SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has requested approval of five energy storage projects totaling 423 megawatts (MW), in a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

The projects are intended to further integrate clean energy from renewable generation sources while ensuring future reliability of the electric system.

“PG&E is deeply committed to the California vision of a sustainable energy future. As we continue to integrate large amounts of intermittent renewable energy, we are now taking advantage of advancements in energy storage technology to ensure that customers continue to receive clean and reliable power from a flexible and dependable electric grid,” said Fong Wan, senior vice president, Energy Policy and Procurement, PG&E.

The agreements for the projects are a result of a competitive request for offers (RFO) PG&E launched in February following a November 2019 CPUC decision that identified potential reliability issues beginning in 2021.

The CPUC authorized utilities and other load-serving entities in California to procure resources that would address those potential future system reliability issues while building progress in meeting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

PG&E was authorized to procure at least 716.9 MW of system reliability resources to come online between August 1, 2021 and August 1, 2023. The five new battery energy storage projects announced today represent PG&E’s first phase of procuring system reliability resources that need to come online within that timeframe.

PG&E will issue another (phase two) competitive solicitation this summer for resources to come online by August 1, 2022 and August 1, 2023.

“One can expect that the number of EVs in fleets will grow very rapidly over the next ten years,” according to Rhombus’ report. But that means many fleet staging areas will have trouble securing sufficient charging capacity.

“Given the amount of time it takes to add new megawatt-level power feeds in most cities (think years), fleet EVs will run into a significant ‘power crisis’ by 2030,” according to Rhombus.

“Grid power availability will become a significant problem for fleets as they increase the number of electric vehicles they operate,” Rhombus CEO Rick Sander said in a statement. “Integrating energy storage with vehicle-to-grid capable chargers and smart [energy management system] solutions is a quick and effective mitigation strategy for this issue.”

Along with energy storage, Guidehouse says a new, more flexible approach to charger deployment will help meet demand. That means chargers deployed by a van or other mobile stations, and “temporary” chargers that can help fleets expand capacity.

According to Guidehouse, the temporary units “are well positioned to de-risk large investments in stationary charging infrastructure” while also providing charge point networks and service providers “with new capabilities to flexibly supply predictable changes in EV transportation behaviors and demand surges.”

“Mobile charging is a bit of a new area in the EV charging scene. It primarily leverages batteries to make chargers mobile, but it doesn’t necessarily have to,” Guidehouse Senior Research Analyst Scott Shepard told Utility Dive.

“The biggest opportunity is with the temporary charging format,” said Shepard. “The bigger units are meant to be located at a certain site for a period of time. Those units are interesting because they create a little more scale-ability for sites and a little risk mitigation when it comes to investing in a site.”

“Utilities could use temporary chargers as a way to provide more resilient service, using these chargers in line with on-site generation,” Shepard said.

Long duration energy storage is an “essential” technology to help accelerate renewable deployment, according to the US Department of Energy’s Dr Imre Gyuk, but will require “appropriate regulatory frameworks”.

This is to ensure costs of the technology are covered in a well-regulated way, Gyuk said during a session entitled Making a Business Case for Long Duration as part of the Energy Storage Digital Summit that took place across last week.

Gyuk, who is the director of Energy Storage Research in the Office of Electricity at the DoE, said that across his 20 years of experience in the sector, he’s seen a “real evolution” of energy storage, so much so that is has now become “one of the hottest topics in the energy business”.

Projects in the US are only getting bigger, he said, with southern California to see 700MW of new storage in the ground by August 2021. Most of these are together with solar PV, which Gyuk described as the “essential feature”.

Whilst these are all 4-hour duration and all lithium-ion, eventually there will be a need for longer durations to work with PV for reasons including intermittency of generation and for storing and using energy overnight. This was echoed by fellow panellist Matt Harper, chief commercial officer of the vanadium flow battery provider Invinity Energy Systems – the company recently formed by the merger of redT and Avalon battery, two existing players in vanadium flow – who said that long duration storage would help “accelerate a high solar future”.

However, the interaction between long duration energy storage and solar was not the sole focus of the session. Speaking of the technology in comparison to lithium-ion, Gyuk said “we’re not totally happy with the incumbent lithium-ion”, citing sourcing problems, safety and reliability concerns and “above all” problems surrounding reuse, recycling and disposal.

This was a “very difficult issue” for lithium-ion, Gyuk said, although it is “perhaps not insurmountable”.

Researchers from Germany’s Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology recently convened for a three-day discussion on the future of energy storage with a basic assumption: “The quest for post Li‐ion and lithium battery technologies is incorrect in its essence.”

The groups discussed the kind of storage technologies that might be considered solid alternatives to Li‐ion storage, and their conclusion was unequivocal: There is no end in sight for the “post Li‐ion” era.

“After extensive deliberations, the group concluded that the current vibe [!, ed.] about the need of future technologies after the lithium era and, thus, the quest for which new technologies can replace lithium‐based battery technology, are somewhat inappropriate and misleading (partially incorrect), respectively,” the researchers tried to say.

Instead, they have recommended a “side‐by‐side” approach for all storage technologies. They also identified the technologies that they see as more promising for the future.

Sodium‐ion batteries

Sodium‐ion batteries (Na‐Ion), which rely on the same ion storage principle of lithium-ion technologies, are considered an interesting alternative as they could provide an affordable solution, due to potential shortages of lithium and cobalt, or possible price surges. They are also easy to ship and have strong potential for further raw material cost reduction. “Actually, the cost and environmental friendliness of the layered oxide cathode materials proposed so far, appear to be the major advantages of sodium‐ion batteries,” the group stated.

It added that Na‐ion batteries face similar safety issues as Li‐ion batteries in large-scale applications, but development is still limited and not enough is known about failure modes, mechanisms, and analysis at the full cell level. Their use is recommended for stationary energy storage systems and light‐duty vehicles for short‐range transportation.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a loan deal for its first wind energy-plus-battery storage project in Thailand, which is also the country’s first private sector initiative to combine the two technologies at scale.

The ADB told Energy-Storage.news this morning that it will lend THB235.55 million (US$7.2 million) for the construction of the Southern Thailand Wind Power and Battery Energy Storage Project, has added an “integrated” 1.88MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) to an existing 10MW wind turbine power plant. The addition of the BESS is being considered a pilot scheme that could go on to be replicated and scaled-up elsewhere in Southeast Asia. An ADB representative said the project “represents a number of firsts for ADB, particularly related to battery storage”.

While the majority of the turbines’ output will go straight into the local electrical grid, the BESS will store energy at times when the output exceeds the grid’s capacity to take it, increasing the amount of renewables that can go into the grid as well as helping to “ensure the stability and reliability of the renewable energy source,” the ADB said in its press release. The ADB representative confirmed today that the financing followed the project’s completion.

The multilaterally-owned bank has signed the loan deal with Lom Ligor Company Limited, a subsidiary of Thailand-headquartered renewable energy development company BCPG Public Company Limited (BCPG). BCPG purchased Lom Ligor Company in 2018, with Low Ligor the operator of the 10MW project at the time, in Pak Panang, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. It was BCPG’s first foray into wind energy in Thailand.

The ADB loan includes US$4.75 million in concessional loan financing from the Clean Technology Fund of the international Climate Investment Funds, which has provided financing for development efforts relating to climate. Private Thai banking group Kasikornbank (KBank) will also provide a loan equivalent to US$7.2 million.

Developers are awaiting approval by the California Public Utilities Commission to begin construction on 770 MW of four-hour lithium-ion battery energy storage systems for Southern California Edison in what is seen as one of the the largest such U.S. procurements.

The systems will support new clean energy projects for which the utility has signed contracts with four developers, also subject to regulators approval. These will replace capacity of aging natural gas power plants being retired.

Solar and wind poweradditions will require energy storage to maintain system reliability. The procurement’s cost was not disclosed.

Most of the selected battery projects will be co-located with solar plants to charge the batteries.

“This is just the first part of a two-part process,” says William V. Walsh, SCE vice president of energy procurement and management. The utility expects to procure more capacity over the next six months.

NextEra Energy Resources has three storage system contracts totaling 460 MW, while Southern Power won two totaling 160 MW; LS Power is contracted for 100 MW and TerraGen Power will build 50 MW. All contracts have a commercial online date of Aug. 1, 2021.

“California has a pretty aggressive mandate to have 100% of their electricity coming from renewable-energy sources by 2045,” says Tim Grejtak, analyst for Lux Research Inc., and battery systems are “getting bigger. . . . We’re now getting into the triple-digit-megawatt range for these installations.”

SCE’s procurement represents a huge acceleration in the rate of energy-storage growth in the U.S.

BloombergNEF reports that 293 MW went on line last year across the country. A 300-MW Moss Landing project is due to open this year in central California and the 409-MW Manatee Energy Storage Center in Florida is scheduled to open late next year.

“We believe that asset scales are now at a tipping point,” Grejtak says, and that may make other energy-storage solutions more attractive than lithium-ion. Vanadium redox flow batteries have a different scaling factor and performance variable from lithium-ion, which makes them attractive beyond 100 MW, he adds.

Experts from the University of Surrey believe their dream of clean energy storage is a step closer after they unveiled their ground-breaking super-capacitor technology that is able to store and deliver electricity at high power rates, particularly for mobile applications.

In a paper published by the journal Energy and Environmental Materials, researchers from Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) revealed their new technology which has the potential to revolutionize energy use in electric vehicles and reduce renewable based energy loss in the national grid. The team also believe their technology can help push forward the advancement of wind, wave, and solar energy by smoothing out the intermittent nature of the energy sources.

The ATI’s super-capacitor technology is based on a material called Polyaniline (PANI), which stores energy through a mechanism known as “pseudocapacitance.” This cheap polymer material is conductive and can be used as the electrode in a super-capacitor device. The electrode stores charge by trapping ions within the electrode. It does this by exchanging electrons with the ion, which “dopes” the material.

In their paper, the team detail how they developed a new three-layer composite using carbon nanotubes, PANI, and hydrothermal carbon that demonstrates remarkable rate-capability at high energy densities, independent of the power use.

Ash Stott, lead scientist on the project and Ph.D student from the University of Surrey, said: “The future of global energy will depend on consumers and industry using and generating energy more efficiently and super-capacitors have already been proven to be one of the leading technologies for intermittent storage as well as high-power delivery. Our work, has established a baseline for high energy devices that also operate at high power, effectively widening the range of potential applications.”

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the ATI at the University of Surrey, said: “This highly ambitious and impactful work has the potential to change the way we all live our lives — and it might be what is needed to make the change for an efficient and fast charging solution of harvested energy from the environment. We see this having an impact in all sorts of industries — from all wearable technology to mobile Internet of Things applications that will launch the 5G revolution. The potential for our super-capacitor is limitless.”

Tesla is getting ready to introduce a long rumored lower-cost, longer-lasting battery for its electric vehicles in China sometime later this year or early next year, according to a new report from Reuters. The battery — which has been colloquially called a “million mile” battery in reference to how long it can last in a car before breaking down — is being co-developed with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd (CATL) and was designed in part by battery experts recruited by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Tesla is already the industry leader when it comes to squeezing range out of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, and it’s expected to reveal more about the new technology at an upcoming “Battery Day” for investors. Musk told investors and analysts earlier this year that the information “will blow your mind. It blows my mind.” The company originally planned to hold the event in April, but has had to reschedule it until at least late May thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company held a similar event focused on self-driving technology in April 2019.

The battery is expected to lower the cost per kilowatt hour (the unit of energy most commonly used to measure the capacity of the battery packs in modern electric vehicles) to under $100. Many experts believe that reaching that mark would allow Tesla or other automakers to sell electric vehicles for the same prices as gasoline-powered ones, thereby making them far more accessible. General Motors is also trying to hit that mark in its work with battery maker LG Chem, as it recently shared during its own big “EV Day” event in March, though the automaker is not expected to get there until the mid-2020s.

General Motors said last month that its new generation of batteries will use 70 percent less cobalt, an expensive and precious material that is often mined by workers who are subject to brutal conditions. Musk has long sought to remove cobalt from the equation entirely, and Tesla is getting closer to doing that in its work with CATL, according to Reuters.

Information about Tesla’s next-generation batteries has steadily trickled out over the last year or so thanks to the experts Musk hired and their public works, like patents, academic papers, and university presentations. The group has been funded by Tesla since 2016, according to Reuters.

Welcome to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change, energy and the environment in California and the American West. I’m Sammy Roth, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Two days after Donald Trump was elected president, I woke up early and drove east from Palm Springs along Interstate 10, stopping just before the California-Arizona state line, about halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix. The desert was even flatter than normal here. Thousands of acres had been scraped and graded for solar panels, which tilted en masse to face the rising sun, looking like a gleaming black sea against a backdrop of jutting mountains and blue sky streaked with wispy clouds.

Various dignitaries had gathered to commission this massive solar farm, which produces electricity for Southern California Edison. It’s now being expanded to serve additional utility customers in Los Angeles County, San Francisco and the San Joaquin Valley.

Another big change is coming to the solar facility. It’s going to get some enormous lithium-ion batteries.

Edison announced this month that it’s buying 770 megawatts of batteries, more than half of which will be installed at this remote outpost near the city of Blythe. The batteries will help Edison replace four gas-burning power plants along the Southern California coast, in part by storing electricity generated by solar panels for times when the sun isn’t shining.

For context, 770 megawatts is more energy storage than was installed in the entire United States last year. It’s enough batteries to meet about 3.5% of all the mid-afternoon electricity demand on California’s main power grid so far this week.