http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2014/11/welcome-to-our-new-energy-storage-e-newsletter

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2014/11/welcome-to-our-new-energy-storage-e-newsletter

Oncor has talked to Tesla Motors Inc. about using its batteries for the grid. Use of batteries to supply electricity to the grid on demand would help with intermittent wind and solar power, which only generate when the sun shines or winds blow. Texas generates the most wind power of any state.

“Texas is facing increasing demands on the power grid and we think this may be the best way to address it,” Schein said. “We need to propose a plan that provides many benefits to the grid.”

Deploying as much as 5,000 megawatts of battery storage would help reduce customer bills by cutting spending on new power plants and distribution infrastructure, according to a report today from Brattle Group Inc. Oncor, which is 80 percent owned by a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings Corp., commissioned the study.

Energy storage for the grid is expected to surge to 20.8 gigawatts in 2024 from 538.4 megawatts this year, with revenue growing to $15.6 billion annually from $675 million, according to Navigant Research.

Price Drop

In the next seven or eight years, the price of batteries used for storage may fall by about half, to $230 a kilowatt-hour of generating capacity, said Sofia Savvantidou, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in London.

Tesla has announced plans to build a “gigafactory” in Nevada that would produce batteries that can supply power to cars and store electricity for utilities. The company has said it plans to cut the per kilowatt-hour cost of its batteries by more than 30 percent.

Energy Future Holdings, which filed for bankruptcy with a $42 billion reorganization plan in April, is seeking a buyer for Oncor via auction. Oncor serves 10 million customers in Texas using 119,000 miles (191,000 kilometers) of power lines.

Copyright 2014 Bloomberg

Lead image: Wind farm Texas via Shutterstock

“This decision to grant development consent now clears the way for the company to make a final investment decision on the project,” Benj Sykes, vice president of U.K. wind for Dong, said in an e-mailed statement.

The U.K. already has more than half of the world’s installed offshore wind-generating capacity, and is pushing the technology to help meet its renewable energy targets.

Dong expects to use 6- to 8-megawatt turbines, it said. The utility owns 50.1 percent of the project, SSE Plc owns 25.1 percent and a joint venture between Dutch pension administrator PGGM and Ampere Equity Fund own the remainder. The project was awarded guaranteed power contracts by the government in April.

It’s the second approval in less than two months for a U.K. project by Dong, the biggest offshore wind developer. Its 250- megawatt Burbo Bank Extension project in Liverpool Bay was granted approval on Sept. 26. That’s next to an existing 90- megawatt farm, and the Walney extension is adjacent to the existing 367-megawatts of Walney 1 and 2 wind farms.

The U.K. currently has 22 operational offshore wind farms totaling 3,653 megawatts of capacity, according to the RenewableUK lobby group. The biggest is the 630-megawatt London Array, a collaboration between four companies, including Dong and EON SE. While no bigger project is currently under construction, today’s approval is the fifth of 750 megawatts or greater to receive consent, according to the data.

Copyright 2014 Bloomberg

Lead image: Offshore wind via Shutterstock

Excluding a loss of $89.3 million that was attributed to non-controlling interests, the company lost 75 cents a share, beating the $1.11 average loss of 11 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 20 percent to $58.3 million.

Quarterly losses attributable to non-controlling interests can cause significant swings in income. Analysts typically exclude those variations from their estimates. Today’s profit likely won’t be repeated soon, said Chief Financial Officer Brad Buss.

“I don’t expect that to continue,” Buss said today on a conference call. A higher share of the company’s losses during the quarter was allocated to these non-controlling interests, he said.

“We do not expect to see profit any time in the next few years,” Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W. Baird Co. in San Francisco, said yesterday in a note to clients. He has the equivalent of a hold on the shares. “SolarCity will be spending aggressively on sales and marketing to build out its portfolio,”

The company provides residential and commercial solar systems, typically at little to no upfront cost to customers who sign long-term contracts to buy the output. It’s losing money as it invests in new systems that will generate revenue over the long run.

Chief Executive Officer Lyndon Rive last month began offering loans for customers who prefer to own rooftop solar systems, a shift away from the leasing model that’s produced most of his company’s growth. Rive expects these loans to make up half of his business by the middle of next year.

SolarCity slipped 2.3 percent to $53.20 a share at 5:28 p.m. after the close of regular U.S. trading.

Copyright 2014 Bloomberg

Lead image: Up graph via Shutterstock

U.S. citizens should remember not to fall for the stereotypes of the political parties. In many ways, we lost one strong supporter in the Senate, gained a strong set of new Republican and Democratic Governors who are clean energy advocates, and are pretty much even keel in the House of Representatives.

Will the Republican leadership in Washington, DC grandstand on Keystone Pipeline? Yes. But can they succeed in undercutting the grass roots Republican clean energy support out beyond the Washington, DC beltway? No.

The two most-watched Senate races in the clean energy world were Mark Udall (D-CO) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). Udall, who co-chaired the U.S. Senate Renewable Energy Energy Efficiency Caucus lost. Shaheen, who championed the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill, won. She sits on the Senate Appropriations Energy Water subcommittee and is a valuable ally.

A good win for clean energy is Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) who sits both on the Energy Water Appropriations Subcommittee and well as the Foreign Relations Subcommittee, which includes international environment. He is a stalwart supporter of clean energy and not a shy one either.

In the Governors races, we have strong support for the portfolio of clean energy technologies. I am relying on Craig Cox’s great research here. Cox is one of the authorities on regional renewable energy politics for decades.

Jerry Brown (D-CA) and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) were re-elected and are very pro-renewable energy and energy efficiency governors. The list is way too long here to list all they have done — but they both have set solid records of expansion of clean energy in two of the most populous states in the nation. Iowa’s re-elected Governor, Terry Branstad (R) has solid clean energy credentials. According to his website, “Governor Branstad signed solar and wind energy tax credits into law in 2012 and 2014, respectively, and Iowa currently generates 27.4 percent of its electricity from wind–the highest in the nation.”

Colorado’s Governor John Hickenlooper (D) was also re-elected and his website states that he “supported renewable energy jobs” and offers the following:

John supports Colorado’s large and growing renewable energy industry. Colorado has the sixth-largest solar industry in the country supporting 3,600 jobs, and the state’s wind industry is tenth-largest in the United States. John signed legislation to cut red tape for solar technology and small hydroelectric generation, and he expanded the state’s renewable energy investment tax credits. In addition, he led efforts at the Western Governors’ Association to call on Congress to extend the federal wind program.

In Hawaii, David Ige (D) was elected, and he publicly states that “we must provide more options for customers to manage their electricity bills and to reduce cost by ensuring that all electricity customers have the opportunity to benefit from clean energy policies. I believe we can be a model of clean energy for the nation — and even the world — but we need the right kind of leadership.”

Incumbent Mark Dayton (D-MN) was also re-elected and he has a long history of support for energy efficiency and renewable energy from his first days as Governor, and incumbent Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy (D) is also an ardent and proven clean energy supporter with initiatives for renewables, energy efficiency and microgrids.

A rising star for Republicans on clean energy is Idaho Governor-elect C.L. “Butch” Otter, who is quoted on his website as saying: “There are few things more important to our long-term economic well-being than becoming more energy independent. A more secure and prosperous future requires protecting and empowering the generation and transmission of low-cost, reliable energy for sustainable growth and development — and more career opportunities for the people we serve.”

Further, the website explains that:

Governor Otter showed his keen understanding of the role of renewable and alternative energy resources — as well as the critical importance of improving Idaho’s energy transmission capabilities — when he created the Office of Energy Resources in 2007. It took the lead during the Great Recession in upgrading Idaho’s public schools to make them more energy efficient, and along with the Idaho Strategic Energy Alliance it has led the Governor’s charge for more industrial energy efficiency and development.

New Mexico incumbent Governor Susana Martinez (R) was re-elected, and she boasted that she “signed legislation to extend Sustainable Building Tax Credit for five years to provide incentives for consumers and builders to use energy efficient homes and buildings.”

Newly-elected Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (R), publicly supported the state’s renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) and stuck by it during his public debates.

Oregon incumbent Governor John Kitzhaber (D) was re-elected, and he took clean energy credit by signing Senate Bill 692, which aligned Oregon’s energy efficiency standards for appliances with California and British Columbia; House Bill 2801, which expands market opportunities for energy efficiency and conservation by allowing utilities to invest public purpose charge funds in whole-building energy efficiency retrofits; and Senate Bill 242, which reduces the amount of coal in the state’s future energy resource mix to encourage investment in lower-carbon alternatives.

This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

November 05, 2014

As part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, federal agencies on October 31 released their plans for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for climate change impacts.

These agency Sustainability Plans and Climate Change Adaptation Plans coincide with the fifth anniversary of the President’s 2009 Executive Order on Environmental, Energy and Economic Performance, which set aggressive energy, climate, and environmental targets for agencies. The agency plans, including the Energy Department’s plan, detail how their actions have already reduced the federal government’s direct greenhouse gas emissions by more than 17% since 2008—the equivalent of permanently taking 1.8 million cars off the road.

The White House also announced the winners of the 2014 GreenGov Presidential Awards, honoring federal agency teams and individuals who are taking innovative approaches to curbing waste, reducing energy use, and saving taxpayer money in federal agency operations. The Energy Department’s Federal Energy Management Program was recognized by the White House as a 2014 GreenGov Presidential Award Winner for a joint partnership with the Department of Transportation that promotes of facility audits, vehicle fleet improvements, and expansion of sustainable buildings. And to seek the best ideas for new climate and sustainability initiatives from the federal community, the White House today launched the GreenGov Challenge, an online tool for federal employees from across the country to suggest and vote on ideas for new ways to meet the President’s sustainability goals.

Over the past year, the Energy Department achieved a number of significant successes in its efforts to promote clean energy, reduce waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions, including:

• The Department added 33 buildings to its green building portfolio, for a total of 101 buildings that meet the federal guiding principles for high performance and sustainable buildings, representing a 49% increase over FY 2012 performance

• The Department reduced fleet petroleum use by 8% from FY 2012, a 16% cumulative reduction from the FY 2005 baseline, placing the Department on track to meet its goal of a 30% cumulative reduction by FY 2020

• In June 2014, the Department completed construction of an 11.5 megawatt wind farm at its Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, making the five-turbine wind farm the largest federally owned wind farm in the United States.

See the White House news release and the Energy Department news release.

The energy storage industry is growing and so is RenewableEnergyWorld.com.

In recognition of the rapidly evolving energy storage industry, RenewableEnergyWorld.com introduced a dedicated energy storage section to the website that keeps readers updated on the latest storage news and industry trends. Due to popular demand, we have now added a dedicated Energy Storage e-Newsletter that will be sent to readers once every week.

Subscribe here to start receiving your copy today!

Renewable energy and energy storage are a match made in heaven, according to industry experts. The more renewable energy enters the grid, the more demand for stabilizing storage applications. Watch executive director of the Energy Storage Association Matt Roberts discuss the booming market and how it will compliment renewables below: 

Grid-connected energy storage is set to exceed 40 gigawatts globally by 2020, according to an IHS report, while off-grid applications are also on the rise, particularly in developing nations. And with big company announcements such as Tesla’s lithium-ion battery gigafactory in Nevada and Alevo’s $1 billion battery factory in North Carolina, there is certainly plenty of exciting news happening daily, and REW is here to provide the latest updates.

RenewableEnergyWorld.com is the source known by industry professionals around the globe providing daily news, podcasts, opinion and commentary and so much more. Each issue will include company press releases, events and every issue of each e-Newsletter will feature one company and one product.

So what are you waiting for? Subscribe now to get the latest weekly updates on the energy storage market.

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In the absence of cost effective storage, a partial solution appears to be increasingly sophisticated demand management, which is able to balance and absorb both the anticipated and unexpected fluctuations in renewable generation. By aligning peaks in demand with peaks in supply, systems can make far more efficient use of renewable surges, while at the same time cutting back on the need for polluting fossil fuel-based reserve capacity to balance the inevitable falls in renewable power and spikes in unmanaged demand.

Demand management systems are also able to cope with far more sources of power, making them an important element in facilitating the move towards distributed generation, with its greater potential for on-site renewables. 

Evolving Technology

Currently most demand management is done through contracts with large energy users that are “interruptible” during peak demand hours. But now smart meters and new monitoring systems are providing more real time data and ever greater system control, while cloud technologies are under development that could expand the control of demand to hundreds of thousands of individual consuming assets across the entire day, rather than just at times of peak demand.

Kimberly Getgen, VP of Tollgrade Communications said monitoring the load on medium voltage grids doesn’t affect consumers, and becomes more important as more variable supply from renewables is brought on-line, helping to “run the system smarter and put off capacity expansion.” In the U.K. she said regulator Ofgem is currently sponsoring a number of monitoring projects because it wants to integrate more low carbon technologies onto the grid. In Germany, where the level of renewables is highest, monitoring is particularly important if the grid is to continue to be effectively balanced — part of this year’s summer peak solar production, which at times represented over 50 percent of total demand, had to be exported or was wasted. 

Analysts at Navigant Research expect annual spending on demand side management (DSM) services in Europe alone to grow from $139 million in 2013 to $777 million in 2020, with new technology driving ever more sophisticated control and changing the way power markets currently operate. «We forecast that DSM is poised to transform energy markets,” said Navigant analyst, Eric Bloom.

The potential for demand management is enormous. Already peak demand can be many times average levels for any particular day, while recent forecasts from the International Energy Agency suggest it could rise further — for example, in China peak demand is expected to rise 200 percent by 2050, while overall demand is only expected to rise 152 percent. The IEA believes that smart grids and associated technology can “make more efficient use of generation assets,” including renewables.

Power of the Cloud

In the case of deregulated markets, particularly the U.K., new cloud-based systems — using advanced communications and software technology from the mobile phone sector — are being developed to shift the energy use of many individual consuming assets from one time period to another. This contrasts with fitting hardware to monitor usage or that will trip out when certain parameters are reached, and can provide energy trading opportunities in markets by moving demand to cheaper periods, including when renewable energy is available.

“Smart grid technologies show strong potential to optimise asset utilisation by shifting peak load to off?peak times,” said Marc Borret, CEO of Reactive Technologies, a DSM provider. “This type of demand management service can balance grid systems by using demand flexibility across hundreds of thousands of small devices.”

Customer Driven

While aggregated demand response should make it easier for grid operators to balance their systems, it is end-users in a deregulated market that most benefit from cloud techniques to move demand to cheaper periods of the day — the timing of which can vary and are likely to become less predictable as more variable renewable supply is added. So in competitive markets, it is the market mechanism that is likely to drive adoption of this technique, as much as central planning from grid operators (although this would be the prime driver in regulated or monopoly provider markets).

Mr Borret said that while cloud-based software platforms can deliver a huge aggregated response, no one should notice on the consuming end — there is no shutting off of demand. “Surges in renewable power can be effectively utilized, which would avoid instances such as those seen in the U.K. recently, where the grid operator paid wind producers for not generating power during periods of low demand.”

“By using the cheapest energy, a share of the saving can be passed back to the customer for providing the flexibility,” said Borret. “For example, if a company wants to keep all buildings heated to 21°C, a range of just plus or minus 0.5°C allows us to vary demand. The wider the range for that customer the more value can be created. By aggregating these responses, value can be generated in deregulated markets such as the U.K., by taking advantage of the half-hourly changes in prices that reflect the changing balance between supply and demand.”

Mr Borret said U.K. utilities were aware of and open to the new technology, especially as “customers get this and are now demanding the service from their energy suppliers.” Large consumers with multiple sites and many consuming assets would be able to make the greatest potential savings, and were most likely to be early adopters of the new cloud-based services, he added.

DSM has huge potential to play a meaningful part in moving to cleaner, greener and hopefully lower cost energy systems. To date it is, however, only a small part of most government energy strategies, with policy stuck in the traditional linear supply chain mind-set — focused on adding additional capacity in order to satisfy continually rising peak demand. Nevertheless, competitive markets alone may be enough to drive demand management using cloud based techniques, simply because it saves customers money.

Lead image: Wind turbines and transmission via Shutterstock

Power grids need extra generating capacity to work properly. For example, about 20 percent of New York State’s generation fleet runs less than 250 hours a year. Because they don’t run much, “peaker plants” are by design the cheapest and least efficient fossil generators. When they do run they cost a lot to operate and produce more air pollution than other types of fossil generation. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable substitute for dirty fossil-based peakers?

As has happened with solar PV, the costs for multi-hour energy storage are about to undergo a steep decline over the next 2 to 3 years. This cost trend will disrupt the economic rationale for gas-fired simple cycle combustion turbines (CTs) in favor of flexible zero emissions energy storage. This will be especially true for storage assets owned and operated by vertical utilities and distributed near utility substations.

Simple cycle gas-fired CTs have been a workhorse utility asset for adding new peaker capacity for decades. But times and technologies change, and the power grid’s long love affair with gas-fired CTs is about to be challenged by multi-hour energy storage. Flow batteries that utilize a liquid electrolyte are especially cost-effective because the energy they store can be easily and inexpensively increased just by adding more electrolyte.

CTs cost from $670 per installed kilowatt to more than twice that much for CT’s located in urban areas. But the economics of peaking capacity must also reflect the benefits side of the cost/benefit equation. Distributed storage assets can deliver both regional (transmission) and local (distribution) level energy balancing services using the same storage asset. This means the locational value and capacity use factor for distributed storage can be significantly higher compared to CTs operated on a central station basis.

These points are discussed in Energy Strategies Group’s white paper, “Guide to Procurement of Flexible Peaking Capacity: Energy Storage of Combustion Turbines.” As noted in the paper, Capex for a 4-hour storage peaker is projected to be $1,390 by 2017, or $348 per (installed) kilowatt-hour of capacity. Factoring in the added value of locating storage on the distribution grid and ownership and operation by a vertical utility, 4-hour energy storage will win over CTs at the high end of the CT cost range by 2017.

By 2018 the cost of ViZn Energy’s 4-hour storage solution, which was selected by Energy Strategies Group as a proxy for the lowest cost multi-hour storage solutions currently being commercialized, is projected to be $974 per kW, nearly identical to that of a conventional simple cycle peaker. For a 4-hour storage resource – that translates to $244 per (installed) kilowatt-hour of capacity. Given the added benefits of installing storage in the distribution network, by 2018 storage will be a winner against the mid-range cost for a simple cycle CT and clearly disruptive compared to higher cost simple cycle CTs.

The disruptive potential of energy storage as a substitute for simple cycle CTs has been recognized. For example, Arizona Public Service (APS) and the Residential Utility Consumer Office (RUCO) recently filed a proposed settlement which, if approved, would require that at least 10% of any new peaker capacity now being planned as simple cycle combustion turbines would instead need to be energy storage — as long as the storage meets the cost effectiveness and reliability criteria of any CTs being proposed.

When selecting new peaking capacity, utility planners can choose between assets that better fit the emerging distributed grid architecture or the older and disappearing centralized approach to grid design. The choices we make today should be consistent with current and long-term cost-performance trends in fossil-based generation, solar PV and energy storage.

Lower cost solar PV and its rising penetration in all market segments will have a profoundly disruptive effect on utility operations and the utility cost-of-service business model. This has already started to happen. Storage offers a way for utilities to replace lost revenues premised on margins from kilowatt-hour energy sales by placing energy storage into the rate based and earning low-risk regulated returns.

Lead image: Natural Gas Combined Cycle Power Plant via Shutterstock