While we have avoided risking the spreading of false information or reacting too hastily too an ever-changing situation, here are some of the latest developments. This blog will be updated as and when new information or views arrive.

The cover image was taken at this year’s Smart Grid Expo in Tokyo, part of World Smart Energy Week and located alongside PV Expo, Battery Japan and other related events. As you can see, the event was hosted under strict WHO guidelines, meaning that face masks were compulsory while in the expo halls, and thermographic cameras checked each visitor as they entered the halls. Read my blog about the event on PV Tech.

You can still read our initial reaction piece from 24 February 2020: This was posted as it became clear the crisis unfolding in China would unquestionably have an impact on the rest of the world. My take was that even then it would likely become a global problem rapidly, requiring global cooperation and understanding. Analyst Dimitrios Pappas, analyst at new energy consultancy Delta-EE meanwhile pointed out that the US, the second biggest manufacturer of batteries after China, lags behind six-fold or more in capacity terms, meaning bottlenecks are likely to be acute through the year.

Solar Media Editor-in-Chief Liam Stoker and I discussed these and other impacts of the virus on the clean energy industry including solar on our podcast not long after that.

10-12 March 2020: The planned Energy Storage Europe event, a long-held fixture in the events calendar, hosted each year in Dusseldorf, did not take place. This site is a proud media partner to the event, which has been important not just from an industry point of view but has also hosted appearances from politicians at regional, national and European level. Here’s a couple of blogs from last year’s event, March 2019:

Big tech and new solutions at Energy Storage Europe 2019

Energy Storage Europe: Energy transition needs energy storage

Paul Verrill, director of energy data analysis & consultancy firm EnAppSys, explains how renewable energy generation, with the integration of smart grid technologies and efficiency energy storage systems, can create a sustainable power system for the future. This article first appeared in E-S.N’s ‘Storage & Smart Power’ section of Solar Media’s quarterly journal, PV Tech Power 22.

Electricity markets across Europe are seeing the growth of renewables within their mix, with levels of generation from renewables overtaking those from fossil fuels across Europe in 2019. Whilst the pace has slowed in recent years, each new year sees records being broken in respect of the proportion of electricity demand met by renewable energy.

Predominantly the growth of renewable generation is coming from increased levels of generation from wind farms – and historically from solar sources – although hydro remains the primary source of renewable generation in European markets.

This growth can lead to problems in security of supply, but the most significant are maintaining stable operation of power grids that were designed for large centralised
thermal power stations. This also means ensuring that there is enough generation to meet demand in periods when output from renewables is low.

In most countries in Europe, the solution to date has been to introduce reserve and/or availability payments via capacity payment mechanisms to supplement the income of existing power stations and incentivise the build of new power stations that are able to meet demand in periods when renewable output is low. These mechanisms in the main provide support to thermal power stations and enable the management of the energy transition but slow down the closure of carbon-emitting assets.

Drivers created by these mechanisms (which are often closed to high-polluting stations) and the European carbon market are increasing the switch from coal to gas but do not yet drive transition to a ‘net zero’ world.

Imagine an electric grid that keeps your lights on while the rest of the island’s grid is dark during a natural disaster or outage.
That’s the promise at Kahauiki Village, a community for formerly homeless families near Sand Island. The village has its own independent power grid, or microgrid, that’s powered by solar panels, a battery and a backup generator. The village only draws power from the utility when there’s not enough sunlight and battery charge to meet its energy needs, so its microgrid operates off the islandwide grid 98% of the time, says Paul Orem, CEO of PhotonWorks Engineering, which delivered the village’s electrical infrastructure. The backup generator is used as a last resort, when the utility grid is down.

Microgrids can take a variety of forms but are not a new concept. Ted Borer, a board member of the Microgrid Resources Coalition and energy plant director at Princeton University, says microgrids existed in the U.S. in the late 1800s when there were no interconnecting electric utilities. Newer technology has refined them with better materials, digital controls and the ability to run faster, he says, and people use them today for their potential to provide added reliability, independence, cost savings and resiliency.

The state Public Utilities Commission, Hawaiian Electric Cos., Microgrid Resources Coalition, Distributed Energy Resources Council of Hawaii, Ulupono Initiative and three others are working to create a microgrid services tariff to encourage microgrid development in the Islands. The Public Utilities Commission proceeding was opened in response to a 2018 state law and will address several issues, including the rules for microgrids to interconnect with the Hawaiian Electric grids and the value of microgrid benefits and services.

Marc Asano, director of transmission and distribution and interconnection planning at Hawaiian Electric Co., says the utility’s goal is to create a tariff that encourages a more resilient grid.

“We want to encourage development of resources that can power the grid during grid outages or if some natural disaster were to hit and our infrastructure would not be able to withstand that, that we can still deliver a level of service especially to critical loads on the island,” he says. Critical loads include hospitals, police stations, military bases and other facilities that must always be powered. “But how we get there is part of what’s getting discussed in the docket.”

Over the past decade, prices for solar panels and wind farms have reached all-time lows. As the saying goes though, the wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining.

The question of how to “firm” renewables — that is, ensuring there’s always enough saved energy no matter the time of day or weather — is one of the biggest challenges in the industry. We need a good way to store energy for later. The go-to option right now is lithium ion batteries.

But, though lithium ion is dropping in price, experts say it will remain too expensive for most grid-scale applications. Right now, lithium ion batteries just can’t store more than four hours worth of energy at a price point that would make sense. Plus, they pose a fire risk and their ability to hold a charge fades over time.

Companies are experimenting with a variety of different solutions, including flow batteries, thermal batteries, and gravity-based systems. If any of these player can crack the code to long-duration energy storage, renewables like wind and solar will finally be able to compete with fossil fuels.

The colourfully-named GIGA Rhino, a 12MW battery energy storage project in the Netherlands, has successfully met a €3.6 million (US$4.03 million) crowdfunding raise target, promising around 5% interest to investors, who chipped in a minimum of €500 each.

Claimed to be the “most powerful energy storage project in the Netherlands,” by GIGA Storage, the locally-headquartered company behind the project, ENGIE was already announced as the chosen installer and NEC Energy Solutions the system supplier, back in October 2019.

Then in January, GIGA Storage put the project up on DuurzaamInvesteren (‘Sustainable investing’), a crowdfunding platform for sustainable energy projects in the European country, allowing people to invest from as little as €150. Having successfully raised the intended target, NEC ES announced via press release today that it has been confirmed to supply the GIGA Rhino system.

GIGA Storage’s special purpose vehicle (SPV) GIGA Rhino BV, will issue a bond loan covered by the income from the sale electricity to the grid’s balancing market, as well as capacity and joining the grid operator, TenneT’s reserve market, as well as providing energy storage services to aid local renewable energy integration.

The system will be hosted at The Test Centre for Renewable Resources at Wageningen University & Research Institute, Lelystad, a university well-known for its life sciences and agricultural research departments in the central Netherlands food-growing regions.

“Due to the increase in sustainable renewable energy on the grid, there is an increasing need for energy storage. Storage and control of electricity is crucial for a reliable and affordable energy system. The GIGA Rhino energy storage system is the first step in making it possible to close down coal-fired power stations,” GIGA Storage CEO Ruud Nijs, said.

Researchers are eyeing the world’s most basic element—water—as a potential solution for the challenge of how to store renewable energy for long-term use.

A team from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIAS) has shown in new research that something called seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS) could be an affordable and sustainable way to store both energy and water annually.

“The energy sectors of most countries are undergoing a transition to renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar generation,” says IIASA postdoc Julian Hunt, one of the researchers on the project, in a press statement. “These sources are intermittent and have seasonal variations, so they need storage alternatives to guarantee that the demand can be met at any time.”

Hunt and his collaborators believe hydrogen is the most viable long-term energy storage to resolve these variations in electricity generation. However, this type of storage is not yet economically feasible, which is why the IIAS team set out to analyze SPHS from multiple perspectives to make a case for its use.

Researchers used computer modeling to provide the first global and high-resolution analysis of the potential and costs for SPHS technology, proving it could be a long-term option to store renewable energy during times when it isn’t as readily available as peak times, Hunt said.

SPHS requires pumping water into a deep storage reservoir–which must be built parallel to a major river–during times of high water flow or low energy demand. If water is scarce or demand for energy increases, the reservoir can release stored water to generate electricity.

The analysis done by the IIAS team took a global approach to where and how to store energy and water seasonably using SPHS, as well as what the costs might be to implement solutions. Researchers used topographical, river network and hydrology data, infrastructure cost estimation, and project design optimization, to identify sites that could work for SPHS deployments.

The team hopes their findings will help promote the use of SPHS to help the world adopt renewable energy over traditional fossil fuels and other types of power that are releasing harmful emissions and depleting valuable resources from the earth, Hunt said.