As the global energy market, piece by piece, slowly but surely, moves towards a renewables-centred paradigm, dispatchable solar and uncurtailed wind, along with other forms of clean energy, are requiring longer and longer durations of storage to integrate them to the grid. While there’ll be a place for lithium-ion for many years yet, the technology really excels at applications of up to around four hours. For everything else, there’s a growing list of contenders, with diverse technologies and at different stages of commercialisation. Here’s a handy guide to some of those technologies and their providers, electrochemical and otherwise, that promise anything from five hours to even days or weeks of storage.

Who’s got a head start
Pumped hydro

It’s worth remembering that more than 90% of the world’s installed base of energy storage in megawatt-hours is still pumped hydro. Lithium-ion may take the plaudits and the new market share today, but historically, the legacy of pumped hydro remains huge.

Water is elevated using pumps into a retained pool behind a dam. When electricity is required, the water is unleashed and runs through turbines, which then creates electricity. While the amount of energy required to pump the water back up is far less than the amount generated as it falls, systems can also be paired with renewable generation to pump the water back to the top. However, while the system is cheap once built and can last for many years, finding appropriate sites and getting permission to build pumped hydro plants remains an obstacle to widespread further development in most parts of the world.

In June 2019, Australia-based firm Genex Power announced it was set to receive a second round of debt funding from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), for what will be the world’s first pumped hydro project to utilise an abandoned gold mine.

In Chile, a 300MW pumped hydro project is under development, having recently received an injection of US$60 million in fresh funding from the Green Climate Fund. The Espejo de Tarapacá project, which will also see a 561MW solar PV plant, is being developed by Chilean renewable developer Valhalla and construction is set to begin next year.

French energy giant Engie is also a proponent of the technology, with its First Hydro Company owning the Ffestiniog and Dinorwig pumped hydro assets in Wales. Engie lauds Dinorwig as the fastest power generation asset in the UK, with the ability to deliver 1.7GW in 16 seconds.

Sodium-sulfur (NAS) batteries

Also fairly well established today, Japanese firm NGK has been working on its NAS sodium-sulfur batteries for over three decades. R&D of the Beta Alumina electrolyte, a key component of the system, began in 1984, with the development of the NAS itself beginning in 1989. NGK worked in collaboration with Japanese energy giant TEPCO for the development of the technology and is the only maker of large-scale sodium-sulfur batteries.

The ideas for how to value storage came from members of the Maryland PSC’s Energy Storage Working Group, which includes representatives of Exelon Corp., Exelon subsidiaries Baltimore Gas & Electric and Pepco, the Energy Storage Association and wholesale electricity market operator PJM Interconnection.

An example of a value stream is an “air emissions reduction value.” Energy storage can create reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by storing electricity generated by non-emitting sources like wind and solar, and then discharging that electricity at times when renewable energy is less available.

Under the working group’s proposal, the megawatt-hours discharged by a storage project could be converted into an equivalent number of tons of CO2, and then that number could be multiplied by a CO2 price to calculate a greenhouse gas reduction value. When this value is combined with other potential value streams, the electricity discharged by a storage project would be worth much more on a dollar basis than would be captured by the price of electricity alone.

The filing mentions that the emissions reductions allowed by potential storage projects can help Maryland reach its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2006 levels by 2030.

Maryland is only the third state to propose substantive analysis of the costs and benefits of storage, Energy Storage Association State Policy Director Nitzan Goldberger said in an email to Utility Dive.

“Currently, only two states—California and New York—have sought to implement [benefit-cost analysis] frameworks beyond simplistic estimates of distribution investment deferral or replacement value,” she said.

“Absent reforms to most current [benefit-cost analysis] frameworks—along with regulatory and market reform that facilitates business models that can provide multiple applications from the same asset—energy storage economic impact analyses would not illustrate the full value of storage,” according to Goldberger.

Another value stream envisioned by the working group would be the savings created when storage defers, or negates the need for transmission and distribution upgrades. Fewer wires and substations need to be built if there are more ways to store electricity, which enhance the reliability of the grid.

More energy conservation at times of peak demand should also be treated as a value stream for storage, according to the working group.

“By reducing the overall need to supply customers during periods of peak demand, the utilities will save money for ratepayers by reducing the overall need to serve the system during period of high demand,” the filing said.

The group also proposed that utilities and regulators should also take into account “non-quantifiable” value streams of storage. For example, battery storage projects can help boost adoption of electric vehicles by serving as additional charging stations.

This last year of the decade proved to be a pivotal year for energy storage technology, as major developments underscored why it is so vital for energy markets. Events such as widespread power outages and transmission issues on a global scale have led to the precipitous rise in energy storage deployments. The energy industry has been working hard to usher in this paradigm shift, and now mainstream consumers –residents and businesses alike– are finally becoming acutely aware of the importance of energy storage.

Battery storage installations in the U.S. in 2018 totaled 311 MW and 777 MWh, up from next to nothing just six years prior. More significant, industry research groups predict that capacities for energy storage will rise exponentially in the next five years. In fact, global energy storage deployments are expected to grow thirteen-fold over the next six years, from a 12 GWh market in 2018 to a 158 GWh market in 2024, according to Wood Mackenzie. This is just the beginning.

Before we take a closer look at what’s next in 2020 and beyond, let’s take a quick look back at 2019 and some of the big stories driving this paradigm shift in the energy market.

Market Drivers: Blackouts, Evolving Energy Infrastructure

The widespread adoption of energy storage solutions is being driven not only by the need for more renewables, but by exponential growth in energy demand, rising energy costs, and inefficient grid systems, as we saw with the outages that hit major cities without warning.

In New York City there were critical blackouts that left more than 72,000 Con Edison customers without power for five hours due to transmission issues. In London, more than a million households and businesses were left in the dark, and commuters stranded, when the lights went out across the city. The cause: a lightning strike that caused two power generators on the National Grid to go offline.

And, as the world watched, California wildfires and subsequent PG&E preemptive blackouts (to avoid further wildfires) afflicted as many as 1.3 million people in the state and threatened to disrupt critical emergency and rescue services. These preventative power cuts have cost California’s economy upward of $2 billion, according to some estimates.

The developers of the lithium-ion battery won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019, in recognition of a scientific achievement that has helped power our mobile phones, laptops, and electric vehicles (EVs).

“It can also store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind power, making possible a fossil fuel-free society,” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said, noting that lithium-ion batteries have created a rechargeable world over the past decade.

In the new decade, batteries and battery technology are set to play an increasingly important role in bringing more electric vehicles and renewable energy to the market, analysts say.

Rapidly declining costs and the potential to scale up existing and breakthrough battery and energy storage solutions are set to dramatically change the global mobility market and the power grid over the next ten years.

A lot of investments will be necessary in scaling up emerging battery and energy storage technology, as well as in the further development of lithium-ion batteries and alternative battery tech, to support the clean energy transition while global demand for electricity continues to rise.

Continuously falling battery costs, and rising capacity and usage of clean energy are set to result in booming global stationary energy storage over the next two decades, which will require total investments of as much as US$662 billion, BloombergNEF (BNEF) said in a report last year.

Energy storage installations across the world are expected to soar to 1,095GW, or 2,850GWh, by 2040, compared to a modest deployment of just 9GW/17GWh as of 2018, according to BNEF’s forecasts.

Unsurprisingly, the key driver of the energy storage installation boom will be additionally plunging costs of lithium-ion batteries, which will give financial rationale to additional uses of storage and surging installations of stationary energy storage.

According to BNEF, the exponential rise in renewable-sourced electricity and EV use will transform the global power systems and the transportation sector, driving demand for energy storage.

“The report finds that energy storage will become a practical alternative to new-build electricity generation or network reinforcement,” according to BNEF’s analysts.

According to UBS, energy storage will be the next critical catalyst for a global shift towards renewable energy. Current energy storage capacity represents just 17 percent of total installed solar and wind capacity, UBS said in a report in November.

“Energy storage cost has almost halved in the past five years but generally remain too pricey for scale-up applications,” UBS says.

Kyocera Corporation and 24M announced that Kyocera has formally launched its residential energy storage system, Enerezza, the world’s first system built using 24M’s novel SemiSolid electrode manufacturing process. In addition, Kyocera has extended its commitment to 24M’s unique manufacturing platform with plans to start full-scale mass production in the fall of 2020.

In June 2019, Kyocera began pilot production of 24M’s SemiSolid battery technology to validate its use in residential energy storage systems in the Japanese market. Based on the successful pilot, Kyocera recently rolled out its full Enerezza product line — a 24M-based residential energy storage system available in 5-kWh, 10-kWh, and 15-kWh capacities designed to meet diverse customer needs.

“Kyocera and our customers benefit from long battery life, unparalleled safety, and the low-cost approach enabled by 24M’s unique manufacturing process,” said Toshihide Koyano, Deputy General Manager of Corporate Solar Energy Group at Kyocera. “At Kyocera, we believe that 24M’s SemiSolid technology is the emerging standard for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. We are delighted to be the first company to deliver residential energy storage products using 24M’s novel process.”

24M’s innovative manufacturing process delivers market-leading price-performance. SemiSolid electrodes use no binder, mixing electrolyte with active materials to form a clay-like slurry with unique attributes. As a result, the 24M process eliminates the need for a significant amount of inactive materials and capital-intensive processes like drying and electrolyte filling, thus dramatically reducing manufacturing cost.

“Kyocera’s launch of the Enerezza residential energy storage product line marks a significant milestone for 24M,” said Naoki Ota, President and CTO of 24M. “After many years of hard work, our technology is commercially available thanks to our dedicated partner Kyocera.”

It has not been stated whether Enerezza will be made available to the U.S. market.

The 10 most popular blogs on Energy-Storage.news during 2019 offer a fairly strong indication of the overall topics leading industry thinking during the year – so without further ado, here they are:

Of course, throughout 2020 – and beyond – we’ll be tackling all of these as well as other crucial, controversial and / or intriguing topics. We’re expecting to see more of a focus on the supply chain and manufacturing in 2020, both for lithium and non-lithium technologies. Safety and regulation topics including grid integration with electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, as well as the related areas of finance and business model innovation are likely to also feature heavily.

Meanwhile here at Solar Media, we’re running with #SmartSolarStorage2020, a hashtag that can be used on social media to create and curate conversations throughout the year.

The Top Three
‘Leapfrogging’ the grid: Hybrid lithium-flow in action at a remote Thai village microgrid

We talk a lot about the existing prominence of lithium-ion. There’s also been an increasing amount of discussion of flow batteries as a long duration counterpart to lithium, evidenced by the popularity of our November news story on Lockheed Martin’s forthcoming flow energy storage battery launch (see our Top five news stories for the year here).

I was both surprised and enthused to see a guest blog on a project combining both technologies, lithium-ion batteries with zinc bromine flow batteries, at a remote Thai village, take the number one spot for this year.

Ben Shepherd, chief commercial officer at Australian company Redflow, talked about the advantages, challenges and execution of a project that promises to prove “an excellent demonstration of the benefits of energy storage systems in developing nations”.

(Cover image to this article shows an aerial view of the village, Ban Pha Dan. Credit: Redflow).

https://www.energy-storage.news/blogs/leapfrogging-the-grid-hybrid-lithium-flow-in-action-at-a-remote-thai-villag

A flow battery ‘competitive with the LG Chems and Samsungs of this world’

Ditto the second entry in our list: the proposed merger between flow energy storage providers Avalon Battery and redT was discussed in detail with Avalon and redT leadership, alongside NEXTracker’s CTO, Alex Au.

NEXTracker has deployed Avalon’s batteries in the field already in its innovative solar-plus-storage power plants. Some deep insights as well as attention-grabbing soundbites from the bullish trio propelled this one into the upper echelons of our Top 10 blogs of the year.

An oft-repeated refrain—the sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow—is sometimes seen as an impediment to renewable energy. But it’s also an impetus toward discovering the best ways to store that energy until it’s needed.

Declining costs in available technologies have propelled interest in energy storage forward like never before. The price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by about 80% over the past five years, enabling the integration of storage into solar power systems. Today, nearly 18% of all electricity produced in the United States comes from renewable energy sources, such as hydropower and wind—a figure that is forecast to climb. And as communities and entire states push toward higher percentages of power from renewables, there’s no doubt storage will play an important role.

Compared with the same period a year earlier, the United States saw a 93% increase in the amount of storage deployed in the third quarter of 2019. By 2024, that number is expected to top 5.4 gigawatts, according to a forecast by market research firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. The market value is forecast to increase from $720 million today to $5.1 billion in 2024. Driving such growth is an increased focus on adding renewable energy sources to the nation’s grid.

Only in the past decade has the widespread adoption of renewable energy sources become an economic possibility, said Paul Denholm, a principal energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He joined NREL 15 years ago and, at the time, he and other analysts were busy plotting a path to 20% of the nation’s energy supply coming from renewable sources. Now, they’re aiming much higher.

“The declining cost of wind and solar and now batteries makes it conceivable to consider 100% renewables,” he said.

NREL’s Renewable Electricity Futures Study estimated that 120 gigawatts of storage would be needed across the continental United States by 2050, when the scenario imagined a future where 80% of electricity will come from renewable resources. The country currently has 22 gigawatts of storage from pumped hydropower, and another gigawatt in batteries.

Energy storage is a rapidly growing segment of the clean energy sector, and prices are dropping fast. Yet many are still struggling to understand how to value energy storage as an investment.

As a growing number of cities, states and businesses commit to 100 percent clean energy, storage is already playing a pivotal role in determining how they will meet these targets. Wood Mackenzie’s latest Global Energy Storage Outlook projects that deployments will grow 13-fold over the next six years, from a 12-gigawatt-hour market in 2018 to a 158-gigawatt-hour market in 2024.

This emerging market represents a huge opportunity. Global investments of $374 billion a year will be needed to upgrade the grid with enough flexibility to account for the variable power generation profiles of renewable technologies like solar and wind. Storage solutions are now a growing part of this energy transition and will represent a $150 billion industry in the U.S. alone by 2023.

However, massive deployment numbers and dropping costs won’t streamline project finance for energy storage in the short term. As a nascent industry, battery storage lacks historical data, requiring investors and lenders to familiarize themselves with its unique qualities.

Installing storage, whether as a standalone asset or by adding it to an existing utility power source, is highly individualized from one project to another. So extrapolating risk and returns from any given asset is not straightforward. Each project draws power from a unique generation source (renewable or traditional power plants) and is interconnected to a regionally regulated power market and a unique revenue stream.

Some storage projects are able to generate income both while charging and deploying energy, while others are focused just on deployment. There are also interconnection considerations depending on how and where your storage project plugs in. Are you directly charging from the grid? From a solar or wind farm or some other standalone generation facility?

Another consideration for investors is that batteries in a storage project have shorter lifespans of 10 to 15 years versus solar or wind energy assets that may last twice as long. And similar to PV modules, which lose efficiency as they age, it’s critical to understand the factors that impact a battery’s ability to store energy as it ages and to factor in the cost of replacement as needed. Understanding the intricacies of asset management and optimization is highly complex, but it is necessary in order to adequately mitigate risk for each storage portfolio.

To realize the full potential for the investment markets and the global energy transition, it’s critically important to understand the entire value stack that integrated storage brings to the table.

January 2 (Renewables Now) – Gresham House Energy Storage Fund Plc (LON:GRID) has completed the acquisition of a 49-MW battery-only project near Preston, northern England, it said on Thursday.

Gresham House acquired the Red Scar project for a total enterprise value of about GBP 32.8 million (USD 43.1m/EUR 39.2m) from developers Gresham House DevCo Ltd and Noriker Power Ltd.

Red Scar was handed over on December 31, after the successful completion of commissioning tests and grid connection. It is one of the exclusive portfolio projects being developed by subsidiaries and associates of Gresham House plc (AIM:GHE) for sale to the fund and included in Gresham House Energy Storage Fund’s initial public offering (IPO) prospectus, published in October 2018. The project brings the total capacity of operational battery storage projects in the fund’s investment portfolio to 174 MW.

The fund expects to buy another three projects in the coming months after they become operational, it said. These include two 50-MW projects and a 5-MW extension to the 8-MW Littlebrook project in Kent.

Liam Stoker and Andy Colthorpe reflect on the biggest news in energy storage in 2019, while also gazing into their crystal balls and predicting what the energy transition may hold in store for the year ahead.

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