Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corp. (Rosatom) is entering the energy storage business through its TVEL Fuel Company (TVEL) unit, which has set up a dedicated subsidiary, Renera.

The new company will produce module type lithium-ion traction batteries for electric vehicles, as well as energy storage systems for emergency power supplies, renewable energy resources, and the smoothing of load demand, TVEL stated.

“Our enterprises have had some experience in developing energy storage products, and since 2018,” a company spokesperson told pv magazine. “But now a special-purpose company is finally incorporated to develop this business systematically.”

“We are committed to comply with individual customer requirements for technical specifications and offer flexible commercial conditions,” said Renera General Director Emin Askerov. “We already accomplish projects under a rent scheme and plan to start leasing and life cycle agreements.”

Rosatom is already operating in the renewable energy sector via its NovaWind unit, which mostly focuses on the wind power business.

“We have an R&D center which is capable to develop energy storage solutions as for grids and substations, as well as for renewable energy sources, including both wind and solar,” the spokesperson said.

The Russian state-owned conglomerate’s nuclear power plants currently cover around 20% of Russia’s total electricity demand.

North America is currently leading the world for utility-scale energy storage deployments, but could be overtaken by the second-largest market, the Asia-Pacific region, as early as 2023, according to forecasting and analysis by Guidehouse Insights.

The Colorado-headquartered research company recently published its Q3 2020 ‘Utility-scale energy storage market update’, which examines market drivers, trends and forecasts for the large-scale energy storage industry worldwide through to 2029.

Only a couple of years ago, utility-scale energy storage was considered “too expensive or complex for integration into energy markets” in many parts of the world, but since then there has been a “major shift”, Guidehouse analysts said. Guidehouse expects annual installed utility-scale storage power capacity to be in the region of 25,000MW globally by 2029, and more than 5,000MW next year, more than doubling this year’s figures.

While renewable energy integration remains, and is expected to continue to be, the strongest driver of that growth, energy storage can help and reduce costs associated with many different aspects of the power system, according to Guidehouse.

“Developed markets with growing storage industries have shown that once energy storage becomes a component of utility planning, cost-effective opportunities to use the technology will present themselves,” report authors Pritil Gunjan, Ricardo Rodriguez and Maria Chavez told Energy-Storage.news.

“In the US, the mandated inclusion of energy storage alongside other assets in utility integrated resource planning (IRP) processes quickly led to the identification of new project opportunities. This trend will replicate itself in emerging markets throughout the world once a sufficient level of understanding has been achieved.”

South Africa’s Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy is conducting a fairly unique procurement programme for 2GW of energy capacity, to come from a “range of energy source technologies”.

With a closing date of 25 November this year and projects needing to be in commercial operation by mid-2022, the government, together with the national energy regulator, has determined that it quickly needs to bridge the gap between demand and supply on the grid.

Independent power producers (IPPs) are invited to prepare bids for projects with an installed capacity of between 50MW and 450MW, for 20-year power purchase agreements (PPAs). Winning projects will need to be dispatchable under terms defined by the tender: the main requirement being that they can dispatch power to the grid as needed between the hours of 05:00 and 21:30.

With the tender closed off to coal and diesel plants, this opens a pathway for renewable energy projects paired with energy storage, it also leaves the door open for natural gas. Consultancy Clean Horizon has partnered with local renewables consultancy Harmattan to unpick and analyse the tender and how it works.

Clean Horizon head of market analysis, Corentin Baschet, spoke to Andy Colthorpe about what the “almost technology agnostic” tender aims to do and the type of companies and projects likely to be successful in it.

The new tender is called the Risk Mitigation IPP Request for Proposals (RFP) – what’s the element of risk mitigation about and how is that put into the tender’s design?

The Risk Mitigation IPP RFP is a 2GW tender put out by the government of South Africa. ‘Risk mitigation’: because they’re lacking 2GW of capacity in the coming years, they’re risking a lot of load shedding essentially. Coal and diesel cannot participate [in the tender], it’s open to gas, renewables and storage. It’s close to technology agnostic, it’s made so that any distributed generation power plant can participate, except for diesel and coal.

EDISON, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Eos Energy Storage LLC (“Eos”), a leading manufacturer of safe, low-cost and long-duration zinc battery storage systems, today announced an expansion of its partnership with Nayo Tropical Technology Ltd. (“Nayo”), a leading West African mini-grid engineering, procurement, and construction (“EPC”) company. Eos will deploy additional units of its signature Aurora EnergyBlock™ systems, rated at 125kW/500kWh, to four rural microgrid projects in Nigeria in the first quarter of 2021.

In July, Eos announced it had entered into an agreement with Nayo to bring safe, environmentally friendly, low-maintenance, easy-to-deploy energy storage to the African market for the use of residents and local businesses in rural locations. This new contract expands on the success of that program by combining solar photovoltaic generation and energy storage to provide reliable electricity to homes and businesses in remote Nigerian communities, in addition to reducing dependence on diesel generators.

A notable benefit of Eos’ microgrid battery energy storage system is that it can store renewable energy that can be released at a later time and under severe weather conditions, giving rural locations and remote environments a reliable solution for energy storage and generation. High temperatures can be a challenge for other battery technologies, as they require heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (“HVAC”) systems, which get overworked and fail frequently in hot climates. Eos’ batteries do not require HVAC and can operate reliably in hot places without it.

“Eos was quick to prove that its positively ingenious energy storage solutions are uniquely suited to harsh environments and rural deployments with our last deployment,” said Dr. Balki G. Iyer, Chief Commercial Officer of Eos. “We are proud to expand our partnership with Nayo with a follow up in the first quarter, and we look forward to serving the energy needs of additional communities in the future with Nayo as our partner.”

Eos’ clients, including utilities, EPC companies and storage integrators, benefit from additional features including simple installation, minimal auxiliary power requirements to run the system, the ability to power through grid outages, simple maintenance and long-term product life. Remote project sites can often be a challenge, as they can be far from a supply chain and labor pool, but the low maintenance requirements of the Eos battery make it a fitting solution despite these limitations.

Energy storage including short duration and seasonal technologies ranging from lithium batteries to hydrogen could help mitigate the impacts of negative power prices in Europe, an analyst has said.

The day ahead price of power in Europe went below zero for an increasing amount of time in the first nine months of 2020, more than doubling from 2019. On average, power prices in Europe went negative 0.8% of the period studied by power market data analysis company EnAppSys.

Belgium saw prices of €-115.31/MWh on 13 April and Germany saw prices of €-83.94/MWh for eight hours on 21 April. Countries with high wind demand were particularly affected, with EnAppSys pointing to Ireland, Germany and Denmark as examples.

Ireland – which includes both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland – saw 36% of its overall energy demand covered by wind generation and negative prices for 4.2% of the time, significantly higher than the European average.

Markets became “much more volatile” in 2020, according to Alena Nispel, business analyst at EnAppSys, due to the lower demand during COVID-19 lockdowns, higher volumes of renewables and increasing interconnection between markets.

Nispel said that battery storage could “reduce these impacts – at least as far as it is economically sensible to do so”. Colleague Rob Lalor, a senior analyst with EnAppSys, said that as as more renewables come onto the grid, increasing volatility, battery storage can shift “large volumes” of wind or solar away from peak output into other periods of the day by charging during peak periods and discharging later on.

“There are economic limits imposed upon storage based on economic return per storage cycle and number of cycles/usages per year,” Lalor said.

Methods reveal understanding of the location of hydrogen in ferritic steels.

 As the global energy market shifts from coal, petroleum fuel, and natural gas to more environmentally friendly primary energy sources, hydrogen is becoming a crucial pillar in the clean energy movement. Developing safe and cost-effective storage and transportation methods for hydrogen is essential but complicated given the interaction of hydrogen with structural materials.

Hydrogen can cause brittleness in several metals including ferritic steel — a type of steel used in structural components of buildings, automobile gears and axles, and industrial equipment. Recent advancements in experimental tools and multiscale modeling are starting to provide insight into the embrittlement process.

A review of various methods, published in Applied Physics Reviews, from AIP Publishing, has improved the understanding of the structure, property, and performance of ferritic steels that are subjected to mechanical loading in a hydrogen environment. While there are many studies of stainless steel, the researchers concentrated on ferritic steel, a cheaper steel that is used in the construction of pipelines and other large structures.

“Determining the location of the hydrogen in the host metal is the million-dollar question,” said May Martin, one of the authors.

Specifically, understanding where the hydrogen goes under strain in a bulk material is critical to understanding embrittlement.

“We haven’t answered this question but by combining techniques, we are getting closer to that answer,” said Martin.

The researchers highlighted several combinations of techniques and methods, including atom probe tomography. APT is a measurement tool that combines a field ion microscope with a mass spectrometer to enable 3D imaging and chemical composition measurements at the atomic scale, even for light elements like hydrogen.

Other techniques that show promise are 2D mapping by secondary ion mass spectrometry to answer the question of where hydrogen lies in a material. Ion mass spectrometry is a technique used to analyze the composition of solid surfaces and thin films by sputtering the surface of the specimen with a focused primary ion beam and collecting and analyzing the ejected secondary ions.

Salt caverns currently used for gas storage are under investigation as large-scale, organic flow batteries.

The project by RWE Gas Storage West GmbH and CMBlu Energy AG is investigating organic flow technology as a means of harnessing the massive storage potential of huge underground caverns.

The challenge for energy storage is to scale the capacity on different timescales to make the most of the growing renewable generation capacity. Currently Europe’s largest battery located in Jardelund, Schleswig-Holstein, which is based on lithium-ion technology, has a storage capacity of about 50MWh. In comparison, the potential capacity of the caverns is estimated up to several gigawatt hours.

The concept is to use an organic electrolyte solution filling the salt caverns as the primary energy source. As a first step, potentially suitable electrolytes have been identified. In the next stage running up to the beginning of 2021, their suitability for use in salt caverns will be investigated in the lab.

Once a suitable electrolyte has been identified, work will start on constructing and operating a test system. The planned capacity of the system is 100kW/1,000kWh and is expected to be in place by the spring of 2024.

“The future belongs to renewables. In order to make optimal use of green electricity, we need large stationary electricity storage systems,” says Andreas Frohwein, technical managing director of RWE Gas Storage West. “In the future, we may be able to use our salt caverns as batteries for storing enormous quantities of electricity. Using existing technical infrastructure, they could also be connected to the electricity grid quickly.”

The government of Canada unveiled CA$10 billion (US$7.53 billion) worth of “new major infrastructure initiatives” last week, with the inclusion of energy storage warmly welcomed by trade group Energy Storage Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new Growth Plan to be delivered through the Canadian Infrastructure Bank (CIB) last Thursday. The three-year plan to invest in infrastructure is a key part of a drive to create jobs and economic growth in the wake of the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

With the hope of creating around 60,000 jobs throughout the country, the Growth Plan focuses on areas including agriculture and internet connectivity as well as helping to build a resilient and sustainable low-carbon economy.

A quarter of the pledged CA$10 billion will go towards clean power initiatives, “to support renewable generation and storage,” a government statement read, as well as transmitting clean electricity between Canada’s provinces, territories and regions, with northern and Indigenous communities among them.

With a further CA$500 million to be allocated by the CIB to directly support project development and early construction works, the plan is part of the government’s overall CA$180 billion commitment to investing in new infrastructure in the country. CIB chair Michael Sabia said that “every dollar of investment” in the Growth Plan initiatives is “intended to attract additional dollars from private and institutional investors”.

Justin Wahid Rangooni, executive director of Energy Storage Canada, told Energy-Storage.news that the group, which began as a trade association for Ontario’s booming storage sector but has since encompassed national representation, “is encouraged to see that energy storage was specifically referenced in the Federal Government announcement”.

India’s renewable energy sector, the fourth-most attractive renewable energy market in the world today, is all set to get a new player.

U.S.-based ArcVera Renewables, which specializes in consulting and technical services, has announced its entry into India’s solar, wind and hybrid energy storage market.

ArcVera has opened up an office in Bengaluru in the southern part of India. From there, it will deliver its expertise to project developers, lenders and investors — not only in India but also neighboring Southeast Asia and Pacific Rim countries.

The MetalMiner 2021 Annual Outlook consolidates our 12-month view and provides buying organizations with a complete understanding of the fundamental factors driving prices and a detailed forecast that can be used when sourcing metals for 2021 — including expected average prices, support and resistance levels.

ArcVera joins the fray in India’s renewable energy sector
The Colorado-based ArcVera Renewables has over 40 years of global experience. The firm is now providing expert technical, financial and independent engineering services for stand-alone energy storage or hybrid projects.

Gregory S. Poulos, CEO of ArcVera Renewables, told the Indian media a combination of factors had made the company take this decision to expand. He said, on the one hand, India is a large and rapidly growing renewables market. With the entry of energy tenders and hybrid project requirements, the country presents an even more complex and competitive market.

On the other hand, a competitor’s departure from the Indian wind market left a vacuum that ArcVera is ideally positioned to fill, Poulos added.

What also drove ArcVera’s decision is the fact that Indian developers and investors are on the lookout for technical expertise to lower project risk and raise project value.

ArcVera’s services cover the full project life cycle. That cycle includes finance-grade resource assessments, project design, technology assessments, financing, M&A, due diligence, construction, operations, and repowering.

The company has atmospheric scientists, engineers, and data analysts.

The world is electrifying at a rapid pace and the mining industry seems to be becoming a quiet but key player in the electrification process. Tesla’s TSLA +4.5% recent ‘Battery Day’ announcements only highlight the incredible challenges facing the electricity storage market, and raise significant questions about how the market will evolve.

We know that demand for energy storage is surging to meet increasing demand for renewable energy and electrified transport. According to Maria Xylia at Sweco Sweden, only 3% of global capacity can be currently stored and energy demand itself is expected to increase over 50% to 2050. Storage is a fundamental necessity for the integration of renewables into a smoothly running and efficient energy system, and it needs to be cost-effective, high performance and safe.

As Dr. Young-hye Na, Manager, Materials Innovations for Next-Gen Batteries, IBM Research says, “Enabling better battery energy storage will be key to a successful energy transition to renewables and net-zero carbon emissions. While lithium-ion batteries have advanced significantly by cutting cost and improving energy density for the last decade, it is still too expensive to be widely adopted for EV and renewable applications, and heavy metals that are needed to make these batteries – ex. cobalt and nickel – have brought environmental concerns associated with their invasive and energy intensive mining.”

Tesla’s ‘Battery Day’ left experts somewhat puzzled. There had been high expectations of breakthrough announcements but the company laid out future plans for building its own batteries and its own supply chain, and for massively ramping up production to 2030. The company announced a new cell design which could cut battery costs in half but it’s yet ready. It can take up to ten years for a battery to move from the lab to commercial production. For an audience expecting significant change, it could be considered a disappointment – given the resulting drop in Tesla’s share price at nearly 10%, it certainly appeared the market thought so.