Cummins, a leader in engine design and manufacturing, serves its customers through a network of more than 500 distribution locations, some wholly owned, some independent. The company, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary, has 8,000 dealers in more than 190 countries.

“So we are a truly global partner,” said de Verdier. 

As for what the company was focused on at Microgrid 2020 Global, de Verdier said Cummins was excited to be an event sponsor and to have an opportunity to discuss the global future of sustainability and renewable power solutions. 

The company also launched its new Power Command microgrid controllers at the event. 

“Designed and tested  to accommodate distributed generation architectures and with the ability to control renewable energy resources and energy storage, these new products are central in creating a completely integrated microgrid power system,” she said. 

Looking at current trends and opportunities in the energy market, the executive director explained that worldwide need exists for clean energy that is reliable and cost effective. 

Green incentives, even mandates, are increasingly used to foster the energy transition, and “renewables are taking a greater share in energy investment resources as we move towards decarbonization,” de Verdier said. 

She pointed out that while renewables help decrease our carbon footprint, they also cause greater volatility across power grids. 

“This leads to increased demand for grid balancing services and opportunities for customers to participate in new ways in energy markets,” de Verdier said. 

A good example? Microgrids. 

Microgrids also play an important role in off-grid applications — reducing carbon and other emissions as well as improving energy economics.

Cummins is trying to address these trends by integrating new energy technologies into solutions and business models. 

Back in 2016, I was serving as founder and executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA). CESA is membership-based trade association and advocacy group that has helped build California into one of the world’s most robust energy storage markets. At that time, CESA did not know exactly where California was headed with clean energy, but we did know other jurisdictions, such as Hawaii, were committing to 100% renewable portfolios.

The CESA team was curious – if California created a similar clean energy goal, how would that drive California’s energy storage needs? To answer this question, we performed a simple exercise. The CESA team took one year’s worth of daily loads from CAISO OASIS data and ran a model that increased the wind and solar on the system until total production matched total energy consumption. Then we plotted the results for every day of the year, as shown in Figure 1.

The resulting graphic clearly demonstrated that in a very high, 100% renewable scenario, multi-day and seasonal energy storage solutions would be required to balance the grid. At that time, the largest form of energy storage within CESA’s membership was pumped hydro, and even that could not offer nearly enough capacity for seasonal energy storage needs.

Driven by curiosity and resolve, I started a search for a technologically and economically feasible seasonal energy storage solution for California and beyond. I spoke to experts far and wide and evaluated solutions from major energy companies to startups. From my explorations, it became clear: of the commercially available solutions, green hydrogen was the only low-carbon, potentially economically viable option to support seasonal, dispatchable, scalable energy storage for the grid.

In my research, I learned that hydrogen was a mature industrial commodity, with approximately 70 million metric tons sold each year around the world – and that virtually all of this hydrogen produced is sourced from fossil fuels. I also learned analysts were predicting that with the increasingly low cost of wind and solar, green hydrogen via electrolysis would become cost competitive with grey hydrogen (hydrogen made from fossil fuels) in coming years.

Even more exciting, my research uncovered the amazing flexibility of hydrogen molecules. For example, hydrogen gas can power the grid via multiple pathways, either through conversion in a fuel cell or by direct combustion in a gas turbine. Indeed, many gas turbines were already able to combust a blend of natural gas and hydrogen, and several leading manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems and Siemens, were developing new gas turbines that could consume 100% hydrogen gas.

US energy storage safety expert advisory Energy Storage Response Group (ESRG) was created through a meeting of minds from the battery industry and fire service. This includes alumni of DNV GL and the Fire Department of New York.

Energy-Storage.news recently heard from ESRG founder and principal Nick Warner that the company, approaches the industry from a position of “tough love”, having become concerned at a number of shortcomings that could result in serious incidents that could not only endanger lives but also endanger the future of the industry if they are not addressed.

ESRG is about to rebrand under a new name as the Energy Safety Response Group, highlighting the increasing combination of energy storage systems (ESS) with other energy assets and the importance of keeping them all safe. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Nick Warner and business manager Ryan Franks for an in-depth look at what the industry needs to do to win the trust of firefighters, code officials and other stakeholders including banks and insurers.

ESRG is a fairly new company, only a year or two in existence, but you have a lot of experience between your leadership team in batteries, energy storage and fire safety. What’s behind the origin of what you do?

Nick Warner, founding principal: I got into batteries a little over a decade ago, originally in the electric vehicle performance and degradation space, working at Ohio State University, which at the time, had a pretty state-of-the-art battery lab, did a lot of battery testing for about four years, did my Master’s thesis there and then ultimately ran the lab. Over time, I started developing more of an interest in battery second use and battery controls, that ultimately proved to be helpful down the road.

About five years ago, I made the jump over to DNV GL. Instead of cycling the batteries for performance, we were lighting the batteries on fire to see to see what they were doing. I’ve been a firefighter in kind of a previous life in undergrad. And so it was a pretty seamless transition for me. Over the next three and a half years at DNV GL, I built out their safety and testing programme in the US, leading their efforts in all things related to energy storage safety.

German grid operator TransnetBW has partnered with solar inverter supplier SMA to gather data that will ease potential issues with energy distribution in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

The collaboration will help TransnetBW alleviate issues that can arise amid Germany’s booming home energy storage market.

As more battery storage systems are adopted and the renewable energy market gradually becomes decentralised, grid operators have less insight over precisely where power should be distributed.

Data analysis and forecasting, therefore has become far more important for “reliable, efficient and cost-effective grid operation”, Jochen Bornemann, executive vice president of SMA’s digital centre, said.

Dr Philipp Guthke, who oversees special prognsosis and optimisation tasks at Transnet, said that roughly 10% of power generated is no longer arriving at the utility grid.

And that figure is likely to grow over the coming years. Recent analysis from trade body SolarPower Europe found that total installed capacity for battery energy storage systems (BESS) reached almost 2GWh by the end of 2019, representing a 57% increase in capacity year-on-year. Germany is Europe’s leading market for residential battery storage by a wide margin, and even in 2020 year-on-year capacity growth is forecast at 9%, higher than previously thought due to the resilience of the market. SolarPower Europe’s analysts expect storage capacity to grow by 14% next year.

With more residential power users storing their own energy, Transnet has less control over the distribution of power across the Baden-Wurttemberg region’s grid.

SMA manages more than 700,000 registered PV and storage systems, and collects real-time data on their power generation, grid feed-in and self-consumption rates. The company has access to generation and consumption data on more than 20,000 PV systems in the Baden-Württemberg region.

“In Germany alone, more than 180,000 PV systems of all sizes send data from low and medium voltage to our Sunny Portal online monitoring portal via SMA inverters,” Bornemann said, adding that the company’s data solutions could be applied to other parts of the country.

Southern California Edison has signed long-term contracts for four projects totaling 590 megawatts of battery energy storage resources. These contracts increase SCE’s total amount of installed and procured battery storage capacity to approximately 2,050 MWs. SCE hopes this will help further enhance the region’s electric system reliability needs.

Three of the four projects are utility-scale projects totaling 585 MW and will take advantage of lithium-ion batteries that can store energy for use later. The fourth project is a 5 MW demand response contract that will use energy from customer-owned energy storage. Economically impacted communities that suffer most from the effects of air pollution will provide 5% of the MWs for this project.

One of the many ways these flexible energy resources can be used is by capturing solar energy during the day and distributing the energy as the sun sets and energy use remains high. They can also be used to respond to the California Independent System Operator signals, high-demand events, heat waves, or when the energy grid is strained.

The projects are expected to come online by August 2022 and 2023.

As laid out in Pathway 2045, SCE estimates the state needs to add 30 GW of utility-scale storage to the grid and 10 GW of storage from distributed energy resources to meet the state’s clean energy and carbon neutrality goals. These new contracts will further help California meet these goals while providing additional grid reliability. They also help improve California’s economy by creating craft and skilled clean energy jobs while reducing GHG emissions.

The recently introduced Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act aims to achieve a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Achieving this goal will require a modernisation of Canada’s electricity system. While the federal government has taken initial steps toward this goal by phasing out coal and encouraging renewables and other zero-emission technologies, it has become clear that energy storage will need to play a much bigger role for the government’s strategy to succeed.

The election of President-elect Joe Biden south of the border gives added urgency to meeting this challenge. Biden’s platform includes “an historic investment in energy efficiency, clean energy, electrical systems and line infrastructure that makes it easier to electrify transportation, and new battery storage and transmission infrastructure that will address bottlenecks and unlock America’s full clean energy potential.” 

Energy storage is mentioned a number of times in Biden’s climate and energy policies, making it clear that it will be a major area of development. Many U.S. jurisdictions are already ahead of Canada in deploying energy storage to improve their energy systems. Canada may soon find itself even further behind.

Energy storage provides a diverse spectrum of benefits, reducing ratepayer costs, improving reliability and resiliency of the electrical grid, and mitigating Climate Change. As electricity demands fluctuate through the Pandemic and the eventual recovery, storage can provide the cost-effective flexibility that we will need through these uncertain times.

Storage can reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) by supporting increased renewables integration and optimising existing assets on the system. Technologies such as solar and wind often produce electricity at low-demand periods. Storing this energy so it can be dispatched when needed during peak demand periods will be the key to unlocking the potential of these zero-emitting sources. 

Storage can also improve the efficiency of existing electricity resources, including transmission and distribution (T&D) assets, to reduce the need for new infrastructure.

Energy storage firm Stem is taking on new owners and liquidity as it aims for greater share in the growing battery storage gains market of the coming decade.

Stem announced that it was combining with Star Peak Energy Transition Corp., a blank check company created to effect a merger, in a transaction estimated at about $608 million. Star Peak includes investments from funds managed by private equity firms such as BlackRock, Adage Capital Management, Electron Capital Partners and Senator Investment Group.

Once the deal closes as expected in the first quarter of 2021, the equity value of the new formation should be close to $1.35 billion, according to release. The cash influx will enable Stem to capitalize on growth opportunities, including advancing its Athena software platform.

“This transaction is transformative for us and we expect it to significantly accelerate our growth,” John Carrington, Stem CEO, said. “Stem is a market leader and our Athena™ software platform is proven in the U.S., Japan and Canadian markets, and this merger will enable expansion to several additional global markets.”

Founded in 2009, Stem has deployed more than 600 MWh of energy storage capacity commissioned in the past six years. The Athena system is contracted or operating in more than 900 systems in 200 cities, according to the company y.

Stem offers an artificial intelligence (AI) software platform for battery storage systems. Its products have operated globally with more than 40 utilities.