, developed as an effort to turn GE locomotives into diesel electric hybrids. Since then, Chandra said, the company has come to appreciate the importance of being battery-agnostic and positioning itself to adapt as the battery supply chain evolves.

Now GE has taken up the mantle of system integrator, using its electrical equipment know-how to vet all the components in the containerized Reservoir product and backstop its system performance.

“This is where you provide the performance guarantees; this is where you wrap everything up,” he said. “This is what customers will come to you for and stay with you for over 20 years. You need companies that can stick around for another 20 years to be able to provide these wraps.”

European authorities have waved through a multi-billion-euro scheme to turn the continent into a global hub for green battery making, amid hints that barriers could be set for foreign imports.

This week, the European Commission gave the nod to a €3.2 billion (US$3.5 billion) plan by major EU states to create a “pan-European” battery ecosystem via a coordinated research push alongside industry operators.

The so-called IPCEI – Important Project of Common European Interest, a status conferred to research schemes seen as key in the EU – will see Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden support their respective national battery industries with the Commission’s blessing.

The €3.2 billion will bankroll projects by 17 sector players across the seven countries, from BASF to Eneris, BMW, Enel X and Fortum. At a respective €1.25 billion (US$1.38 billion) and €960 million (US$1.06 billion), German and French battery schemes will reap a sizeable slice of the funding.

The multi-country project will be structured along the four core steps of the battery chain, from the more efficient sourcing of ores to the development of cells and modules, the roll-out of software- and algorithm-powered battery systems and sounder recycling and dismantling practices.

The €3.2 billion pot will focus on lithium-ion batteries, both liquid electrolytes and solid-state systems, and seek to unlock a further €5 billion in private money. If backed projects exceed their revenue expectations, they will return the extra gains to their respective member states.

The IPCEI – to be overseen by a body integrated by all seven states – stems from months of talks between the Economy ministers of Germany (Peter Altmaier), France (Bruno Le Maire) and others. On social media this week, the Commission’s Maroš Šefčovič thanked all for their “coordination”.

In separate statements to the media, also this week, Šefčovič’s hinted that EU authorities may not stop at fostering an EU battery landscape; they could also act to set up hurdles to battery imports from outside the EU bloc.

Competitive markets are wonderful crucibles of innovation. With decades of accumulated manufacturing experience for use in portable electronics, lithium-ion battery prices have steadily dropped. As a result, larger battery products for electric cars and buses have emerged, making them more affordable and paving the way for grid applications.

The early versions of energy storage systems were relatively small. With declining battery prices, their size and volumes have grown, opening up new markets. A few now store enough energy to manage the variable nature of wind and solar energy over the course of a day. Even larger systems are in planning and development, but progress is still gated by battery costs.

Looking a few years ahead, our scientists at Utopus Insights studied the characteristics of hybrid power plants that combine wind and/or solar power with battery storage.1 While the industry has focused almost exclusively on pairing solar with batteries, we found, to our surprise, that wind pairing offers unique benefits.

With solar pairing, there are many days when it is not possible to meet a target power commitment during peak hours. In most of the cases we studied, wind pairing yields many fewer missed days.

In hindsight, these results make sense. Peak hours typically start when the sun is setting, yet the wind may continue to blow. Thus, solar requires more “lift and shift” because a larger proportion of the energy supplied during peak hours must be provided by discharging storage.

Significantly, we found that for a given battery capacity, combining wind and solar further improves the ability to meet peak demand. Reliability is improved because the two energy sources complement each other temporally.

Just as choosing a judicious mix of stocks and bonds may reduce the volatility of our financial investments, diversifying renewable energy sources and pairing them with the right amount of battery storage is a good way to make sure we have enough energy during peak hours.

The optimal mix of wind and sun depends, of course, on the local climate and timing of peaks.

As a wholly owned energy analytics subsidiary of Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, the generation forecasting and storage optimization that we are developing will be crucial in enabling such hybrid plants to achieve their maximum value. Hybrid plants can reliably supply electricity during the hours of peak demand, eliminating the need for expensive gas-fired peaker plants. This would be the beginning of the end of fossil-fired electricity production.

One of the biggest criticisms of renewable energy has been its inherently intermittent nature. Solar energy plants don’t produce power at night, and wind turbines don’t produce power without wind, so utilities need fossil-fuel or power plants to keep the grid running. Without a way to store renewable energy, fossil fuel will always be the backbone of the electric grid.

What’s changed in the past few years is that energy storage is suddenly an economical asset to consider as part of the electric grid. If regulators and utilities find ways for energy storage to generate revenue, finance companies will open up their wallets and fund investment. Before long, energy storage could change energy forever.

Solving the revenue problem

Energy storage is starting to make financial sense, which is the only way it will ever be able to reach scale. Utilities see value in energy storage as a way to offset expensive peak generation on high-demand days. For example, in one time of use rate plan in Southern California Edison’s territory (southern California) peak rates during the summer are $0.38 per kW-hr but rates during off-peak hours are just $0.13 per kW-hr. The $0.25 difference can be cost savings for homeowners with a battery by using the battery’s energy during peak hours and charging during off-peak. Depending on the size of the battery, savings could be a few dollars per day for consumers and for utilities it means buying less power from expensive peaker plants, helping lower rates for everyone.

Utilities are also seeing it as a way to reduce transmission and distribution costs, and even put off investment in new power plants. Con Edison is using batteries as part of a plan to defer $1.2 billion in substation investments. And new bids from solar plus energy storage are beating the cost of building new power plants.

Residential and commercial customers are seeing value from a different angle, using energy storage to reduce electricity bills. SunPower (NASDAQ:SPWR), Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN), and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) are starting to build energy storage systems that reduce on-site electric bills and can even bid capacity into electric grids by creating a virtual power plant. There are different models for consumers, but the time of use rate savings I highlighted above is one option and another is commercial building owners saving on demand charges by batteries lowering their peak electricity usage each month.

There’s now money to be made in energy storage, so if costs are low enough, the investments will make financial sense.

The cost problem

When batteries cost thousands of dollars per megawatt (MW), it was tough to justify their value to the grid because the up-front expense was too high. But costs have fallen nearly 90% in the past decade, according to NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE), and will be only $8 to $14 per MW-hour by next year, or about a penny per kW-hour. For perspective, the average kW-hour of electricity costs about 13 cents for retail users.

A 4.8MW / 16.4MWh battery energy storage system supporting the local grid of utility Con Edison in Brooklyn, New York, has begun operation through Enel X and global real estate firm Related Companies.

It’s not the biggest battery project so far in the state, which is newly embued with full-on low carbon energy transition policy ambition – the state wants to go use 100% renewable electricity by 2040 – and has an energy storage target of 3GW by 2030 to match.

That accolade currently is held by developer Key Capture Energy’s 20MW lithium-ion system supplied by NEC, which Energy-Storage.news took an in-depth look at back in September. While New York has long been discussed as a region of huge potential for energy storage, the market has been relatively slow to take off for reasons including a need for stringent safety regulations in the state’s many densely populated urban centres.

The 16.4MWh front-of-the-meter (FTM) battery energy storage system (BESS) deployed by Enel’s new energy spin-off Enel X is, however, the largest in New York City so far, Enel X said in a release today. Hosted by Related Companies at one of its properties in East New York, the batteries will help support Con Edison’s grid in times of peak demand. Con Edison said in July that it is seeking 300MW of energy storage of at least four hours duration.

Perhaps the more important ‘bigger picture’ aspect of the BESS’ switch on in Brooklyn, is that it is the latest piece of the feted Brooklyn-Queens Neighbourhood Program (aka Brooklyn-Queens Demand Management Program), which is an initiative designed to use demand response, energy efficiency and related technologies including BESS and virtual power plants via aggregated behind-the-meter (BTM) resources to relieve grid congestion in the area.

Investment in the programme, which since 2016 has also included 13MWh of storage from Green Charge (now ENGIE Storage) could potentially save big money on the need to upgrade transmission and distribution infrastructure. The programme already led to the deployment by Enel X of a solar-plus-storage microgrid at the Marcus Garvey Apartments. Meanwhile, Enel X claimed that the novel lease arrangement between Related Companies, Enel X and Con Edison could be widely replicated to help the state meet its clean energy goals.