The electricity grid is undergoing its first evolution since the invention of the power transmission system, and energy storage devices, particularly mechanical energy storage devices, will play a solid role in this evolution.

Decarbonization, renewable energies, and energy storage devices are all factors involved in the current evolution of the electricity grid. In the last decades the integration of renewable energies, pushed by the necessity to decarbonize the electricity sector, led energy storage devices to become increasingly important to stabilize the electricity grid.

The increased adoption of variable renewable energy led the electricity grid operator to adopt energy storage systems to smoothen the variability of renewable sources.

Li-ion batteries, currently dominating the storage sectors in all of its aspects. From portable electronics to MW scale storage systems, Li-ion batteries will struggle in the future to address the MW scale power and daily storage duration, when Mechanical Energy Storage systems will enter the market.

In the brand-new report “Potential Stationary Energy Storage Technologies to Monitor”, IDTechEx has investigated these emerging technologies. With a simple working mechanism, Mechanical Energy Storage systems are addressing the bigger spectrum of the energy storage devices: large power output, and long storage time.

This new class of storage systems include older and newer technologies. It includes elderly technologies like compressed air energy storage, already installed in the 1980s, and some of the younger gravitational energy storage, like in the case of Highview Energy, and Energy Vault recently backed with millions of dollars.

On Tuesday, electric vehicle and battery manufacturer Tesla held its ‘Battery Day’, announcing its intention to halve the price of battery energy storage.

The company, which began in electric vehicle manufacturing, has become a leader in utility-scale energy storage supply. The company announced plans to build a new battery production plant in the US and to scale up cell production to produce 100GWh in 2022.

On an outdoor stage in California, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and senior vice-president of energy engineering Drew Baglino told shareholders about five technology innovations the company has moved into production to halve production costs.

Materials and components in batteries change to allow greater capacity

One of these measures involves the company ending its use of cobalt in batteries. Tesla joined the Fair Cobalt Alliance in September, and Musk said the company has had difficulty in finding ethical and responsible sources for the metal. However, it did not give an estimated timescale for the change.

Cobalt is a suitable metal for stabilising energy flows in mid-tier batteries. However, a paper in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society suggests that cobalt has a negligible effect in higher energy, high-nickel batteries.

Baglino told shareholders: “Using novel coatings and dopants, we can get a 15% reduction in cathode cost per kilowatt-hour. We are also looking at the processing costs for cathodes. About 35% of the cost per unit of storage comes from transforming the battery metals into their final form.

“We’re proposing a process that requires 66% less capital investment and a 76% reduction in processing cost.”

A ‘three-tier system’ for Tesla battery vehicles

Musk continued: “In order to scale, we need to make sure we are not constrained by total nickel availability. I think we need a three-tiered approach to batteries, starting with iron as a medium-range battery, then nickel-manganese above that, then high-nickel for long-range applications.

We take a look at six start-ups creating energy storage technology for a variety of purposes and with the support of a large range of investors.

This week, Tesla’s highly anticipated Battery Day event took place, signalling what the future of mainstream electric vehicle (EV) batteries could look like.

While Tesla is one of the most prominent players in the energy storage sector, there’s an abundance of start-ups out there trying to build the next best technologies for a variety of different applications, from heating homes to powering EVs.

This week, we shine a light on just a small selection of the numerous start-ups developing interesting energy storage solutions.

Advano

Founded in 2014, Advano is a New Orleans-based energy storage start-up that focuses on combining nanotechnology with chemical engineering principles. Since launching six years ago, the company has attracted investment from Y Combinator, DCVC, Future Shape and the Mitsui Kinzoku-SBI Material Innovation Fund.

The firm was co-founded by Alexander Girau and Shiva Adireddy, with the goal of increasing the energy density of lithium-ion batteries by 30-40pc without sacrificing battery life or increasing the cost of batteries. The company’s batteries are designed for use in IoT devices, consumer electronics and EVs.

Advano recognises that EVs have not yet been able to overcome the burden of cost versus range limitations. The start-up believes that a step-up change in performance will be possible thanks to one of the most abundant resources on earth, silicon. With silicon, Advano aims to make batteries with thinner electrodes for higher energy density, in place of graphite.

A team of researchers at the University of Newcastle has come up with a way to keep the lights on at thousands of coal power plants across the globe. Wait, it’s not what you think! They mean keeping the lights on at retired coal power plants. Those old power plants may be dead to coal, but they are still parked on many dollars worth of land, turbine equipment, and grid infrastructure, which means they could make suitable locations for large scale energy storage systems.

This New Energy Storage System Looks Like Bricks, Acts Like High Tech Battery
The Newcastle energy storage system basically consists of bricks that can hold energy in the form of heat, then discharge it to run steam turbines at retired coal power stations. Or, for that matter, at any power station.

The thermal storage approach is a bit different from battery-type systems, which hold an electrical charge. Thermal storage can also involve more simplicity in engineering and a longer span of charge-discharge cycles, which generally translates into lower costs.

If you’re wondering why nobody ever thought of storing thermal energy in bricks before, well, they have. A lot. The issue is efficiency. Until recent years, the state of materials science did not allow for fabricating bricks that can act as highly efficient batteries.

The Newcastle breakthrough involves a new two-component material they call MGA, for Miscibility Gaps Alloy.

Without giving too much away, the head of the research team, Professor Erich Kisi, explains that the team has “sourced abundant and readily available starting ingredients for our block so that it can be produced at a very low cost to accommodate for the scale of energy storage that’s required – they are 10 per cent of the cost of a lithium battery of the same size, yet produce the same amount of energy.”

“It offers near to 100 per cent conversion of electricity to heat and the lowest levelised cost of storing electricity – a measure of the total lifecycle cost of a facility compared to the amount of energy it is capable of storing,” Professor Kisi adds.

To ice the sustainability cake, Newcastle states that the blocks consist of “non-toxic, 100 per cent recyclable material so there is no risk of explosion or combustion in hazardous environments.”

The Tennessee Valley Authority will acquire its own grid-scale, battery energy storage system for the first time.

TVA announced it was installing the battery storage facility near an industrial complex in Vonore, Tenn. The Vonore Battery Energy Storage System will use lithium-ion capacity to store 40 MWh of energy.

The battery capacity could be deployed to provide electricity up to three hours for more than 10,600 customers, according to the authority.

“TVA is building the energy grid of the future,” said Senior Manager Dale Harris, who leads research and development for TVA. “This pilot project will help us to innovate and adopt new technologies that will provide businesses clean, low-cost, reliable electricity while helping them meet their sustainability goals.”

The Vonore facility is expected to be operational in 2022. The location will be near industrial customers served by Loudoun Utilities Board and doesn’t require the addition of new transmission lines.

“TVA’s battery will provide premium power for the industrial complex customers we serve,” said Ty Ross, Loudon City Manager and Utilities Board general manager, in a statement. It also will save the municipal utility on expenses needed to deal with peak demand challenges.

The Vonore BESS will be TVA’s first battery storage system to go online, but not the only grid-scale battery storage system that TVA will use. In February, TVA announced a solar project in Lowndes County, Mississippi, for its Green Invest programs that will include 200 MWh of battery energy storage.

Distributed energy resources (DERs) will be able to participate in US wholesale energy markets following a “landmark” new ruling from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

FERC Order 2222, approved late last week, enables DERs to participate in regional organised wholesale capacity, energy and ancillary services markets, competing against more traditional power resources.

Numerous installations of DERs, such as residential solar and battery storage systems, will be able to aggregate together to reach minimum size and performance requirements, with FERC commissioner Neil Chatterjee commenting that there was “no doubt” that investment in DERs would accelerate in the coming years.

“By relying on simple market principles and unleashing the power of innovation, this order will allow us to build a smarter, more dynamic grid that can help America keep pace with our ever-evolving energy demands,” he said.

The latest ruling builds on FERC Order 841, which states that barriers to distributed and behind-the-meter energy storage participating in wholesale electricity markets should be removed. It orders regional transmission operators (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to reconfigure wholesale markets to accommodate storage resources to allow them to provide capacity, energy and ancillary services.

While that order ruled that states cannot opt-out, Order 2222 establishes a small utility opt-in whereby grid operators are prohibited from accepting bids from the aggregation of customers of small utilities whose electric output was 4 million MWhs or less in the preceding fiscal year. It also allows retail regulators to continue prohibitions against distributed energy aggregators bidding the demand response of retail customers into the regional markets.