ESJ Summer issue

Issue 13: Summer 2016

Risks and returnsProject financiers weigh up the pros and cons of storage

Upside down on topAustralia leads the way in making shift to renewable economy

Residential heavenSuppliers slug it out for next wave of products, market

Coming soon to a utility near you ...Virtual power plants to dominate business

Charging the future – special supplement

on global ees exhibition series

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· Drive Cycle Simulation· Bidirectional DC Power Supply· Super and Ultra- Capacitor Testing

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CONTENTS

www.energystoragejournal.com Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2016 • 1

COVER STORY: VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS 50

LOADING WEIGHT TO TAKE WEIGHT OFF THE LOAD Despite a proliferation of highly nuanced business models, utilities, solar-and-storage companies continue to fine-tune their approach to using energy storage as part of a virtual power plant.

NEW YORK PILOTS SOLAR-PLUS-STORAGE VPP The REV initiative — the ‘reforming energy vision’ of New York State — has a virtual power plant pilot that may serve as the first steps to creating a template for the future.

Bakholdin: fkywheel veteran moves to Amber Kinetics 5

Event success, location, location, location: Dubai 73

Virtual power plants ... coming soon to a utility near you 50

EDITORIAL 2Think big, think stupid — but leave a legacy…

PEOPLE 5Amber Kinetics appoints Daniel Bakholdin as CTO • ILA appoints senior scientist for health • Lowry joins Nano One • UE Technologies appoints co-founder of ESA as president and former US Saft sales VP joins UniEnergy Technologies • Crown’s Blackwelder joins VSI as new CFO • Alevo appoints Dybwad as new chief executive officer • ViZn Energy appoints Williams and Bar-Lev to board positions • Leeward Renewable picks Wolf as new chief executive • American Lithium chooses Swan for advisory board • SunEdison appoints new finance heads, Dubel as Chapter 11 CEO • Leclanché chooses Feintuch Communications for North American PR • Manz joins Johnson Matthey • Axion Power appoints Corcoran as director and chair of audit committee

NEWS 11Tesla acquisition of SolarCity provides yet another business model developing • Starwood Energy invests $100 million to Stem, brings project finance pool to $350 million • Greensmith Energy, Wärtsilä form partnership agreement • AGL prepares ‘world’s largest virtual power plant’ • Gaelectric to get further EU funds for CAES project • Imergy goes into ABC insolvency agreement — intellectual property and assets up for sale • EnSync sells first PPAs, opens up Hawaii • National Grid tenders for grid services problematic for developers RES snares battery project ahead of launch of UK’s frequency response market • Doosan acquires 1Energy, MESA co-founder Kaplan stays on as COO • GE Ventures takes stake in Sonnen

TESTING ENERGY STORAGE FOR NEXT-GEN PRODUCT LINES 21Craig Brunk, sales director at Bitrode talks about the current state of the testing market

HYBRIDIZING ENERGY AND POWER FOR THE GRID 23Maxwell Technologies looks at how supercaps and storage work well together.

SOLAR-PLUS-STORAGE DOWN UNDER 26Australia has been widely hailed as the next place to be for PV uptake, now its uptake of solar plus storage is positive for the whole of Asia.

SPECIAL EES SUPPLEMENT 31

Inside track of the stories behind the latest ees and Intersolar meetings in Munich and a look forward to the meetings in North America

RISK ASSESSMENT — THE KEY TO COMMERCIALLY VIABILITY 47Energy storage technology requires substantial financing and that means substantial risk The view from Standard & Poor’s

RESIDENTIAL SOLAR ON THE UP 61Market range expands as residential energy storage plunges ever onward

CONFERENCE IN PRINT 66Advanced intermediate temperature sodium–nickel chloride batteries with ultra-high energy density.

EVENTS 71Energy Storage Journal’s round-up of the most interesting conferences and exhibitions to attend in the coming six months

Brunk: Challenges for next iteration of testing 21

EDITORIAL

2 • Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2016 www.energystoragejournal.com

Mike Halls, editor • [email protected]

We were privileged to be among the elite few that witnessed the (then) signing of the largest loan in UK history. The year was 1987. And the largest ever syndicate of international banks — think Citi, JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Barclays, BNP, UBS — had gathered to agree an enormous project financing.

The project was to finance construction of a tunnel linking Britain to France. The facility was for £5 billion (then around $9 billion).

Such was the enthusiasm for the project that the lemming effect kicked in. In all, 170 international banks agreed to be part of the lending group. The French and the UK governments joined the party too.

And two years later the refinancings began. It was seemingly inevitable that it would end in tears and bankruptcy. It did.

What seemed odd about it — at least to those of us nifty with a calculator and with a healthy disregard for contractors’ promises of finishing on time — was that there seemed no way that these bankers would get their shareholders’ money back.

With interest rates in double digits the train line would have to make a profit — not turnover but profit — of $3 million a day just to stay even. Not forgetting the $9 billion of capital that would have to be repaid at some point.

Just think of the revenues needed to generate that!

I can’t remember our final guesstimate but we ended up reckoning that trains would have to run every hour around the clock and be completely full for the project to work. And, of course, any construction delays would be catastrophic. The slightest disruptions to the service would haemorrhage money.

In the end the tunnel came in some 80% over budget.

The bankers weren’t necessarily stupid. Their credit committees would have gone through the numbers in the same way that we did.

Their fault was that they suffered from that odd mix that characterizes humanity on the edge of gross stupidity — optimism, enthusiasm dashed with a mix of blind faith, resulting in delusion.

At the time of the decision about building the tunnel, 15.9 million passengers were predicted for Eurostar trains in the opening year. In 1995, the first full year, actual numbers were a little over 2.9 million, growing

to 7.1 million in 2000, then dropping to 6.3 million in 2003.

Academia has been fascinated by this. How could these experts get these projections so spectacularly wrong?

Danish economist Bent Flyvbjerg has spent most of the last two decades puzzling at humanity’s inability to understand this. His book, Megaprojects and Risk, an Anatomy of Ambition, looks at how strategic misrepresentation — deliberately mistaking the likely outcomes of planned actions — plays a part in huge project financings.

Flyvbjerg reckons that nine out of 10 mega-projects faces a cost overrun, with costs 50% higher than expected in real terms not unusual. And then, of course, there are the implications from all this and many of these are not so immediate to grasp.

So how does this fit into the energy storage industry now caught in a stupendous wave of enthusiasm for all things renewable?

The answer is a lot and a little. Energy storage at the residential level is now proving eminently bankable. The payback times are reasonable as is the initial outlay. But things get complicated when we start to talk project work on the large to very large scale. Building huge battery factories in the middle of the Nevada desert or trying to legislate 100% renewable energy powering the entire Hawaiian archipelago in a generation’s time, have a fanciful air to them.

Flyvbjerg talks about the “four sublimes”: the excitement of engineers and technologists building the newest or largest item of its kind; the rapture politicians receive from building monumental works that increase their public profile; the delight of businesses and trade unions generating money and jobs; and the aesthetic pleasure generated by iconically large design.

All this optimism contributes to overestimates of benefits and underestimates of cost.

Whether it’ll be fair to judge the Tesla giga-factory and now its spectacular take-over of SolarCity in the same way, is up in the air. The sums of money at stake are huge but so too are the returns possible. Serious investors have done their sums and the spread-sheets are positive. Oe to many they are.

One thing is for certain, the fate of Tesla and SolarCity are vitally dependent on the brand that can only be

Think big, think stupid — but leave a legacy

EDITORIAL


Mike Halls, editor • [email protected]

called its founder Elon Musk. Public perception of him is directly reflected in the share price of the companies that he runs and his exuberant visionary approach to what he does is a genuine positive.

The economist Albert Hirschman decided that the underlying principle behind unsuccessful projects was “the hiding hand”— if people knew the actual costs of projects like these, they would never undertake any, so there must be a mechanism that hides this reality from people, engendering progress but also the occasional disaster.

Flyvbjerg argues instead that what is called for is greater and more detailed studies of why some huge projects succeed, while others don’t.

But as ever in the development of these things, the law of unintended consequences is at work. Wasted money is indeed wasted money but that’s not to say that everything is wasted.

The history of great ventures and the rise of great industries is littered with the legacies of what they leave behind.

The railway boom that littered the UK initially and later Europe and the US with unprofitable lines and massive shareholder losses also left an infrastructure that is recognisable today. It also made some of these pioneers, such as the so-called ‘robber barons’ in the US — think the ruthlessness of Vanderbilt — some of the richest in the world.

Some 20 years ago a similar territorial battle emerged — a race to put in place the huge fibre-optic highways across the western world that would serve the internet of the future. Huge investments were made, investor

support was massive but in the end the two major players for the space ran out of money.

The shareholders went bust but, like the millions that use the Channel Tunnel each year, their legacy was the hundreds of millions of miles of fibre-optic cable running through cities across the planet that we use today.

So as we see mankind’s energies invested (or frittered, if that’s your view) in the mega-giga-giga battery-making plants of the future, or the smartest of smart grids that will sweep across the planet, we’re not going to worry.

We don’t have to fear the consequences of these failures —as long as we’re not investors that is! — but rather we should just wonder about what legacy we and our children will inherit.

So to misquote the poet William Blake … “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”.

Let’s face the Next Big Battery Thing with optimism.

Energy Storage Journal — Business and market strategies for energy storage and smart grid technologies

Energy Storage Journal is a quarterly publication.

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Working with

The new titan of leadEcoult’s UltraBattery, ready to take lithium on, head-to-head

The CEO interviewAnil Srivastava and Leclanché’s bid for market dominance

Next gen integratorsComing soon to a smart grid near you, the ideal middle man

Let cool heads prevailThe lead-lithium storage debate steps up a notch

Meet the team

Claire Ronnie, Office Manager and SubscriptionsClaire’s our unflappable person — she’s the go-to girl for subscriptions or account enquiries. Go ahead and challenge her!

Antony Parselle, Page DesignerBetter known in the office as ‘Ant’ he’s been working in magazine design and layout since the early 1990s. Not so good on showing his best side however!

June Moutrie, Business Development ManagerShe’s our accounting Wunderkind who deals with all things financial — a kind of mini Warren Buffett. But more fun!

Jan Darasz, CartoonistJan has won international fame as a cartoonist able to making anything — including an electrolyte! — funny. And as for LiCFePO4 ...

Kevin Desmond, HistorianMore than just a historian on energy storage and batteries as he’s written about many things. He’s the inspiration behind our Heroes of the Grid section.

Mike Halls, EditorMike, a former journalist with the UK newspaper the Financial Times, has been involved in journalism, publishing and print for three decades. “I’m particularly fond of writing about the energy storage industry,” he says. “It’s an unusual mixture of being fast-paced but slow to change — and friendly too. There’s always something more to learn.”

Karen Hampton, PublisherIn her recent years of working within the energy storage business Karen has become a well known figure at conferences — not least as our social butterfly. “My job,” she says, “is to get the maximum benefit for our advertisers to make sure their name and brand is out there, while maintaining the integrity, fairness and excellence our publications are renowned for.”

YEARBOOKS, PUBLISHING ADVERTISING EDITORIAL & EVENT GUIDES Jade Beevor Mike Halls All enquiries +44 (0) 1243 792 467 +44 (0) 7977 016 918 +44 (0) 7792 852 337 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Reception: +44 (0) 1243 78 22 75 • www.energystoragejournal.com • Fax +44 1 787 329 730Hampton Halls Associates Ltd, 10 Temple Bar Business Park, Strettington PO18 0TU, UK • Registered in England and Wales 09123491

POWERING THE SMART GRID www.energystoragejournal.com

Sara Verbruggen,Associate Editor Sara, one of the founding figures of Energy Storage Journal, has relocated back to England, and now works as our in-house adviser as well as a respected contributor to sister magazine, Batteries International.

Wyn Jenkins, Supplements EditorDon’t let his boyish charm deceive, Wyn’s been a journalist and respected editor on major financial titles for some 20 years. When not heading his own publications firm, Seren Global Media, he looks after our supplements.

Issue 8: Spring 2015

The new titan of leadEcoult’s UltraBattery, ready to take lithium on, head-to-head

The CEO interviewAnil Srivastava and Leclanché’s bid for market dominance

Next gen integratorsComing soon to a smart grid near you, the ideal middle man

Let cool heads prevailThe lead-lithium storage debate steps up a notch

Jade Beevor,Advertising Manager Jade, who joined the team in early 2015, is already getting a feel for the industry. “This is an incredible business we’re in,” she says. “These people are literally changing the future of our lives — and the planet too!”

PEOPLE NEWS


Daniel Bakholdin — a well known veteran in flywheel development and commer-cialization — was appointed chief technology officer for the US firm Amber Kinet-ics. He will be responsible for advancing the commer-cialization of the company’s four-hour discharge duration steel flywheel technology.

Ed Chiao, chief executive officer at Amber Kinetics said: “Bakholdin has been in the flywheel and turbo machinery industry for

more than 20 years and has shipped over 1,000 com-mercial flywheels. He brings major bona fides to our fly-wheel commercialization ef-forts.”

Bakholdin has 26 years of experience in engineering and management. He co-founded Pentadyne Power Corp, where he worked as vice president of mechanical engineering and later over-saw production engineering as vice president of sustain-ing engineering.

Pentadyne, now Powerth-ru, develops and manufac-tures flywheel energy storage systems for power quality and power recycling appli-cations. Bakholdin invented or co-invented much of the technology utilized in Pow-erthru’s machines.

Bakholdin was previously a consultant to a range of power and energy tech start-ups. Concurrently, he was a director of Hyperloop Trans-portation Technologies mag-netic propulsion and levita-tion development laboratory.

From 2012 to 2014, he was chief operating officer of Rotonix USA. Rotonix developed a 1MW energy storage flywheel system for power quality and recycling applications. Bakholdin or-chestrated the company’s US-based R&D and Rotat-ing Group production facil-ity. He also oversaw the es-tablishment and tooling of Rotonix China’s production facility in Beijing.

From 2008 to 2011, Bak-holdin was chief operating officer at Advanced Turbine Designs, a company devel-oping a 5kW microturbine gen-set for distributed power generation and residential combined heat and power applications.

He is also a co-founder and

former president of Quad-radyne (acquired by Penta-dyne), the HEV project man-ager at Capstone Turbine Corp and manager of design engineering and testing at Rosen Motors, an innovative developer of flywheel power systems.

Amber Kinetics (formerly Berkeley Energy Sciences Corp), was co-founded by Ed Chiao and Seth Sand-ers, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California-Berkeley.

Amber Kinetics was incu-bated at the University of C a l i f o r n i a - B e r k e l e y ’s Skydeck before launching commercial operations in 2013.

Amber Kinetics appoints Daniel Bakholdin as CTO

Cris Williams has been ap-pointed as the Internation-al Lead Association’s new senior scientist-health with responsibility for provid-ing in depth expertise on toxicological science asso-ciated with lead exposures. He will be based in ILA’s offices in North Carolina in the US.

Williams previously worked for the consulting firm Ramboll Environ and has more than 21 years of experience in applied toxicology, quantitative risk assessment and public health.

He is a member of the Society of Toxicology and the author or co-author of more than 30 peer-reviewed publications in toxicology and risk assess-ment. In addition, he has

worked as a peer reviewer for several toxicology and risk assessment journals.

Williams will provide health science support for the lead industry and the lead battery industry and joins a team that includes Jasim Chowdhury who provides scientific support in the environmental area.

Steve Binks, ILA’s regula-tory affairs director said “He joins ILA at a very op-portune time with the health effects of lead taking centre stage in the regulatory land-scape. His knowledge and experience will be critical for lead producers and downstream users to help ensure that any new regula-tions appropriately reflect the current science and are proportionate to the risks to human health.”

ILA appoints senior scientist for health

Bakholdin: appointed chief technology officer for the US firm Amber Kinetics.

For the record Joe Lowry joined Nano One as a strategic adviser to the company in April. Lowry has worked for top lithium producers in the US, Japan and Chi-na, and, Nano One says the firm, “has extensive worldwide market ex-perience, a large contact base and a good pulse on the lithium market”.

Lowry is widely respected and known as one of the world’s experts in the lithium sector.

After a two-decade tenure working in senior positions in leading international lithium companies, Lowry formed Global Lithium as an advisory firm in 2012.

Lowry joins Nano One

“Bakholdin has been in the flywheel and turbo machinery industry for more than 20 years and has shipped over 1,000 commercial flywheels. He brings major bona fides to our flywheel commercialization efforts.”

For the challenges ahead...

Check out how Hammond Groupis driving innovation for PbA batteries.www.hmndgroup.com/about/

2016 Sally Breidegam mikSiewicz innovation award winner

For the challenges ahead...

Check out how Hammond Groupis driving innovation for PbA batteries.www.hmndgroup.com/about/

2016 Sally Breidegam mikSiewicz innovation award winner

PEOPLE NEWS


UniEnergy Technologies, the US Vanadium flow bat-tery firm appointed Rick Winter, the chief operating officer in June as president with full P&L responsibility and accountability for daily operations of the company. Winter continues as COO.

Winter, a well known industry figure not least because of his role as a co-founder of the Electric Storage Association and his tenure as chairman of the body, has helped shape the industry’s embrace of en-ergy storage.

He joined UET in 2013 and subsequently managed the launch of UET’s product lines, the Uni.System and the ReFlex, and guided the company from a standing start to 80MWh in deploy-ments, orders, and awards.

“UET is now tripling its manufacturing and engi-neering floor space to meet growing demand and enable 100MW annual production at its current facility,” says the firm.

Winter has 28 years’ ex-perience innovating and implementing grid storage technologies. He has been a driving force in the transi-tion of the grid storage in-dustry from its early stages, to the strategic imperative for grid flexibility and the stability it has today.

During this time, he helped build the US Electric-ity Storage Association from its inception in 1991, serv-ing twice as chairman and as a board member for 18 years.

In 2011, he was awarded the Phil Symons award for his “instrumental role in the evolution of storage tech-nologies in both the utility and battery manufacturing industries”.

With a focus on producti-

zation, Winter has hands-on experience evaluating grid impacts of distributed gen-eration systems including batteries, flywheels, micro-turbines, photovoltaics and diesel generators.

Winter’s background ranges from managing the storage technologies pro-gramme at Pacific Gas & Electric, America’s largest investor-owned utility, to deploying remote area hy-brid power systems in Aus-tralia’s Torres Strait.

He has led product de-velopment at five advanced battery companies, in the process creating the world’s first flow battery product by leveraging ad-vanced zinc-bromide tech-nology from Austria (the 100kW/100kWh Power-Block), and leading devel-opment of iron-chromium batteries for cell towers in India.

Winter invented the sin-gle loop flow battery mem-brane in his garage (Patent number 8039161), going on to found Primus Power and raise $30 million in capital. He holds 17 US patents and numerous abroad with a further 10 US patents pend-ing.

Winter led the innova-tion team that created the world’s first commercial flow battery product (the 100kW PowerBlock) while he was vice president of en-gineering at PowerCell.

At the end of June UET appointed Blake Frye, for-mer vice president for sales for Saft America, as its sen-ior vice president of global sales. Frye will be in charge of deployment and sales of UET’s vanadium flow en-ergy storage systems.

“Frye’s broad industry experience and technical ex-pertise makes him uniquely

qualified to provide value to customers, end-users, and channel partners, as well as to advise on the advantages of flow batteries compared with other technologies,” says UET.

Frye started as a sales manager with Saft in 2001 becoming a vice president for sales and marketing in North America in 2004, a director of Saft Group in 2007 and finally a VP of sales for energy storage in 2010 where he led the crea-tion and growth of its en-ergy storage business.

“He closed multiple large-scale contracts with utili-ties, renewable developers, transit authorities, and the US Department of Defence, with projects located in Cal-ifornia, Hawaii, the north-eastern US, Alaska, Arizona, Canada, Bolivia, Mexico, and the Caribbean basin,” says the firm.

Earlier in his 15-year ca-reer at Saft, Frye managed marketing, business devel-opment, and communica-tions for two Saft interna-tional business units selling lithium and nickel metal hydride batteries with over $400 million in annual rev-enues.

Frye has extensive techni-cal expertise from his six years at Energizer from 1995, where he was re-sponsible for product de-velopment including nov-el technologies for new

rechargeable battery prod-ucts.

Frye holds three US pat-ents, and his team at Saft was recognized by the En-ergy Storage Association in 2015 with the Brad Rob-erts Outstanding Industry Achievement Award.

“After many years of direct interactions with customers, it is clear the advanced vanadium flow batteries developed at UET and now deployed at meg-awatt-scale are an industry game-changer,” said Frye.

UET’s core technology is a so-called third generation vanadium flow battery, with a breakthrough electrolyte first developed at Pacific Northwest National Labo-ratory (PNNL) with support from the US Department Of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reli-ability.

“Our vanadium flow en-ergy storage systems partner well with solar energy be-cause of the long-life of the batteries and their ability to facilitate the integration of increasing renewable re-sources into the grid,” says Frye. “By working together with a leading utility and national laboratories, we will develop metrics for evaluating renewable energy and storage integration and demonstrate the benefits of leading energy storage tech-nology to the US’s grid mod-ernization efforts.”

UE Technologies appoints co-founder of ESA as president and former US Saft sales VP joins UniEnergy Technologies

Winter: ESA co-founder Frye: new senior sales VP

PEOPLE NEWS


Crown’s Blackwelder joins VSI as new CFO

Jesse Blackwelder took over as chief financial officer of VSI Global — a portfolio company of invest-ment firms Lakewood Capital, and Spartacus — on July 11. He was most recently CFO of Crown Battery Manufacturing, where he headed the company’s finance function, includ-ing numerous data analysis initiatives that contributed to the company achieving the highest profits in its history.

Roger Knight, managing partner of Lakewood Capital and Spartacus Partners, said, “Since our acquisi-tion of VSI Global in February 2015, we have been putting in place the infrastructure and building blocks to ensure state-of-the-art service. Blackwelder is an integral part of that process.”

Alevo appoints Dybwad as new chief executive officer

Alevo appointed Per Dybwad in May as its chief executive while the founder and executive chairman Jostein Eikeland passes on his CEO responsibilities to Dybwad.

Dybwad was elected to the Alevo board of directors in March. He joins from Dentware Scandinavia where he was CEO and director of the publicly traded 3D printing company.

He has previously worked for a short time at Maxwell Technologies, the ultracapacitor firm as director of sales, marketing and business devel-opment for the firm’s high voltage business unit. “Dybwad will lead the executive team, initially focusing on achieving the company’s manufactur-ing and commercial development and global deployment,” says the firm.

“Dybwad brings over 30 years’

international management experience to Alevo and his expertise includes energy distribution and storage, medtech and pharma, environmental technology, materials science, finan-cial services and consumer goods.

ViZn Energy appoints Williams and Bar-Lev to board positions

ViZn Energy Systems, the zinc/iron flow battery firm. has appointed Kent Williams to the company’s board of directors. Joshua Bar-Lev has joined ViZn’s advisory board.

Williams is a strategic adviser to several alternative energy companies focused on plug-in electric vehicle (PHEV) drive trains and new battery technologies.

Bar-Lev was the vice president of regulatory affairs for BrightSource Energy, a builder of utility-scale solar power plants, from its start-up in 2004 until he retired in May 2011. He was responsible for govern-ment relations, regulatory policy and permitting for BrightSource and was on their executive management committee. Previously, he was chief counsel at the Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

“Williams and Bar-Lev have over 80 years of successful leadership roles and strategic business experience in the energy industry and are heavy-hitters in the business world and each possesses impressive energy industry experience,” said ViZn chief executive Ron Van Dell.

Leeward Renewable picks Wolf as new chief executiveLeeward Renewable Energy, an af-filiate of ArcLight Capital, appointed Gregory Wolf in July as its chief executive officer.

Wolf, who has more than two

decades’ experience in renewables, was most recently president of Duke Energy Renewables. At Duke he headed the integrated renewable energy business which Leeward says delivered high growth results and a strong operational track record.

Before that he was senior vice president of development for Duke Energy’s commercial unit, where he created Duke Energy’s solar and biomass business and managed a national development pipeline.

He has also been a vice president of General Electric’s Power Systems business as well as GE Capital Group.

American Lithium chooses Swan for advisory boardAmerican Lithium has appointed lithium battery expert, David Swan to the company’s advisory board. Swan has more than 30 years’ professional experience in clean and efficient energy conversion and storage systems, specializing in the design and application of lithium battery technology for automotive and aerospace applications.

“Swan is internationally recognized for his research, development and commercialization of advanced ener-gy storage systems and has consulted to all major global automotive and supplier companies including BMW, Toyota, Honda, Chrysler, Daimler, General Motors and Ballard Power Systems,” says American Lithium.

In 2006, the California Air Re-sources Board appointed Swan to its Zero Emission Vehicle Expert Review Panel where he liaised with all leading technology developers and every major automobile manu-facturer.

Between 1995-2000, Swan was chief scientist at AeroVironment, a technology company working on electric transportation as well as unmanned aircraft systems for the US defence department.

He was responsible for energy stor-age activities including development and testing of battery systems for electric and hybrid vehicles including all aspects of General Motors’ hybrid vehicle battery programme, and de-velopment of fuel cell and hydrogen storage systems for AeroVironment’s solar-powered aircraft.

His pedigree is impressive. Swan was appointed to the Technical Committee of the US government-industry R&D initiative, Partnership for A New Generation of Vehicles,

Dybwad: heads executive team

Williams: strategic advisory experience

PEOPLE NEWS


a cooperative research programme between the government and USCAR (the US Council for Automotive Research).

He has also been appointed to the California South Coast Air Qual-ity Management District (AQMD) Locomotive Propulsion Task Force and is a past member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Swan has seven patents in his field with others pending. He is the au-thor of over 40 published papers on fluid mechanics, applied electrochem-istry and electric vehicle technology, and has contributed to numerous textbooks.

SunEdison appoints new finance heads, Dubel as Chapter 11 CEO

SunEdison appointed John Dubel as its chief executive officer, effective from June 22. He takes over from Ahmad Chatila, the former president and CEO who steps down that day. Dubel will continue as SunEdison’s chief restructuring officer. The firm is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protec-tion. He started at the firm at the end of April.

Chatila joined SunEdison in 2009 and led the company through a series of aggressive acquisitions where, some critics say, that made the company grow too quickly. In 2009, semiconductor company MEMC Electronic Materials spent $200 mil-lion buying solar startup SunEdison, which was founded by entrepreneur Jigar Shah. In 2013, the conglomer-ate changed its name to SunEdison, and in 2015 sold off its semiconduc-tor business, choosing to focus solely on clean energy.

Dubel has over 30 years’ experi-ence advising boards and companies

on matters related to restructuring.Dubel will report directly to Sun-

Edison’s board of directors. In June SunEdison appointed new

heads for its finance team, including Philip Gund, as chief financial officer and Salvatore LoBiondo as a senior vice president and corporate control-ler

Gund and LoBiondo are senior managing directors with Ankura Consulting Group, a business advi-sory and expert services firm.

Gund is a senior managing director of Ankura Consulting Group, with more than 30 years of professional experience, including 26 working with debtor companies, creditors, investors, and court-appointed of-ficials. He was most recently chief restructuring officer at Vivaro Cor-poration, one of the largest pre-paid phone card companies, and as an adviser to Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives, an alternative energy construction company.

LoBiondo is a senior managing di-rector of Ankura Consulting Group and has led restructurings across diverse industries, often working in advisory and interim management roles.

Leclanché chooses Feintuch Communications for North American PR

Leclanché, the Swiss battery energy storage system provider, has hired Feintuch Communications for what it calls, “its public relations agency of record for corporate and trade public relations in North America”.

Leclanché recently established a North American subsidiary in Dal-las headed by Bryan Urban. “The North American market represents a tremendous growth opportunity for Leclanché as the demand for station-ary and mobile battery energy storage systems has increased exponentially in the last few years,” said Urban.

Manz joins Johnson Matthey Anna Manz will join Johnson Mat-they’s board of directors in October, succeeding Den Jones as group fi-nance director. Jones had announced in March his intention to step down as group finance director; he left the company at the end of July.

Manz joins from Diageo where she was group strategy director and a member of Diageo’s executive com-mittee.

Alta Energy takes Bettis as sales VP

Alta Energy, a solar analytics and procurement company has recruited Mark Bettis as vice president of sales.

Bettis was previously vice presi-dent of sales and marketing for REC Solar, a firm providing grid-tied solar electric design and installation for commercial customers nationwide.

His solar experience includes sales and marketing positions at SunLink, Tioga Energy, Delta Electronics and Schott Solar.

Axion Power appoints Corcoran as director and chair of audit committee

Axion Power International appointed Michael Corcoran in May as a board director and chairman of the audit committee.

Corcoran is a partner with GVP Partners a company he founded in 2008 to provide governance, risk and compliance advisory services. He has helped several global companies imple-ment and operate automated enter-prise risk and compliance programs.

Before GVP Partners, he was a partner with Deloitte & Touche from 2005 to 2008 and headed the business risk advisory practice along the US east coast.

Separately the firm announced in April that it had appointed Richard Bogan as its new chief executive and chairman with Donald Farley, as its vice chairman.

Axion said: “The realignment is consistent with the company’s traditional combination of the CEO and chairman roles and is as a result of the transfer of leadership responsi-bilities to Bogan. Farley will continue to play a prominent role as vice chairman and will focus on strategic growth initiatives and partnering opportunities.”

Chatila: steps down

Corcoran: board director

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Tesla Motors agreed in August to buy SolarCity, the US’s largest rooftop so-lar installer for $2.6 billion. Although not finalized as Energy Storage Journal went to press, the acquisition offers a more comprehensive business model for energy storage in the future.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Te-sla and also chairman of SolarCity, says he expects two-thirds of shareholders to approve the deal which should be finalized in the last quarter of the year.

“Essentially it’s yet another step in the evolution of Tesla. Initially it was a car company making high-end electric vehicles, it then morphed — probably predictably — into that of a lithium ion contract battery manufacturer ca-pable of feeding the Teslas with the EV batteries at a competitive (if as yet un-proven) rate,” says one commentator.

“As part of the volumes required to realise the economies of scale needed for the EV side to work, the company moved the excess volumes — these are potential volumes — into the residen-tial side of the renewables business with its PowerWall.

“It may have been effective but it wasn’t a particularly subtle move on Tesla’s part, the market for residential storage of renewables, at least in the last year or so has been swept by com-petitors. Sonnen, for example, is dis-posing of something like 10,000 units this year.”

According to Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and chairman of SolarCity — he owns roughly a fifth in each company according to S&P’s Global Market Intelligence — the deal was a “no brainer” in what it provided.

“We would be the world’s only verti-cally integrated energy company offer-

ing end-to-end clean energy products to our customers. This would start with the car that you drive and the energy that you use to charge it, and would extend to how everything else in your home or business is powered,” he said.

More simply, it would be one-stop shopping for renewables — you’d buy the panels for the roof and their instal-lation, store their energy in the Pow-erWall, which would then look after the house’s power needs — and then plug in your Tesla, or EV, to take you to work or shopping.

Which sounds brilliantly simple. However, there are too many vari-ants in the business model that cause complications from the price of energy. Predictably analysts have a huge range of opinions over the acquisition. Some say Tesla should focus more on making its car products successful before as-suming more debt. Others talk about it being a bail-out of SolarCity.

Initial reaction to the talk of the merger was negative and Tesla stock fell 10% in the week of the announce-ment.

Both companies “are burning cash at a furious rate,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “SolarCity went through $2.6 billion in 2015 while Tesla spent $2.2 billion.” But that was well known already. Another analyst called the acquisition a bail out of what was effectively a sister firm to Tesla.

In one sense the debt levels are a side issue — albeit an important one. Solar-City has over $6 billion in liabilities, according to Reuters, the news agency, but these are balanced by regular and predictable income streams. SolarCity is however the largest player in the US

residential market with roughly a third of all the business.

There are synergies too. A joint com-pany might be able to achieve cost savings of over $150 million in the first full year after closing the transac-tion, Musk said. The merger could fix this, transforming Tesla’s roughly 200 showrooms around the world into one-stop shops for homeowners and motorists.

The biggest area of savings may come from lowering SolarCity’s cost to obtain customers by using Tesla’s strong brand recognition on top of its retail store locations.

Moreover, it’s the potential income that continue to stop Tesla’s buoyant share price from slipping too far.

Musk’s vision — and a noble one, de-spite the excessive hype — is depend-ent on a host of variables varying from the appetite of consumers wanting to move to an electric vehicle and also adopting a home residential system and the price of solar at the time.

As a brand name, and one of a small group of market leaders, the acquisi-tion is more related to the reputation of Musk as the great innovator rather than the vulnerability his companies have in terms of sales, the arrival of new technologies, and at its simplest, its affordability.

From SolarCity’s viewpoint it can only succeed if it gets bigger. In a June interview Lyndon Rive, chief ex-ecutive of SolarCity said the compa-ny wants to function at some point as a distributed power plant that, using its network of panels and batteries. To do that, it needs a lot of SolarCity panels and Tesla batteries in a lot of homes.

Tesla acquisition of SolarCity provides yet another business model developing

Lyndon Rive, chief executive of SolarCity said the company wants to function at some point as a distributed power plant that, using its network of panels and batteries. To do that, it needs a lot of SolarCity panels and Tesla batteries in a lot of homes.

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Stem, the US software-driv-en energy storage company, announced mid-August that its project financing pool now exceeds $350 million following the addition of up to $100 million in new money from investment af-filiates of Starwood Energy Group Global, a private investment firm focused on energy infrastructure.

John Carrington, CEO of, Stem plans to use its pool of capital to support project finance deals for its projects. Each of these is set up as a special purpose entity that is funded through non-re-course project financing. The project company then signs a lease for Stem’s so-called “storage-as-a-service”.

Stem created its energy storage project financing model in 2013 and says it is now the global leader in energy storage for commer-cial and industrial facilities with more than 75MWh of projects deployed or under

contract across more than 480 locations across the US.

GTM Research estimates that the firm has more than a 50% share of the behind the meter market.

“Third-party financing enables companies such as Safeway, Wells Fargo, and Adobe to subscribe to our storage-as-a-service solution with no upfront costs for equipment or installation,” says the firm. “Custom-ers benefit from intelligent storage that automatically reduces energy use during peak demand times, lowers monthly electricity bills by up to 20%, and provides a revenue stream from ser-vices that help balance the electric grid.”

Madison Grose, a senior managing director at Star-wood Energy said: “Distrib-uted energy resources such as those provided by Stem will be part of the founda-tion of the future electric grid. The Stem financing

is an attractive investment that facilitates lower ener-gy storage costs and wider adoption of clean energy solutions — it’s a win/win for our investors, Stem’s customers and the environ-ment.”

According to a GTM Re-search, the US market for behind-the-meter energy storage grew more than 400% in 2015. By 2021, this sector is expected to ac-count for up to 49% of the total energy storage market.

“This financing vehicle gives our customers access to capital and allows them to achieve the benefits of intelligent energy storage without making a major in-vestment,’ said Carrington. “Support from Starwood Energy helps solidify Stem’s position as a well financed, industry leader in providing intelligent energy storage solutions.”

As Stem brings on more storage projects, Carrington

hopes to reduce the firm’s cost of capital by adding economies of scale and demonstrating the validity of its business model to a wider audience of investors. Carrington says Stem has already cut itss cost of capi-tal in half over the past 18 months.

Stem was one of 10 win-ners of an auction to sup-ply demand response to Consolidated Edison. Under the agreement with Con Ed, Stem will install up to 857kW of battery storage in New York City by 2018.

Last November, Southern California Edison awarded Stem a contract to provide 85MW of distributed be-hind-the-meter storage for buildings in the West Los Angeles Basin.

For customers, Stem’s bat-tery systems are similar to a demand response service. It can shave peak load and capture savings from avoid-ed demand charges. Aggre-gating its grid management tools across multiple cus-tomers, Stem can then turn around and offer to help utilities manage their grid.

Stem’s primary project financing comes from Gen-erate Capital, a specialty fi-nance company. Generate’s work with Stem brings a version of the solar financ-ing model to energy stor-age, supporting its mission to rebuild energy systems using high-impact, proven technology solutions. Other project financing is also pro-vided by Clean Feet Inves-tors.

In addition to Starwood Stem is funded by a consor-tium of investors including Angeleno Group, Iberdrola (Inversiones Financieras Perseo) GE Ventures, Con-stellation Technology Ven-tures, Total Energy Ven-tures, Mitsui, RWE Supply & Trading, and Mithril Capital Management

Starwood Energy invests $100 million to Stem, brings project finance pool to $350 million

Greensmith Energy, one of the largest US providers of energy storage software and integration services, entered into a cooperation agree-ment with Wärtsilä, the in-ternational technology firm, in July.

This enables Wärtsilä to deliver energy storage sys-tems integrated with solar PV, and Wärtsilä Smart Power Generation power plants, jointly forming a hy-brid energy solution.

Greensmith will provide its GEMS software platform to provide the control for the system. Wärtsilä, a com-pany known for its multi-fuel power plants, says it will leverage its installed base and provide global EPC (engineering, procure-ment and construction) and

O&M (operation and main-tenance) services to custom-ers worldwide.

The two firms said: “As a combined market solution, Wärtsilä and Greensmith will provide sustainable, re-liable, and affordable power — particularly in countries and regions with limited or small electrical grids.”

Separately, Greensmith Energy launched its behind-the-meter energy storage so-lution, Omni4 in June.

Greensmith’s Omni4 is a plug-and-play product suit-able for a variety of custom-ers including utilities, devel-opers, building operators and energy partners. Omni4 comes in four configurable sizes — 100kW, 250kW, 500kW and 1MW.

All Omni4 systems come

deployment ready and in-clude fully-integrated out-door-rated enclosures, batter-ies, AC/DC protection, power conversion, thermal manage-ment, fire suppression and advanced software controls.

Greensmith announced mid-August that AltaGas has selected the firm as the software provider and system integrator for a 20MW/80MWh system in Pomona, California. The project will be put on a fast-track basis and the firms say they expect this to be com-pleted by the end of the year.

The firm says it is now on track to install 200MW of cumulative operating capac-ity. It was recently voted as being one of the fastest growing energy storage companies.

Greensmith Energy, Wärtsilä form partnership agreement

NEWS


Australia energy retailer AGL, working with the federal government’s Aus-tralian Renewable En-ergy Agency (ARENA), is commissioning Sunverge Energy, the Californian energy storage firm, to de-velop what it says will be the world’s largest virtual power plant.

“This project is the world’s largest, the first of its kind and an innovative solution to both help cus-tomers manage their en-ergy bills and at the same time contribute to grid stability,” said AGL chief executive Andy Vesey.

“This project is core to our strategy of being a manager of distributed energy resources. It also leverages our investment in Sunverge and helps us to continue to improve the digital customer experi-ence.”

Sunverge and AGL have partnered on storage in-stallations in Australia since 2015, and earlier this year AGL became an investor in Sunverge.

The AGL virtual power plant will be capable of storing 7MWh of energy, with an output equivalent to a 5MW solar peaking plant — this is enough power for 1,000 homes. It will also provide greater grid stability, demonstrate alternative ways to manage peaks in demand and sup-port the higher penetration of intermittent, renewable generation on the grid.

The project will be rolled out in three phases over a period of approxi-mately 18 months. In the first phase, running until April 2017, the first 150 customers in metropolitan Adelaide will be eligible to buy a discounted Sun-

verge SIS 5kW/7.7kWh energy storage system for A$3,500 ($2,700) which includes hardware, soft-ware and installation.

“For customers with suf-ficient excess solar gen-eration, this is expected to result in a seven-year pay-back period,” says AGL. “Consumers currently without solar will be able to purchase a solar system of the appropriate size for their needs with their bat-tery.”

Later phases will see an offering to narrower zones within metropolitan Ad-elaide where peak demand management and other network support services can be demonstrated.

AGL says it hopes the project can show how re-lationships between elec-tricity networks, retailers, consumers and the market operator can create new

sources of value and sta-bility in a renewable en-ergy future.

The overall project cost is approximately A$20 million, with ARENA pro-viding conditional approv-al of A$5 million as part of its Advancing Renewables Program, which aims to support the penetration of renewables on the grid.

“The AGL and ARENA Virtual Power Plant is re-markable today, but in five years’ time large-scale VPPs will be everywhere,” said Ken Munson, co-founder and CEO of Sun-verge Energy.

“By helping to build a stronger, more efficient and more reliable grid, VPPs deliver tremendous value to utilities, their customers and the environment.”

Sunverge has deployed hundreds of Solar Integra-tion Systems in Australia and New Zealand, reduc-ing peak load by 48% and providing more than 6,100 hours of backup power over the past 12 months.

Gaelectric, the Irish renew-able energy and energy storage group, announced in August it is to receive some €8.28 million ($9.4 million) in funding from the European Union to develop a compressed-air energy storage (CAES) in Larne, Northern Ireland.

The 330MW project had already been designated as a European Project of Common Interest in 2013, and had been awarded EU grant support of €6.5 mil-lion for front-end engineer-ing and design studies. This latest award is for the drill-ing of an appraisal well, and detailed studies into the design and commercial structure of the project.

This facility will generate up to 330MW of power for periods of up to six hours. It will create demand of

up to 200MW during its compression cycle. This is enough to meet the elec-tricity needs of more than 200,000 homes, and create demand on the system of 250MW.

The project involves the creation of two storage caverns within salt deposits which are a feature of the east Antrim coastal areas of Northern Ireland. These caverns will be located at

depths of greater than 1400 metres below ground.

The project has been de-signed to allow its replica-tion at other suitable sites in the UK and the European mainland.

AGL prepares ‘world’s largest virtual power plant’

Gaelectric to get further EU funds for CAES project

South Korea’s largest utility, Korea Electric Power Corporation — better known as Kepco — has awarded Kokam a contract to develop a 36MW/13MWh energy Storage System (ESS) for frequency regulation at the Non-Gong substa-tion in South Korea. Work started in June and should be completed by the end of the year.

The project features a combination of two

Kokam lithium ion bat-tery technologies: its ultra high power nickel manga-nese cobalt battery tech-nology and its NANO battery technology.

This is not Kokam’s first project with Kepco. In March, Kokam announced that it had deployed two ultra high power nickel manganese cobalt batteries (a 24MW/9MWh and a 16MW/6MWh system) along with a

16MW/5MWh lithium titanate oxide system. This provides Kepco with 56MW of energy storage capacity for frequency regulation. When the new 36MW ESS project is completed, Kokam will have de-ployed 92MW of energy storage capacity for frequency regulation for Kepco, and the total worldwide capacity of ESSs using its batteries will total 132MW.

Kokam to build 36MW ESS for Kepco

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NEWS

UK aggregator Smartest Energy has called for the UK’s National Grid to provide more certainty on future frequency response capacity, for the emerging energy storage market to grow. International interest is high given that this is a stepping stone that all mature renewable energy markets must cross.

Smartest Energy published its find-ings in mid-August following a survey of 45 energy storage developers about the barriers to commercialization. The key findings are that there are too few National Grid contracts and those that are being awarded are too short.

The biggest revenue opportunity available to developers will be from

providing grid services, chiefly the new enhanced frequency response (EFR) market, with most developers pursuing this opportunity.

National Grid will announce the winners of the first 200MW EFR auc-tion on August 26.

However, with the pipeline of bat-tery projects estimated to be at least 1GW, a lot of storage capacity will re-main untapped because of the limited availability of contracts.

A big issue for developers seeking to commercialize energy storage in the UK is the four years of guaranteed revenue from the EFR market.

Unless assets can achieve a return in that time — highly unlikely at current

battery prices — developers have to look at other sources of income. But these are not guaranteed and in some cases income is reduced by environ-mental levies.

While most of the developers sur-veyed by Smartest Energy believe a return on investment can be realised in five to 10 years, there is an inherent risk in developing and raising finance for batteries where these other rev-enue sources are not guaranteed.

During the first four years of the as-set’s operational lifetime — the con-tractual period for ER services — its ability to earn other revenues is lim-ited.

“It will depend upon whether Na-

UK’s National Grid tenders for grid services problematic for developers

Certainty is needed on future frequency response capacity, for the UK storage market to thrive.

NEWS


tional Grid chooses to contract for long continuous periods of EFR service from storage owners or is willing to ac-cept a mix of offers covering different periods of the day which could enable contracted storage owners to use their assets for other purposes when not committed to providing EFR services,” says Kevin Magner, director, financial advisory, government and infrastruc-ture, at Deloitte in London.

The consultancy provides financial advisory and other services to firms in the renewables and energy storage sectors.

Storage assets’ operational lifetimes are at least 10 years, so they could ac-cess other revenues after the end of the

four year EFR contract period. For example, their owners could bid into subsequent EFR or other grid service tenders also, one of which is firm fre-quency response. However, this is not guaranteed.

“Our assumption is EFR will even-tually replace firm frequency response, since less of it will be required,” says Robert Owens, vice president of de-mand side management at Smartest Energy.

In designing the EFR market, Na-tional Grid has made sure that at least 1GW of enhanced frequency response — where storage devices, such as bat-teries, have to react within sub-second timeframes to inject power into the grid to correct imbalances — can be provided without causing problems to the power system, which also means that EFR can be, in future, a standard product much like firm frequency re-sponse is today.

By the time of the next EFR bid-ding round, which will be from 2018, and is expected to be in the region of 400MW, technological advances, or reductions in production costs, may make newer storage systems more competitive by then, which may mean assets built for the first round are un-able to provide the service competi-tively.

“We would expect bidders that can mobilize capital that is willing to take a positive view on the ability of stor-age assets to earn sufficient revenues both in the EFR contract period and in other markets, later, over the eco-nomic life of the assets will be well placed in the EFR tender competi-tion,” says Magner.

In general, the longer the period over which costs can be amortized then the lower the required year-by-year rev-enues. “This is likely to be linked to where the storage assets are deployed and their suitability for accessing oth-er markets such as load shifting for large power consumers or enabling large renewable generators to offer fixed levels of output for more of each day,” Magner says.

He also points to other unique ad-vantages of battery storage, which in-stalled as a containerized product can be redeployed physically more easily than most forms of generation, and is also less intrusive.

While some of these other commer-cial opportunities help to mitigate the risk for storage owners, from Smartest Energy’s discussions with developers for the survey, Owens says most have come up with projects for direct grid

connection, as opposed to co-locating storage with existing renewable gen-erators.

“This is due in part to intensive fo-cus on the EFR market as National Grid may opt to select bids for pro-jects that are dedicated 24/7 to pro-viding this service. Also co-locating with wind or solar can interfere with renewables payments,” says Owens.

Because four years of guaranteed revenues is not enough to make pro-ject financing, a type of debt financing instrument for raising capital to build large energy and infrastructure pro-jects, developers and investors have had to look at alternative financing options.

“In general the storage opportunity looks at this stage to require more entrepreneurial forms of equity and mezzanine-style debt, or corporate fi-nancing,” says Magner.

“That will almost certainly change as the market matures and the sen-ior debt proposition becomes clearer, better understood, and larger in vol-ume. The key is mobilizing capital that has confidence in the long term revenue potential of the storage assets, based on their physical operating life, and will accept repayment, refinanc-ing or returns linked to that.”

Smartest Energy has been work-ing with developers on a commercial framework for energy storage projects in the UK. From its discussions the company expects that National Grid may spread contracts out among de-velopers so there might be as many as 20 awarded for servicing the 200MW EFR market.

“EFR is a testing exercise for Na-tional Grid, as much as one of pro-curement, so it may be in future that as revenue streams settle and other factors are considered, such as how far battery prices come down, that bigger projects will prevail in later EFR bid-ding rounds,” says Owens.

Smartest Energy, which purchases electricity from independent renew-able generators, equivalent to 13% of the UK’s independent renewable capacity, is not an investor in any of the EFR projects. “We produced the survey from the stance of a service provider,” says Owens.

The company has been working with the energy storage industry for the past three years, when it part-nered UK Power Networks to pro-vide a supply and offtake agreement for the distribution network opera-tor’s 6MW battery in Leighton Buz-zard, England.

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Sherwood Partners, the US insolvency adviser, has been engaged by Imergy, the va-nadium flow battery firm, to market and sell the com-pany’s assets. On July 18 Imergy entered into an As-signment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC), a form of insolvency under Californian state law.

The collapse of Imergy had been widely anticipated. It follows the collapse of so-lar firm, SunEdison in the spring.

Imergy had been partnered with SunEdison on a huge Indian rural electrification programme where SunEdi-son had agreed to buy up to

1,000 of Imergy’s 30kw units over the next three years.

SunEdison was an equity investor in Imergy.

Last December the firms announced they were working together on a 5MW/20MWh flow battery for the Independent Electric-ity System Operator, an On-tario, Canada utility.

Sherwood says now that it is the so-called “assignee” of Imergy, “we take control and work through the prob-lems of the company. These problems are transferred to the assignee. The manage-ment team, investors and the board can then move forward with their lives and

everyday business. Also, the personal liability of directors and officers for running an insolvent company ceases to be an issue once the assign-ment of assets occurs.”

Imergy has ceased opera-tions and dismissed its staff. However, some key former employees to help with the sale of the intellectual property and related assets. Some of the claims such as the ability to cut the cost of manufacturing the batter-ies from $500kWh to under $300kWh were contentious.

The IP could well provoke interest given Imergy, which was part of Deeya Energy until 2013, had distinct dif-

ferences from other flow battery firms. It originally worked on an iron-chromi-um chemistry but shifted to vanadium three years ago. It moved from using sulphuric acid as an electrolyte to an-other electrolyte developed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

One advantage was its ability to use so-called “dirty vanadium”. It claimed to be the first flow battery compa-ny able to use secondary re-sources of vanadium from mining slag, fly ash and other environmental waste. The battery could stay stable up to 55°C without the need for cooling.

EnSync Energy Systems, the US energy management sys-tem company, announced in August the sale of multiple projects in Hawaii to AEP OnSite Partners, a subsidiary of American Electric Power.

The sale of these projects is EnSync Energy’s first transac-tion of a portfolio of project power purchase agreements (PPAs) and includes a major portion of EnSync Energy’s PPA backlog reported at the end of our third quarter.

The first solar-plus-storage PPA is a watershed moment for Hawaii, which has one of the most aggressive renewa-ble portfolio standards in the US. In June last year it signed into a law a target of using 100% renewable energy for its electricity by 2045.

All of the systems are sited behind-the-meter at condo-miniums or university cam-pus buildings on Oahu and the Island of Hawaii, and represent the first ever solar plus storage PPAs in Hawaii. EnSync will provide project services through a contract

with AEP OnSite Partners.“We’re very pleased to

complete this transaction with AEP OnSite Partners, a recognized leader in renew-able energy investments and this sale, which could be the first of its kind in the renew-able energy market, and pro-vides validation of our PPA business model,” says Brad Hansen, chief executive of EnSync Energy.

“When we entered the Ha-waiian market with our PPA business model featuring

leading energy management and energy storage systems, it was novel and unique in the islands. Since that time our pipeline and backlog of PPAs has continued to build and we look forward to con-tinuing this growth over the coming quarters and years.”

EnSync Energy has built a position in the Hawaiian market, and through its sub-sidiary company, Holu En-ergy, has developed a project pipeline in the islands.

These projects are the first

integrated solar and storage projects in Hawaii.

In 2015, EnSync incorpo-rated power purchase agree-ments into its portfolio of offerings, enabling electricity savings for customers and providing a stable financial yield for investors. EnSync is a global corporation, with a joint venture in AnHui, China at Meineng Energy, as well as a strategic partner-ship with Solar Power.

EnSync was formerly known as ZBB Energy.

Imergy goes into ABC insolvency agreement — intellectual property and assets up for sale

EnSync sells first PPAs, opens up Hawaii

Advanced Microgrid Solutions, a developer of energy storage systems for electric utility grid support, and Opus One Solutions, a smart grid software engineering company, agreed a tie-up in July to provide utili-ties with a platform for real-time management and optimization of the

electric grid.AMS and Opus One say

they will pair advanced energy storage systems with real-time grid level energy management software to bring utilities grid visibility, control, and optimization. This will support widespread deployment and opera-tion of distributed energy

resources, including renewable energy.

“In addition to the benefits to utilities, the so-lutions provided by AMS and Opus One will help customers optimize their energy strategies while contributing to a stronger, more resilient grid,” they say.

“This partnership gives AMS and Opus One a competitive edge in

AMS tied up with Opus One

NEWS


Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, a Korea-based power generation technology firm, acquired US-firm 1Energy Systems in mid-July. 1Energy was founded in 2011 to develop the software needed to au-tomatically integrate dis-tributed energy resources into electric power systems.

1Energy will be renamed Doosan GridTech and will remain in Seattle, operating as a new business division of DHIC.

“By accelerating the growth of 1Energy, the ac-quisition furthers Doosan’s expansion into technology solutions to manage and operate an increasingly digital, distributed electric grid,” say the two firms.

Daejin Choi, vice presi-dent of DHIC for nearly

seven years, will relocate to Seattle to become CEO of Doosan GridTech. New Doosan GridTech employ-ees will be hired in Seattle, joining 1Energy employees and Doosan personnel relo-cating from Korea.

“Wind and solar power, energy storage and the ad-vent of electric vehicles are changing how the grid op-erates,” said David Kaplan, 1Energy CEO who will become COO of Doosan GridTech.

“As Doosan GridTech, we’ll scale rapidly to de-liver more field-based intel-ligence and continue our leadership in cross-industry efforts, such as Modular Energy Storage Architec-ture (MESA) open stand-ards, to deliver more cost-effective and functional

solutions on behalf of cus-tomers.”

Kaplan, who was a central figure in creating MESA, says standards are neces-sary to scale any technol-ogy. The personal computer industry grew to millions of units per year, while driving down prices, after software and hardware components were standardized. MESA standards will allow con-nections between energy storage system compo-nents, freeing utilities and vendors to grow storage through market processes.

“While battery storage technologies are improving all the time, they are only as good as the software that operates them,” Ka-plan said. “Doosan Grid-Tech provides the advanced software — the intelligence

that controls complex op-erations — to truly break open the opportunities of battery storage, enabling utilities to meet the chal-lenge of managing distrib-uted resources and capture new value streams across the grid.”

Ji Taik Chung, DHIC vice chairman said: “Doosan’s global customers are con-fronting two critical, long-term trends: Increased elec-trification of the world’s energy systems driven by public policies to reduce carbon emissions, and the declining costs of technolo-gy, especially renewable en-ergy and battery storage.”

1Energy has roughly 30MW of energy storage projects using its platform, with about half of that in the US.

GE Ventures announced in June that it had bought a stake in Germany’s Son-nen for an undisclosed sum to boost its presence in the fast-growing market for battery systems built to store solar power.

“This is an extraordinary endorsement of Sonnen,” said one industry commen-tator. “It’s not just about an investor covering its bases so much as not to miss out on an opportunity that may happen, but one taking a stake in what it reckons will be a major player in the sector.”

GE’s unit is paying a “mid double-digit million-euro” sum for a minority stake in the company, according to a statement by the Bavaria-based Sonnen and reported in the press.

The company said other investors are considering taking stakes in Sonnen, whose ownership includes

founder Christoph Oster-mann and four private eq-uity funds. Ostermann re-cently announced the firm was seeking an investment round of up to €50 million.

Sonnen claims to be Eu-rope’s biggest maker of lith-ium-battery systems for so-lar storage. It competes with Tesla Motors Powerwall home battery and Bosch

Power Tec. This year it claimed that it had shipped more sonnenBatterie than Tesla’s Powerwall.

Ostermann later was quoted in the press as say-ing: “With GE Ventures, we have not only partnered with one of the world’s largest power and water technology companies but gained a supporter for our

vision of a sustainable and affordable energy future for all.”

“Sonnen is helping to re-shape the energy industry,” said Jonathan Pulitzer, managing director at GE Ventures. “We believe in Sonnen’s vision. that’s why we are excited to be a part-ner to provide clean and af-fordable energy to all.”

Doosan acquires 1Energy, MESA co-founder Kaplan stays on as COO

GE Ventures takes stake in Sonnen

For the record, Rongke Power a partner and affili-ate of UniEnergy Technol-ogies said in May it plans to deploy the world’s largest battery — a vanadium flow battery — rated at 800MWh. UET and Rongke Power have worked closely together since 2012 to develop large-scale vanadium flow batteries.

The battery arrays approved by the China National Energy Adminis-tration will be made up of 10 20MW/80MWh VFB systems deployed on the Dalian peninsula, which during extreme weather events has experienced stress on the electricity grid.

After commissioning, the VFB battery will

be able to peak-shave approximately 8% of Dalian’s expected load in 2020.

The VFB battery will be built at Rongke Power’s new factory to be opened this autumn, with a phase 1 capacity of 300MW of VFB electrode stacks, a phase 2 capacity of 1GW, and a phase 3 capacity of 3GW.

The world’s ‘largest’ battery for north China

NEWS


Renewable Energy Systems, the UK based international energy storage de-veloper, is building a 20MW battery storage plant to provide services in sub-second frequency response to the National Grid in the UK.

In May the two signed a four-year contract for RES to provide frequency response from a 20MW battery stor-age plant the company is building, which will be operational in the final quarter of 2017.

The deal was announced before the transmission system operator can publicise successful bids for its new enhanced frequency response market, which happens in late August.

RES said: “This is a new service which will aid National Grid in per-forming its system balancing role, which increasingly requires innova-tion and the use of new technolo-gies. The services delivered by RES’ battery storage system will provide cost effective frequency response to the grid within one second of the de-tection of a frequency deviation.”

The 20MW plant is outside of the 200MW enhanced frequency response (EFR) market the National Grid is in the process of establishing.

National Grid senior account man-ager Adam Sims said: “RES’ system is being used to test parameters of fre-quency regulation. It is a precursor to the enhanced frequency response, but is not part of the market.”

Fast frequency regulation has grown in demand as a means of balancing the grid, especially in North America, as more intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar con-tinue to be added.

Energy storage plants typically bal-ance the grid within second or sub-second ranges to correct supply and

demand imbalances. Helped by fall-ing battery prices it is becoming more economic to use lithium battery stor-age systems to despatch these types of power-intensive ancillary grid services.

Transmission system operator PJM Interconnection has overseen the most advanced and largest market for bat-tery storage for the provision of fast frequency regulation services. The market’s rules have been established to more accurately compensate stor-age providers for high performance qualities of energy storage systems.

Other markets in North America and globally — here the UK approach is included — have looked to PJM as an example of how to design a market for battery storage.

RES’ core business is developing operating renewable energy plants, including utility-scale wind and solar photovoltaic plants, which the com-pany has been building since the early 1990s. The company’s global portfo-lio of assets built or in development numbers several gigawatts and also includes transmission projects.

In the past few years RES has devel-oped over 70MW of energy storage mainly in North America.

National Grid has continued to refine the design of its enhanced fre-quency response market since it was announced in the second half of 2015.

Sims says: “Designing the enhanced frequency response market has fea-tured collaborative input by the com-panies seeking to take part, many of which are planning to use battery storage to provide this service.”

For instance, the invitation to tender documents, which provide guidelines for the remaining prequalified par-ticipants for their bid submissions, has split the enhanced frequency response

into two service envelopes. This has been done to simplify the

original approach which would have allowed for many variations, to pro-vide flexibility. However, in reality this could have been complicated to administer.

RES has also provided input into the National Grid’s research into enhanced frequency response. The company says it initially proposed this service to National Grid in 2014, based on the company’s experience of delivering multiple similar projects in North America, for the PJM Intercon-nection, Ontario’s independent elec-tricity system operator and others.

The company said: “We undertook a significant amount of detailed tech-nical analysis on the benefit of such a service to the electricity system in Great Britain, and worked closely with National Grid in testing and proving National Grid’s own analysis of the impact of very fast frequency response services on the grid.

“The result is this contract, which separately contributed to National Grid’s decision to seek 10 times more (200MW) of sub-second frequency response through the enhanced fre-quency response invitation to tender.”

The 20MW asset being built by RES will provide a different service and a different ramp rate within the one sec-ond frequency range. “It is very much a test bed for the National Grid to use a battery to see how it performs providing fast response services and gather data. For instance, what are the parameters and what will they do to the grid in the UK?” says Sims.

Under the terms of the contract RES will develop, build, own and operate the 20MW battery energy storage plant to deliver the sub-second fre-quency response services to National Grid.

“The service contract will be paid for by National Grid through its role as system operator and is similar to many other ancillary services con-tracts it procures for balancing pur-poses,” according to RES.

RES snares battery project ahead of launch of UK’s frequency response market

“Renewable Energy Systems’ system is being used to test parameters of frequency regulation. It is a pre-cursor to the enhanced frequency response, but is not part of the market.”

POINTS OF VIEW: BITRODE CORPORATION


What do you think are going to be the most interesting markets for testing in the coming years?

We are seeing a broad spectrum of activity within what we we’d call growth markets.

The transportation sector is looking at lead acid developments to 48 volts for consumer transportation as well as 1000+ volts for advanced chem-istry batteries for off-road and mass transportation applications.

We receive more requests for micro-grid applications — standalone islands, remote/rural locations, and the like — at this time, but we don’t see a lot of test equipment activity for applications relating to grid peak storage or frequency regulation.

Another area that we see growth in is in the re-purposing of used EV/EHV batteries. There is still a lot of life in EV/EHV batteries after they are no longer ideal for transportation use.

And in terms of geographical location, where do you think will be the new hot spots for testing?

In the past 12 months we have seen a great amount of activity from China and in India. While the North American market still remains as a stronghold in R&D of both lead acid and advanced chemistry batteries, the Indian and Asian markets are leaning heavily on equipment for the testing of advanced chemistries.

Will Brazil be the next Shenzhen?

We do see activity in Brazil and we are always hoping for growth in the South American market, but the volatility of the Brazilian market seems to change even within the time taken from when we quote a project and the expected PO [purchase order] date.

In terms of the technological advances in testing, what areas do you think are going to be the most exciting — greater precision, greater predictability for lower cycling, totally new products and the like? Or all?

Customers continue to ask for faster and more accurate test equipment. There is a spec war going on globally. R&D lab equipment being used for material research requires high level of resolution and accuracy.

There is always the economic trade-off between cost and requirement.

I believe that all test equipment suppliers are working to understand this now.

Where do you see Bitrode as part of this?

We take pride in our reliability and the ability to prove what we put on our spec sheets. Our R&D depart-

Testing times as new generation of energy storage products appears

Energy Storage Journal interviewed Craig Brunk, sales director at Bitrode for his take on the current state of the testing market and the direction it’ll go in the next few years.

POINTS OF VIEW: BITRODE CORPORATION


ment is constantly being challenged to meet the escalating requirements of our customers and not take short cuts.

We are in development of three to four new product platforms that we believe will give customer’s the value they expect from Bitrode testers and meet their high demands for precision and reliability.

What are your thoughts on new forms of potential secondary batteries such as lithium air, magnesium ion …

Bitrode’s product line is chemistry neutral; we build testers for cell test-ing, module testing and pack testing. Our R&D lab and university cus-tomers don’t typically disclose their proprietary development programs and proprietary test algorithms.

Our Windows-based VisuaLCN software is fully capable and easily programmable by users to develop test profiles for each variation of bat-tery chemistry.

How do you think the testing industry will evolve in the years to come?

At the end of the day, customers want to work with suppliers that have experience in the industry, a track record of proven results and respon-siveness to requests for equipment flexibility, technology, service and performance.

Natural selection will eliminate those that can’t meet these require-ments.

Will the industry consolidate?

That’s a maybe! Digatron and Firing Circuits merged in 1988. Sovema purchased Bitrode in 2008. It’s been quite a while since a merger or acqui-sition has taken place. Perhaps 2018 will be the next year for change? (laughs!)

Become more specialized?

Power electronics are the heart of battery testing equipment. If any-thing, I would see expansion of our company and our competitors ex-

panding into adjacent space markets that use power electronics.

Or will the industry become more collaborative as per some of your collaborations with GM?

Collaboration and integration are becoming more and more common. Bitrode has partnered with Gamry for integration of EIS (electrochemical impedance spectroscopy) capabilities and we have integrated with many environmental chamber suppliers for turnkey installations.

We have also been approached about providing complete turnkey test room facilities. Many customers will be looking at one-stop shopping in the future.

Has development in lead battery testing more or less reached an end game if lead batteries can’t be used meaningfully in HRPSoC applications?

Lead acid batteries have always been the workhorse of the energy stor-age market. We believe that our lead acid customers continue to provide innovative products for future needs — 48V automotive batteries for the micro-hybrid vehicles are a prime example of continued R&D and investment in lead acid technology.

How do you see the automotive and energy storage markets of the future developing? And what kind of pace will that be?

One thing we know for sure, the need for energy storage will grow and grow in the future. The wildcards are always weight, safety, cycles, power density, cost (... and cost!).

In terms of pace, it’s happening now! The automotive industry has cre-ated a media frenzy with automotive developments from Tesla, Google and Apple. Their development is highly vis-ible to the consumer in the street.

The automotive sector has become a leader in electrification and the need for energy storage.

What consumers don’t read about in USA Today is about the developers of non-traditional energy generators and the storage of this generated energy.

Growth and development is hap-pening simultaneously in the automo-tive and grid storage industries, it’s only that the automotive industry is getting the byline.

When — or if — do you see lithium ion becoming the major battery chemistry in grid or automotive markets?

As soon as price and power density meet the needs of the consumer.

Perhaps it won’t be lithium ion technology that will be the final chemistry that gets us to the needed cost/benefit ratio, but it appears to be a great technology that we are all learning from and could take us to that next battery chemistry.

Will it be price as the major consideration?

Yes. For the most we all have a fixed budget to live on. Until electrification and battery storage costs reach a level that the consumer is willing to pay for and see a net benefit of, we will continue to use power from natural resources power such as oil, gas, coal and the like as well as nuclear power in supplying our power needs.

What worries you most about the evolution of today’s large scale storage markets?

The evolution is not fast enough for us in the battery industry. We all would like to see additional R&D dollars granted over the next five to 10 years to help us break dependence on non-green energy generation and the storage of distributed energy.

One thing we know for sure, the need for energy storage will grow and grow in the future. The wildcards are always weight, safety, cycles, power density, cost and cost.

I would see expansion of our company and our competitors expanding into adjacent space markets that use power electronics.

GRID TECHNOLOGIES, ULTRACAPACITORS


Gaston County, North Carolina. It’s not the most famous spot in the US. Or not yet. But in terms of grid energy storage, it’s one of the hottest sites in what could be the cutting edge of how renewable energy will be integrated into the grid.

Guodian China and Duke Energy, the US utility, recently commissioned hybrid battery-ultracapacitor energy storage systems to stack multiple grid services into a single solution. The hy-brid system capitalizes on the strong points of each technology: batteries for long-term energy storage and ul-tracapacitors for high power.

This mitigates the need to oversize batteries to meet system lifetime re-quirements.

When cloud cover or other weather events cause solar power fluctuations on the grid, this hybrid system lever-ages ultracapacitors’ high power and fast response capabilities. Ultracapaci-tors support battery performance by removing high peak power demand, which in turn, over time, mitigates battery capacity degradation.

This way, the batteries have an op-timized performance for energy shift-ing of solar on the distribution circuit. This hybrid approach maximizes util-ity system value by simultaneously de-livering these grid services at an over-all lower system cost.

What does this in-field example of a hybrid battery-ultracapacitor energy storage system mean for the future grid?

More renewable energy is being added to the grid each year, and utility and grid owners are under pressure to implement solutions that help to de-liver clean, reliable power to end us-ers — and at the same time, they must find a way to minimize operating costs and increase returns.

The answer to this challenge is to integrate fast-responding energy stor-age, such as ultracapacitors, which can enhance renewable energy pro-duction by reducing — and in many cases, eliminating — the problems of intermittency.

Take the examples of frequency re-sponse and wind power smoothing.

In the case of frequency response, balance must be maintained on a sec-ond-to-second basis between electric-ity demand and generation to main-tain grid stability. The tight frequency envelope has to be managed in second to sub-second time-frames to prevent system collapse.

Wind generators in particular should consider this factor — energy storage assets can be leveraged with ultracapacitors to provide frequency response.

Ultracapacitors are also an advantage for wind power smoothing. More in-termittent renewable generation is pen-etrating the grid, and variations in wind power output can create faults on local transmission lines and result in poor quality power to the end customer.

Ultracapacitors can respond to these variations within milliseconds and prevent problems associated with power output fluctuations. Im-plementing ultracapacitors to rapidly deliver quality power ameliorates rev-enue loss associated with curtailment and can also help avoid expenditures for transmission line upgrades.

In addition, the growing demand for power quality has led suppliers to seek out new options for turbine wind pitch technologies.

Ultracapacitors have emerged as a

practical solution for wind pitch con-trol, due to ultracapacitors’ ability to produce high-quality, reliable power, provide faster charge and discharge cycles, a longer lifetime, and reliable performance in colder temperatures. Ultracapacitors offer these benefits and more — without dramatic in-creases in operating costs.

Energy storage systems that imple-ment ultracapacitors significantly improve generation quality and reli-ability while at the same time offer operators a new frontier of financial savings.

The Duke Energy battery-ultraca-pacitor hybrid system acts as an il-lustration to utility and grid audiences worldwide on what the future of en-ergy storage could look like. The en-ergy density of batteries paired with the high power, fast response ability of ultracapacitors continues to dem-onstrate success in the field and may very well be setting the new standard for grid energy storage.

Kimberly McGrath, director of business development at Maxwell Technologies discusses how the combination of supercaps and storage offers an economic way forward for grid development.

Hybridizing energy and power for the grid

Kimberly McGrath is director of business development for Maxwell Technologies and has spent her career in the field of energy storage applications and technology development. She writes about the latest in ultracapacitor technology at http://www.maxwell.com/blog/category/ultracapacitors

Ultracapacitors support battery performance by removing high peak power demand, which in turn, over time, mitigates battery capacity degradation.

Central to the space will be the En-ergy Hub, a dynamic platform for the show’s comprehensive seminar content. Incorporating a mix of panel discussions, live debates and CPD seminars the Energy Hub content will address the core issues in the industry today as well as give insight into the latest regulations, policies and tech-nologies.

The content has largely been shaped by the outcomes of the high-level de-bate hosted by Energy 2016 earlier in the year.

The event brought together leading energy specialists, including Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party and Steve Fitzsimons, Senior Manag-er Infrastructure Services at EDF En-

ergy, to discuss the key issues such as energy storage and its role as a crucial facilitator for the future of renewable energy in both domestic and commer-cial environments.

Nick Blyth, Policy & Practice Lead, IEMA will be opening this year’s event followed by a three-day semi-nar programme at the Energy Hub featuring leading industry experts on hot topics and trends.

On day one Bekir Andrews, Group sustainability Manager at Balfour Be-atty will address the need for “Adapt-ing to an ever changing energy land-scape.” followed by an open Q&A session.

The lunchtime panel discussion: “Opportunities in residential to com-

Challenging content and high-profile networking, the order of the day at the UK’s premiere energy event


Connecting the energy industry like no other event in the UK, Energy 2016 is back for its second year at the Birmingham NEC on 18-20 October, as part of the award winning UK Construction Week.

The event has been backed by leading industry bodies such as the Renewable Energy Association (REA), the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM), the Energy Managers Association (EMA), the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA), the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) and many more.Uniting all the key business

players in the industry, such as architects, project and energy managers, engineers and developers, Energy 2016 will provide a perfect platform to bring together the sector and the wider interconnected industries. Over 8,500 industry professionals attended last year’s event and with a programme of high-profile speakers, seminars, CPD workshops and a Hosted Buyers Programme, this year’s event is not to be missed.Visitors to Energy 2016 will

also benefit from the event’s co-location alongside eight other trade events being held at UK Construction Week.

mercial energy storage” will explore the relationship and opportunities that exist between residential and commercial energy storage units, speakers include David Pickup, Policy Manager at the Solar Trade Associa-tion, Mark Donovan, Principal Engi-neer at UK Power Network Services and Marc Stanton, Commercial Di-rector at Clean Power Solutions.

On day two, the lunchtime panel dis-cussion: “Working towards a greener and more sustainable future” looks at how the supply chain is working towards more sustainable and energy efficient commercial buildings with a specific focus of meeting the zero car-bon target by 2020. Speakers include: Natalie Bennett, Leader of the Green Party, Andrew Mellor, Partner at PRP, Mark Harris, Divisional Building Technology Director at Kingspan In-sulated Panels and Sara Kassam, Head of Sustainability Development at the Chartered Institution of Building Ser-vices Engineers.

The closing session on day two will give an overview of the business op-portunities that hydrogen and fuel cell technology can offer.

This technology will also be key for the implementation of new de-central-ised energy systems offering support for grid infrastructure and balancing of supply.

Day three will start with a focus on renewable energy and the biomass in-dustry within the UK. Government in-centives are being reformed and new innovative solutions have recently be-come available that will help reduce waste costs and generate energy.

Two great panel discussions will also be on the programme for the fi-nal day. The first one will ask: “Are

EVs the solution to resolving the en-ergy crisis?” 2016 has seen a massive growth in the EV market with devel-opments from the likes of Tesla, Nis-san and even BMW. Speakers for this seminar include: Christopher Jackson, Director at Flexisolar Ltd, Michael Wayne Bexton, Head of Energy Pro-jects at Nottingham City Council and Erik Fairbairn from Pod Point.

The second discussion, “The great innovation pitch” will look at the lat-

est innovations and forecasts for inno-vations in Energy. Confirmed speakers are: David Pybus, Business Develop-ment Executive at Pavegen and Mat-thew Lumsden, Managing Director at Connected Energy.

In addition to the Energy Hub, the Renewable Energy Association will also host a range of half-day confer-ences throughout the show, covering topics such as energy storage and re-newables in the built environment.


Registering to attend Energy 2016 is quick, easy and free, by going online to www.energyliveshow.co.uk. What’s more, by completing the form, trade visitors can access all nine shows taking place at UK Construction Week.

Energy 2016 will also host a VIP lounge bringing a string of high profile buyers and visitors to the show. The Energy 2016 VIP section will be located within the show’s footprint offering exhibitors the unique opportunity to interact with some of the biggest players in the industry.

GET YOUR FREE TICKET

NETWORKING IN STYLE

AUSTRALIAN RESIDENTIAL STORAGE UPTAKE


Over a million and a half solar sys-tems are installed in Australia, equiva-lent to 17% of its households, ac-cording to Sydney-based consultancy Sunwiz. Thanks to a generous feed-in tariff scheme and high levels of solar radiation, Australia’s total solar PV installed capacity stands at 5GW. That is about 9% of the country’s total elec-tricity generation capacity.

Regions with the highest share of homes with rooftop solar PV are Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

As happened in Europe — particu-larly in Germany and the UK — the FiT incentive to support the installa-tion of rooftop solar PV in Australia has contributed towards the growth in demand. It has helped create a com-petitive market for the technology.

However, the FiTs, which vary be-tween states in Australia, are being slashed — by up to 90% in some cases. This provides little incentive for homeowners to export unused energy generated back to the grid.

With electricity costs also rising, homeowners are seeing great potential

for battery storage since it allows them to use their free, solar energy at night at a fraction of their off-peak rates.

Australia’s solar-plus-storage poten-tial made headlines last year, when a host of home energy storage players — Tesla included — announced it as their next export market. Some have formed partnerships with utilities to help unlock demand for their technol-ogy.

They include Japanese consumer electronics brand Panasonic, which had already announced in mid-2015 pilots of its home storage system with ActewAGL, Red Energy and Ergon Energy, in homes of those utilities’ customers with solar installed. The batteries are being used for peak shav-ing and will provide data on how solar-plus-storage systems should be deployed in the residential market.

Several other energy storage system providers are also targeting Australia, including Germany’s Sonnen, as well as US companies Sunverge, which sup-plies energy storage systems and vir-tual power plant software, and micro-inverter maker Enphase.

“Australia is seen as a core market alongside Germany and the US be-cause of Australia’s relative wealth, its high energy costs and its high penetra-tion of solar,” says Chris Parratt, who oversees Sonnen’s Australian subsidi-ary, which was set up in April.

The initial stock of Sonnen’s latest home storage system Eco 8, which is a modular product, has just arrived in Australia. Parratt expects that Aus-tralian households will require capaci-ties between 4kWh and 8kWh based on existing solar generation.

Sonnen has signed up several na-tional partners in Australasia that can supply and install its systems across the region, including True Value So-lar, Energy Matters, Zen Energy and Madison Australia.

“Payback depends on specific ener-gy rates, which differ across Australia, and household consumption. As long as the system is sized correctly, pay-back can occur in eight to 10 years,” says Parratt.

Features of Sonnen’s system that will appeal to customers and the grid in Australia, include tariff arbitrage,

Australia has been widely hailed as the next place to be for PV uptake, now its uptake of solar plus storage is positive for the whole of Asia.

Solar-plus-storage down under



demand response, by responding to high price events from the wholesale market, as well as other grid services.

Peak shaving trialsEnphase has arranged beta trials for its all-in-one AC Battery with SA Power Networks in South Australia and Genesis Energy in New Zealand. These trials are part of the company’s efforts to reach new customers and enable utilities to use its technology to support the grid as more solar is add-ed, in addition to supplying its micro-inverters, energy storage systems and related home energy products to solar installers in the region.

Enphase is unable to disclose data from the trials, as they form part of its review into how batteries interact with the grid, especially during peak demand times for electricity.

Separately, Enphase also has other programmes and pilots with utilities to see how the company’s micro-in-verters can support the feed-in of solar PV electricity.

In Australia, the company an-nounced a partnership with Energy Australia in March 2015, where it has exclusive rights to provide its micro-inverters and access to its MyEnlight-en platform to Energy Australia’s resi-dential customers.

This is Enphase’s first utility-level partnership in Asia-Pacific and En-phase micro-inverters are installed with the systems of 98.5% of Energy Australia’s solar residential customers.

The company’s micro-inverters are also qualified in Queensland with an export control feature that meets the state’s energy regulatory requirements. Enphase is in discussions with Ergon Energy and Energex as they can influ-ence regulatory decisions based on so-lar PV export controls in Queensland.

Following beta trials Enphase’s AC

battery will be available in Australia and New Zealand by the end of the year.

Already the company has registered interest for 60,000 units for installa-tion over the next 12 months from its distribution and installation partners, which include AC Solar Warehouse, One Stop Warehouse, RFI and Solar + Solutions in Australia and Solar Part-ners NZ and YHI in New Zealand.

Nathan Dunn, managing director of Enphase Asia-Pacific, says: “This has far exceeded our expectations where we had initially forecasted for orders of 12,000 units before the end of 2016. We are continuing discussions with our partners as there is a strong interest for battery storage from households, particularly in Australia. It’s been our strongest performing market to date.”

Enphase’s network includes over a thousand installers in Australasia and based on internal estimates the company leads the Australian micro-inverter market with an approximate market share of 10% in the overall inverter segment and 40% in New Zealand.

“There is potential for home energy storage to grow in Australia due to the relatively low cost of entry which will appeal to the PV retrofit market of homes with 1kW-5kW sized solar systems as well as the demand for new residential installations,” says Dunn.

At a policy level, there has been keen interest in battery storage and how it can potentially alleviate electricity de-mand during peak periods. In states such as South Australia and Victoria trials of residential solar-plus-storage systems have been set up to investi-gate how the technology can support energy use from the grid.

Just over 75% of New Zealand’s electricity comes from renewable re-

sources (primarily hydropower and geothermal power). While the govern-ment has not prioritized the uptake of household PV, a study by the Uni-versity of Otago has found that 58% of households would like to generate their own electricity.

About 9,000 of the 1.6 million households in New Zealand have rooftop solar PV systems. “In terms of storage, we believe the market poten-tial for New Zealand remains smaller at this stage and this can be attribut-ed to the policy neutral environment towards energy — unlike Australia, New Zealand homeowners do not re-ceive any feed-in- tariffs or subsidies for rooftop solar,” Dunn says.

Using Enphase’s AC Battery, home-owners can achieve sustainable self-consumption or store solar energy generated for use at times when grid-supplied energy rates are at their peak.

Software is keyThe company has developed a cloud-based energy management platform that can integrate the storage system and other home energy products from Enphase with smart devices for intel-

“Australia is seen as a core market alongside Germany and the US because of Australia’s relative wealth, its high energy costs and its high penetration of solar” — Chris Parratt, Sonnen Australia

“As battery prices continue to decline storage will continue to seem a more attractive proposition. This dynamic, coupled with such a competitive retail market will result in storage moving past the early adoption stage in the next two to five years”— Jason Clark, AGL



Investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts the solar-plus-storage market in Australia to go from around 2,000 Australian homes now to reach one million households by 2020. In its high case scenario this could even reach two million by that time. Australia already has the highest solar per capita in any country in the world.

Morgan Stanley, however, admits that its estimate is the most bullish of rival investment banks.

In June 2015 Australia Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced several solar-plus-storage projects as part of an A$2.5 billion fund to invest in commercially viable projects that are intended to reduce the cost and increase the use of renewable energy in Australia.

Following the announcement, in the second half of 2015 ActewAGL trialled Panasonic’s battery energy storage systems in Canberra homes, as part of the ACT government’s next generation energy storage pilot.

ActewAGL had worked with Panasonic for two years to prepare for the trial. In the pilot the 8kWh battery systems were coupled to homeowners’ solar PV systems to store the excess solar generation accumulated during the day to power the homes at night.

As part of an ACT government programme Canberra residents can purchase subsidized energy storage systems.

Queensland-based energy firm Ergon Energy also trialled Panasonic’s home storage systems among residential customers in its service territory.

Since trialling Panasonic’s battery system in 2015, Red Energy (Snowy Hydro’s retail energy business) now offers three solar-plus-storage packages. The 3kW package generates on average 11.7kWh of electricity a day in, Sydney — more in summer, less in winter time. The 4kWh package generates on average 15.6 kWh of electricity a day in Sydney and the 5kW system, 19.5kWh.

Flow batteries too Redflow, based in Brisbane, is bringing to market a hybrid flow battery using zinc and bromine called ZCell which is suitable for the home

as well as commercial operations such as offices.

Its smallest home energy storage system, the 10kWh ZCell, started shipping in June for commercialization in the second half of this year.

The household battery is about the size of an air-conditioning unit. The amount of energy per square centimetre is similar to Tesla’s Powerwall. Price-wise the system is competitive with the other energy storage systems available on the market, which are based on lithium ion chemistry.

The company has worked with end users, such as utilities, well as research organisations, for demonstration and trial purposes.

Utility partners include Powerco, which is New Zealand’s second-largest electricity distribution company with around 315,000 customers on North Island. Powerco has exclusive rights to distribute Redflow’s battery system through its subsidiary Basepower, which supplies reliable power for remote homes and farms.

One of Redflow’s earliest partners was Ausgrid, a New South Wales

utility. In conjunction with the Australian government’s Smart Grid, Smart City trial, RedFlow installed 60 residential energy storage units in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley.

More recently Redflow supplied 30 of its home storage units for installation and integration within Ergon Energy’s electricity supply network in Queensland, as part of the Australian Government’s Advanced Electricity Storage Technologies (AEST) programme. The systems were used for managing peak electricity demand within three locations in Ergon Energy’s rural network and were remotely monitored by both RedFlow and Ergon Energy.

In June 2016, Redflow teamed up with Australian inverter maker Redback Technologies to help bring its ZCell home battery to market. The tie-up followed months of testing the battery’s compatibility with Redback’s solar PV hybrid inverter.

ZCell is also compatible with inverters from Netherlands-based Victron Energy, and Redflow is exploring opportunities in Europe for its battery storage technology.

Redflow chairman, Simon Hackett, pictured with the company’s battery, is also one of its biggest investors. He believes there is an opportunity for Australian state governments to offer home battery storage incentives to consumers and to fund this incentive by repurposing existing, commit-ted government expenditure. This would involve inviting consumers to voluntarily trade in the residual life of their solar PV FIT in exchange for funding to buy a home battery energy storage system, both eliminating a long-term forward liability for state governments while initiating home energy storage demand in Australia.

SOLAR-PLUS-STORAGE ROLLOUTS IN AUSTRALASIA



ligent home energy use. The home’s solar generation, energy storage and consumption can be monitored from any web-enabled device.

Enphase’s hardware is software-defined, networked and monitored by a robust global platform with bi-directional communication capability. This has benefits at system level, for homeowners, fleet level, for installers, grid level, for utilities, and at a global level for the company.

Dunn says: “For example, solar PV despite all its potential has brought with it many challenges for the grid. Being an uncontrollable generation source, its output is intermittent and not 100% predictable. Storage holds the key to being able to level out so-lar’s sometimes sudden impact on grid voltages by acting as a reserve for ex-cess power.

“To help utilities manage grid volt-ages, it is essential that the storage as-sets on their grid are smart and offer bi-directional communication — what Enphase offers. This allows for a much more dynamic, adaptive management of grid conditions.”

Each Enphase AC Battery module provides 1.2kWh and because of its modular design, homeowners can choose to choose the right size their solar battery storage should they wish to add more Enphase battery storage in the future.

The system is AC-coupled, which makes it compatible with any solar PV system, and means there is no high voltage DC in the storage system mak-ing it much safer than DC-coupled batteries.

AC-coupled systems offer equivalent efficiency to DC-coupled systems with advantages in flexibility, reliability, and safety. They are also more incre-mentally scalable with much better scope to right-size the storage system and avoid over investing in extra ca-pacity that is not needed.

Around a 10-year payback in Aus-tralia and New Zealand is possible with Enphase’s home storage system based on the average increasing mar-ket rate for power. The return on in-vestment varies depending on various factors, including grid power prices, the amount of excess solar energy available to store, the level of night-time grid power usage in the home and so forth.

In New Zealand Sunverge has in-stalled 300 systems through its partner Auckland-based utility Vector Ltd. Sys-tems are 11.65kWh to 12kWh in size.

Vector did not have a solar pro-

gramme in place, which other utilities have had. “However, utility wanted to address the issues that adding more renewables causes the grid, such as ca-pacity constraint. So it decided to en-ter the solar market with a solar-plus-storage programme,” says Sunverge chief executive Ken Munson.

Customers have been able to buy the system at a discounted price from Vec-tor. Customers benefit from lower bills and reliability. Deploying the assets as a virtual power plant, using Sunverge’s software platform, enables the utility to manage the grid without making

big investments otherwise needed.AGL is one of Australia’s largest

utilities and the largest owner, opera-tor and developer of renewable energy generation plants in the country. With every residential solar PV installation, the energy firm provides a monitoring device that analyses customers’ so-lar power system production perfor-mance and home energy consumption so they can see how much electricity they are saving.

Earlier this year AGL completed a demand response trial with 68 resi-dential customers in Victoria, with

Nathan Dunn, Enphase Asia-Pacific: “Australia’s been our strongest market to date.”

Enphase’s AC battery system: modifiable by smart phone

“Our customers were keen to be part of a potential solution. Consumers are looking for greater control of their energy consumption and management. Storage can help them achieve this” — Jason Clark, AGL



network provider United Energy. Only a few of the homes had batteries in-stalled integrated with their existing solar PV systems.

The 11.65kWh systems, made by US company Sunverge, were deployed to six individual customers, and con-trolled to deliver energy in aggregate using Sunverge’s virtual power plant software.

AGL’s general manager for dis-tributed energy services Jason Clark says: “It was important to have stor-age in the trial as we see demand re-sponse being delivered by a fleet of devices, including controllable loads and energy storage. Therefore this trial was devised to replicate what we believe a future state of the industry may look like.”

AGL is planning further trials, build-ing on the knowledge gained from this one and including other elements. The energy retailer wants to increase the size of these trials to be able to dem-onstrate deliverable outcomes and services to the market and network, with participating customers sharing the benefits.

Two key features of the Sunverge platform that attracted AGL is the software’s ability to integrate multiple hardware technologies within a single platform and a complex rules engine developed specifically for energy stor-age systems. “This enables us to con-trol a fleet of batteries for multiple stakeholders,” says Clark.

In the trial AGL’s customers were happy with the storage devices and implementation as well as the delivery. “Our customers were keen to be part of a potential solution. Consumers are looking for greater control of their en-ergy consumption and management. Storage can help them achieve this,” says Clark.

Earlier in 2016, AGL announced an AS$20 million ($15 million) stake in Sunverge.

As well as Sunverge’s battery stor-age systems, AGL also offers its retail electricity customers a smaller system from AUO, as part of a range that can meet the self-consumption needs of different households, large and small. The energy retailer offers upfront sale and financing options up to five years.

However, energy storage is still an early adopters’ market and will be for a while yet even though there is big in-terest in the technology. Clark says the company’s online AGL Power Advan-tage Club, where people can join and be updated on new information about storage and other distributed energy

solutions and trends, has a growing base of over 5,000 subscribers.

AGL has also developed a mobile app that customers can use to moni-tor and manage all their energy con-sumption, including gas and electricity usage, as well as solar PV system and battery storage performance, from their smart phone.

The Australian Energy Market Op-erator has forecast the uptake of in-tegrated PV and electricity storage systems would “start slowly”, picking up especially after 2020 and reaching about 3.8GW of installed capacity

within 20 years. Clark says: “Storage will play a

key role in the future of the Austral-ian energy market. Because we have such a high level of solar penetra-tion, many customers are looking to storage to enable them to use more of their solar output. As battery pric-es continue to decline storage will continue to seem a more attractive proposition. This dynamic, coupled with such a competitive retail market will result in storage moving past the early adoption stage in the next two to five years.”

According to Morgan Stanley, retrofits including batteries will be another factor in greater solar+storage penetration

2,000

1,800

1,600

1,400

1,200

1,000

800

600

400

200

02015e

n High n Base n Low

2017e 2018e 2019e 2020e

Take-up estimate scenarios (‘000s)Sources: Morgan Stanley Research. Base Case Shown in Blue

www.ees-events.com

STORAGE AT THE HEART OF NEXT GENERATION SOLAR

AWARD 2016: HONORING THE GREAT AND THE GOOD

SOLAR+STORAGE TO TAKE NORTH AMERICA BY STORM

RIDE THE BOOM: JOB OPPORTUNITIES AWAIT

CHARGING THE FUTURE

WELCOME TO THE NEW ENERGY WORLD

www.ees-events.comENERGY STORAGE JOURNAL | Summer 201632

ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE (EES) | EUROPE

“ „An exhibition space of 17.500 sqm and around 270 exhibitors are expected at ees Europe 2017

ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITORS AT EES EUROPE

Quick facts: 2017 exhibition data

Dates May 31-June 2, 2017

Hours 9:00am-6:00pm | Wednesday, May 31, 2017 9:00am-6:00pm | Thursday, June 1, 2017 9:00am-5:00pm | Friday, June 2, 2017

Venue Messe München 81823 Munich, Germany Hall B1-B2

Exhibitors 430 (expected, including energy storage exhibitors of Intersolar Europe)

Visitors 40,000+ (expected total number of ees and Intersolar Europe visitors)

Innovative storage solutions form the basis of a sustainable power supply from rene-wable sources. They decouple power genera-tion from consumption and make an intelli-gent and sustainable energy system possible – from the stabilization of power grids th-rough to e-mobility. From May 31–June 2, 2017, ees Europe, the continent’s largest and most visited exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems, will create a profes-sional platform for manufacturers, suppliers,

distributors, research institutes and users of stationary and mobile storage solutions for electrical energy – along the entire value chain of battery and energy storage techno-logies.

ees Europe grows by 40% Even after the great success of 2015, ees Europe recorded substantial growth again in 2016. The exhibition space expanded by more than 40% to over 12,000 sqm, and

212 battery and energy storage manufac-turers showcased their products and services at ees Europe – an increase of 35% from the previous year. Together with Intersolar Europe, which takes place at the same time, an impressive 369 of the total 1,077 exhi-bitors presented innovative energy storage services, products and solutions. And the success story continues: An exhibition space of 17.500 sqm and around 270 exhibitors are expected at ees Europe 2017.

Charging the future

EXHIBITION SPACE AT EES EUROPE (GROSS, IN SQM)

ees Europe — Europe‘s largest exhibition for one of the fastest-growing markets

www.ees-events.com ENERGY STORAGE JOURNAL | Summer 2016 33


“ „it proved to be a must-attend event for those driving forward the energy storage industry

A fantastic atmosphere and perfect so-lar-weather: Together with the parallel event Intersolar Europe, ees Europe sent the market a positive signal. Even in the run up, both exhibitions were already seeing considerable success, with exhibition space booked out two months in advance.

The two exhibitions greeted over 44,000 visitors from 160 nations over 66,000 sqm. Again it proved to be a must-attend event for those driving forward the energy storage industry, smart renewable energy supply and sustainable mobility solutions.

Packed halls, excitement and a dynamic atmosphere: ees and Intersolar Europe 2016



Welcome to the new energy world

Intelligent networks are the next step

The worldwide energy market is undergoing a transformation, enabling increasing numbers of new players to move into the spotlight. Rather than large-scale, centralized nuclear and fossil fuel power stations that supply consumers with energy, in the future, the energy supply will be secured by decentralized renewable energy plants, storage systems and consumers as so-called prosumers.

In this decentralized landscape, concepts and technologies need to be developed to sensibly integrate clean energy into the grid. It is essential that energy supply and demand are flexibly coordinated, as renewable energy sources such as sun and

wind are not always available. In the future, intelligent power grids, known as smart grids, will control and monitor the generation, storage, distribution and consumption of electricity. To facilitate flexibility in balancing energy supply and demand, the

energy, heating and transportation sectors are becoming increasingly interconnected. Energy storage systems play an essential role in this respect, as they can provide positive or negative balancing power to assist in maintaining frequency stability.

www.ees-events.com ENERGY STORAGE JOURNAL | Summer 2016


35

Products and solutions for the new energy world at ees and Intersolar Europe

The energy storage and renewables industry surges forward

The restructuring of the energy system continues to progress around the world, and many countries are enjoying success on this front. In fact, on May 8, 2016, Germany was able to cover 87% of its energy needs with energy generated by renewable sources (see diagram). While this is a milestone for the energy transition, it represents a challenge

for grid operators. As old power plants are difficult to regulate, the availability of large amounts of renewable energy for a short time causes a surplus of energy in the grid. To overcome this challenge, power generation, storage and energy management must be more closely connected in the future. Smart technology plays a central role in this, as it

enables generation and consumption to be analyzed, optimized and controlled.

Numerous new digital services, products and solutions are currently being developed. They control the decentralized energy market of the future efficiently, flexibly and safely, and in doing so, optimally coordinate generation and consumption. With the renewable energy industry experiencing a wave of innovations, many companies are presenting the results of their intensive research and development.

Connecting players and achieving the highest possible degree of automatic analy-sis and optimization of energy systems and electricity storage is key. ees Europe together with Intersolar Europe forms the central plat-form which supports these changes and lays the groundwork for the global energy tran-sition. Both exhibitions pay homage to the new energy world by dedicating a special

thematic focus to smart renewable energy. In addition to highlighting technologies, challenges and international markets, the ac-companying program and the exhibition seg-ments of these two events showcase various aspects of this topic and feature presenta-tions and discussions of current approaches and solutions with exhibitors, experts and partners.

High share of renewables: Power generation and consumption in Germany


ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE (EES) | AWARD

Honouring the great and the good of energy storageThe winners of the ees AWARD 2016 were announced at ees Europe, Messe München on June 22. This year, Ferroamp Elektronik AB, LG Chem Ltd, and SMA Solar Technology AG received the highly coveted prize for the best technological innovations, the highest benefits for the industry, environment and society as well as the greatest economic viability of the solutions.

Once again, the formal ceremony highlighted the first day of Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems. This is the third year of the award ceremony.

At the end of the exhibition day,

representatives of the 10 ees AWARD finalists were eagerly awaiting the announcement of the winners at the Innovation and Application Forum. A further 10 companies were nominated for the Intersolar AWARD 2016 and another 13 in the category of “Outstanding Solar Projects”.

New record attendance for 2016This year, 149 exhibiting companies from all Intersolar and ees exhibitions worldwide applied for the Intersolar and ees AWARD — a new record.

One of the conditions for the competing companies was to submit products, projects

ees AWARD and Intersolar AWARD Winners 2016. Source: Solar Promotion


and services which were either undergoing testing, already entered the market or showed important developments for existing technologies.

Trends in innovation The independent jury particularly praised the high number of systems, which feature high economic viability, enable multiple possibilities for applications and focus on durability, efficiency and security. Other trends in the submissions came to the fore, for example the use of JH3 lithium ion cells for domestic storage systems and the growing significance of wireless interfaces in the energy storage industry, such as smart meters and control options using apps. Also of note was a move to combine renewable energy technologies to guarantee supply safety in different weather conditions.

The EnergyHub system Swedish manufacturer Ferroamp Elektronik AB received the ees AWARD 2016 for its EnergyHub system. Combining high flexibility with low-loss photovoltaic storage, the system manages to bring a local DC nanogrid, an up-to-date circuitry and a smart meter function together. In this connection, a bidirectional 3-phase inverter with internal phase compensation and distributed DC-DC converters for diverse PV strings, batteries and DC consumers builds the basic set-up.

The jury members emphasized the high efficiency level made possible by the DC coupling and scalability from kW to MW range.”We are excited about the ees award. The exposure during the Intersolar and ees exhibition gave us new contacts with potential partners. They especially seem to appreciate that the EnergyHub system allow them to offer new services with a more scalable and flexible PV solar and storage solution,” said Mats Kalström, VP Sales & Marketing at Ferroamp Elektronik.

The Residential Energy Storage Unit (RESU)Korean manufacturer LG Chem Ltd was able to convince the jury with its innovative Residential Energy Storage Unit (RESU),

using lithium-ion batteries with advanced JH3 cell technology. The capacity, energy density, durability and security of RESU were especially mentioned by the jury.

The advantages of the system are the extremely high energy density in the low voltage range, the compatibility with many inverters and the easy applicability for example in regards to installations and software.

“It is a great honor for LG Chem to receive the ees AWARD 2016 and would like to thank both the jury and organizers,“ said Santiago Senn, Director Energy Storage System at LG Chem Europe afterwards.

“Right after Intersolar, we launched the sales of our new RESU product line. The feedback about its compactness, technical performance and pricing level is overwhelmingly positive. We are very happy to change the energy and the lives of our customers.”

The Sunny Boy Storage 2.5SMA Solar Technology AG was happy to win two prizes at the AWARD ceremony: In addition to the Intersolar AWARD in the category “Outstanding Solar Projects”, honoring a photovoltaic diesel hybrid system of SMA Sunbelt Energy GmbH on the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius, SMA also received the ees AWARD for the Sunny Boy

Storage 2.5 battery inverter. It was produced for the demand of private

households, as this product can be easily and cost-effectively integrated into new and existing PV systems. Therefore SMA offers — as the only provider on the market — an AC-coupled system for high-voltage batteries to connect with the inverter.

“We are very happy to receive this award. The Sunny Boy Storage inverter combines cost-effectiveness as it uses standard PV technology with the maximum flexibility of an AC-coupled battery inverter for high-voltage batteries. It makes it easy to install storage systems into existing or new PV plants,“ said Thomas Thierschmidt, Product Manager, Business Unit Residential at SMA Solar Technology AG after the ceremony.

“The Sunny Boy Storage inverters is thus a logical addition to a wide variety of self-consumption tariffs as well as a genuine alternative to feed-in tariffs that are about to expire or zero export requirements.“n

Honouring the great and the good of energy storage

For ees AWARD 2017 the submission period for entries starts in January and lasts until the end of March 2017. Intersolar and ees exhibitors can register for the events throughout year. AWARD finalists are going to be announced in April 2017. The formal announcement of AWARD Winners will be on May 31, 2017 at ees and Intersolar Europe in Munich.

www.ees-events.com/en/ees-award.html

Time to make your submission! AWARD registration 2017

“ „This year, 149 exhibiting companies from all Intersolar and ees exhibitions worldwide applied for the Intersolar and ees AWARD — a new record.

ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE (EES) | AWARD

EES AWARD WINNERS 2016


ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE (EES) | POWERFUL PIONEERS

The worldwide PV boom: solar to drive energy storage

By the end of 2015, a total of 229GW of solar capacity had been installed worldwide — a 45-fold increase over the past 10 years with some 50GW coming in 2015 alone.

This was just one of the findings of Solar-Power Europe’s market analysis report Global Market Outlook for Solar Power 2016-2020, whose publication was launched at Intersolar Europe 2016.

Japan, the USA and China were again among the leading solar markets in 2015; China and Japan were responsible for 50% of the newly installed capacity around the world.

The European solar market also grew in 2015: 8.2GW were new installations, up 15% from the previous year. Europe has also bec-ome the first region in the world to cross the 100GW mark for total installed photovoltaic capacity.

Newly installed capacity this year is forecast to reach around 62GW. The largest markets in 2016 will again be China, the US and Japan but the US is set to overtake Japan as the sec-

ond largest solar market behind China. Solar energy is well on its way to becoming

the most inexpensive form of energy genera-tion — in many parts of the world, electricity production costs for solar energy from PV are already as low as 5 to 7 euro cents per kilo-watt hour.

Because of this PV as well as wind power will play a central role in the energy supply of the future. Storage systems are the backbone of this new energy world, as they guarantee supply safety, and are therefore an important catalyst for the global energy transition.

Consequently, Intersolar and ees exhibitions are rising in popularity across the world.

Celebrating 25 yearsIn 2016, the organizers of ees and Intersolar celebrated the anniversary of an idea — for the past quarter of a century they have been powerful advocates for solar energy. And en route have built Intersolar up to be the world’s leading exhibition series for the solar industry.

Since its inception in 1991, Intersolar has been bringing people, markets and techno-logies together and the exhibition has grown continually on an international level as have the international photovoltaics and storage system markets.

In 2014, the “electrical energy storage” (ees) exhibition and conference was intro-duced in parallel to Intersolar Europe in Munich, Germany.

With ees, a professional platform for the ener-gy storage industry was created to showcase companies’ achievements and innovations, to help companies and drivers of the global growth markets to develop and distribute technologies and business models, and to esta-blish connections with new, emerging markets.

The ees exhibitions and accompanying con-ferences focus on storage solutions for rene-wable energy, from domestic and commercial applications to large-scale storage systems for stabilizing the grids.

The spotlight is also shined on topics such as energy management, electric transportati-on and uninterruptible power supply, better known as UPS.

With ees Europe in Munich, ees North Ame-rica in San Francisco and ees India in Mumbai, ees events are now found on three continents. ees Europe is the continent’s largest and most attended exhibition for the battery and energy storage industry.

By running concurrently, ees and Intersolar events create a powerful synergy. Topics affec-ting the future of the industry, such as energy generation, storage and the systems integra-tion of renewable energy, are discussed under one roof at Intersolar and ees.

Here, the traditional energy industry is uni-ted with the renewable energy sector and the development of solutions that will enable the power, heat and transport sectors to suc-cessfully switch to green energy is actively supported.

Solar Promotion GmbH and Freiburg Wirt-schaft Touristik und Messe GmbH & Co. KG (FWTM) are more than traditional exhibition organizers. Their employees bring expertise from their industries and are driving the de-centralized, renewable energy transition for-ward. Charging the future! n

Global Solar PV Cumulative Market Scenario until 2020


ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE (EES) | NORTH AMERICA

Next generation solar — energy storage has to be part of the mixAs solar penetration increases in the US, the value new projects can extract from the grid will fall. This put further pressure on the cost of solar to remain competitive. Solar plus storage is the answer says Ravi Manghani, director of energy storage at GTM Research.

The US market for solar PV has grown expo-nentially in recent years — going from a few MWs of installations in 2000 to over 7GWs in 2015. In February this year the millionth solar installation came online in the US.

For the first time, solar PV accounted for more generation capacity to come online than natural gas in 2015.

While this is a great landmark, solar has only recently been given a spot at the grown-ups table.

The key reason for this delayed recognition for solar is apparent if we step back and look at solar generation as a percentage of total electricity generation in the US, that number is still under one percent in 2015.

Getting solar to the next order of magnitu-de — a lofty but attainable goal — involves all the factors that have brought solar this far, but more importantly it needs newer business models, integration of peripheral, complementary technologies, and market structures that uncap the real value of solar.

As it stands today, the solar industry in the US is primarily focused on the near-term, and for good reason. Every quarter brings a new spate of business models, regulatory skirmis-hes, financing innovations (or woes), and overall change.

The solar market moves fast, and there is little time to invest resources beyond the next few years.

The near-term focus of the industry is dri-ven by a few market and policy drivers, na-mely, the extension of renewable tax credits, continuous improvement in technology and business models across the system value chain with plenty of headroom for cost re-ductions, and the potential role of the Paris Agreement in decarbonizing the US economy (with or without the Clean Power Plan).

This anticipated and unprecedented growth in solar PV adoption will have its share of downsides. And in addressing the-se downsides lies yet another opportunity for the solar industry to frame solar not as a price-taking and non-dispatchable rene-wable energy resource, but rather as a smart,

Ravi Manghani at ees North America. Source: Solar Promotion

U.S. Annual Solar-Paired-Storage Deployments, 2011-2021E (MW)

U.S. Solar-Paired-Storage Deployments to Cross 1GW by 2021, a 70X Growth from 2015. Source: GTM Research



value-adding and dispatchable resource that leads to decarbonization and modernization of the US electricity grid.

Solar Promotion and CALSEIA, in part-nership with GTM Research, have published a white paper on the future of solar called “Smart Solar: Integration of Storage and Energy Management.”

Theories of valueGrowing solar and wind penetration has been argued to present challenges to exis-ting utility business models and maintenance of a reliably balanced grid. Solar, in particular due to its distributed nature, continues to face several net energy metering (NEM) batt-les from state regulators and electric utilities.

Over the past few years, NEM has been at the center of regulatory disputes across more than 20 states. Utilities often argue that NEM customers do not pay their fair share of grid costs, resulting in a cost shift to non-solar ratepayers.

Solar advocates counter that distributed solar has value to the grid for which utilities

are not fully accounting, such as capacity value, transmission and distribution (T&D) deferral, and T&D line loss savings. This has a significant impact on the economics of resi-dential solar, in particular.

A parallel, but more widely agreeable theo-ry can be applied to value of solar to the grid. As solar grows as a share of the total gene-ration mix, its value to the electricity system (and thus the revenue it can generate) be-gins to decrease.

Solar is a zero marginal-cost resource, which means it will bid into wholesale power markets at zero dollars and take any price it can receive. Add an increasing amount of solar to that market and prices decline over-all, leading to lower revenue for each solar project.

Since solar is non-dispatchable, project operators cannot strategically sell into the market at higher priced times — solar is purely a price taker (unless paired with ener-gy storage, as discussed later). In fact, the more solar is placed on the grid, the less the grid needs power when solar production is highest — causing solar’s value to decline as its penetration increases.

Researchers first identified the value defla-tion effect in the 1990s, and it has continu-ed to inform planning studies for increased renewable penetration (for example by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory). But over the past two years, a number of high profile studies using wholesale price predic-tions as proxies for the future value of solar have quantified a similar effect with increa-sing precision in disparate geographical con-texts.

The fundamental insight that the value of solar declines as solar’s penetration on the grid increases holds true for distributed solar as well as large scale solar.

This effect can be masked by the rate st-ructure — for example, net energy mete-ring that compensates distributed solar at a constant retail electricity rate will not reflect solar’s value deflation.

But one study of residential systems in California found that under a rate structure that compensates customers who own dis-tributed solar for power exports to the grid at time-varying wholesale prices, customers lose 35% of their bill savings from solar at 15% solar penetration on the grid, compa-red with zero solar penetration and net ener-gy metering.

Put another way, grid parity for solar is a moving target.

As solar penetration increases, the value new projects can extract from the grid may fall, which will put further downward pres-sure on the cost of solar in order to remain competitive.

We do expect solar costs to continue fal-ling through 2030, but at a far more tem-pered rate than we have seen over the past decade (for example, our forecast calls for just 11% reduction in utility-scale system costs from 2020-2030). Will it be enough, or will economic competitiveness escape solar’s grasp as the market grows?

Enter smart solarOne consistent theme in the value of solar and prospects of solar becoming mainstre-am discussions is linked to dispatchability of solar (or lack thereof). This non-dispatchable nature of solar has, and is, projected to give rise to many curvy problems, including but not limited to the duck curve in California, and Loch Ness “Nessie” curve in Hawaii. And yet, these are also the states that have put forward aggressive renewable goals — 50% by 2030 for California, and 100% by 2045 for Hawaii.

As a result, the solar industry will have to cope with changing net energy metering re-gimes and solar value deflation, in addition to other ongoing industry challenges. Various viable and not-so-viable solutions have been proposed and tested that broadly fall under three categories:•Market design (expand the grid, imple-

ment rate design solutions);

Ultimately, the ascent of solar in the US to the next order of magnitude

depends on the industry’s ability to successfully transform solar into a

reliable and dispatchable grid resource.

The US crossed one million solar PV installations in the first quarter of this

year, but the path to get to 10 million installations, undoubtedly involves integrating solar with energy storage, energy management, and other

software solutions that are deployed to create a cleaner, resilient and responsive grid.

The road upwards

“ „The more solar is placed on the grid, the less the grid needs power when solar production is highest — causing solar’s value to decline as its penetration increases.



•Demand management (manage load toalign with solar output); and,

•Energystorage(shiftandfirmoutput).From a behind-the-meter end-customer’s

point of view, dispatchability of solar can be achieved primarily through two technologies — load management and energy storage. Both these technologies have been en-abled by distinct advancements in hardware (advanced metering, batteries) and software (customer analytics).

A confluence of these technology advance-ments along with appropriate market structures that value services offered by solar-plus-storage, or solar-plus-energy-ma-nagement are the stepping stones for taking solar to the next level and enhancing solar as a smart renewable energy resource.

Storage enables flexibilityEnergy storage has enormous promise on its own, but it can also serve the needs of a gro-wing solar market.

First, energy storage can help distributed solar owners navigate changing rate struc-tures by maximizing self-consumption (and decreasing potentially lower-valued grid exports), optimizing consumption versus time-of-use rates and mitigating demand charges.

Second, at the system level, energy storage may be the factor that eases solar’s value de-flation effect before it truly takes hold.

Pairing energy storage with renewables can enhance the value of the underlying rene-wable asset. As renewable penetration on the grid increases, storage can be used to facilita-te renewables smoothing through ramp rate control and firming instantaneous output.

In remote islands such as Hawaii and Puerto Rico, these are important technical requirements to enable reliable grid opera-tions while onboarding more renewables on the grid. Even in markets that are not grid constrained, storage addition can allow con-sistent use of firmer renewable capacity to meet capacity and electricity needs. SolarCi-ty’s recent foray into utility-scale solar plus storage-based Capacity Services offering aims to tap into these value streams created by firm solar output.

If we shift to the viewpoint of the residenti-al and non-residential end-customers, stora-ge already has and will likely continue to play a growing role, as several utilities and public utility commissions continue to evolve rate

design structures for solar customers. In states like Hawaii and Nevada, with less

than retail rate net energy metering (NEM) values, there are electricity bill saving oppor-tunities by increased self-consumption.

Though California has not significantly re-duced the solar export value for future solar customers in its recent NEM 2.0 decision, the mandatory requirement to transition to TOU tariff creates an incentive to time shift excess solar to evening peak hours. On top of these benefits to different sides of the meter, stora-ge improves the overall system resiliency in instance of power outages, and improves grid reliability.

Energy storage is not the only resource that can help mitigate value deflation and manage evolving rates. While energy storage serves its purpose on the supply side of the equation, load control can provide additional support on the demand side.

As more devices in the building become controllable, smart and networked, custo-mers and services providers will gain the abi-lity to shift load away from traditional peak periods and further toward periods of higher solar production. Rocky Mountain Institute calls this “demand flexibility” or “flexiwatts” and has estimated that residential flexibility

alone can reduce grid costs by $13 billion per year.

In recent months, several solar companies have introduced home energy management programs and systems, while many others have established partnerships with energy management companies. Companies such as Enphase Energy and SolarCity have in-house energy management systems targeting re-sidential and non-residential customers. SunPower on the other hand, has inked a deal with EnerNOC and invested in Tendril to enhance its energy management software offerings and capabilities.

Solar can play a vital role in new grid edge market structures

Today, behind-the-meter solar projects es-sentially receive a single value stream — the reduction of a customer’s bill via a combi-nation of self-consumption of solar power

Renewables plus storage benefits across the grid. Source: GTM Research

“ „When paired with energy storage, load control and other distributed energy resources (DERs), solar can be a crucial component of tomorrow’s grid-responsive building.



and net energy metering for power fed back into the grid. But solar ultimately has grea-ter value — specifically, value to the grid. Especially when paired with energy storage, load control and other distributed energy re-sources (DERs), solar can be a crucial compo-nent of tomorrow’s grid-responsive building.

This may sound futuristic and theoretical, but it is beginning to happen today.

The technology for DER aggregation is quickly arriving, as are the associated bu-siness models. And most importantly, the ground rules are being set by regulators and grid operators.

In California, the ISO has approved a proposal for distributed resources (under the name Distributed Energy Resource Providers, or DERPs) to bid into ISO markets under cer-tain conditions. In New York, the Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) initiative seeks to open a host of grid service value streams to distributed resources under the guidance of the state ISO and the newly formed Distribu-tion System Platform (DSP) providers.

Regulatory overhauls such as that being proposed in New York under the REV initia-tive had grander ambitions. In the ideal REV future, customer premises become grid-re-

sponsive assets, participating in a variety of new markets that reflect the true and full value of the customer’s costs and her servi-ces to the system.

This customer of the future has all the tra-ppings of the smart home — various con-trollable devices connected to high energy usage appliances, all operating in concert th-rough a simple interface. But in order to ma-ximize value, the customer needs some form of generation, and solar is often the best bet.

For the solar industry today, initiatives such as REV in New York or utility Distribution Resource Plans (DRPs) in California, present small windows into the future of customer-sited solar. That future is hard to predict, but it almost certainly presents an array of new opportunities to extract value for customers and the grid from on-site solar. n

The digitization of the home: the customer experience is everything. Source: GTM Research

Utility Programs• DemandResponse• CustomerEngagement• EnergyEfficiency• SmartThermostat

Portable Devices• Portal• OnlineApplication

Smart Thermostat,Gateway and Display

HVAC with DirectLoad Controller

Solar PV and Micro-Inverter

Energy Storage

EV Charger

Electric Vehicle

Backup Generator

Smart Meterand Reader

Security Devices Smart Appliances,Devices and Plugs

Lighting Control

EntertainmentSystem

Router andBroadband Services

“ „The solar industry in the US is primarily focused on the near-term, and for good reason. Every quarter brings a new spate of business models, regulatory skirmishes, financing innovations (or woes), and overall change.



Solar + Storage = More jobsExtracts from a Solar Foundation discussion paperThe boom in the US energy storage market is going to be reflected in a host of work oppor-tunities, according to a discussion paper by the Solar Foundation.

The reasoning is simple, the expected boom in energy storage and particularly in be-hind-the-meter storage.

The numbers bear this out. Last year, the US energy storage market deployed 221MW — up from 65MW in 2014. Of the 221MW — 187MW were in front of the meter (utility-s-cale), while the balance was behind the meter.

By 2021 the market is forecast to be around nine times larger than the 2015 market. The greatest growth is expected to occur in the behind the meter (residential & non-residential) segment, growing from 15% to 49% with residential demand expe-riencing the fastest growth.

Key drivers of market growth include many of the same factors that have driven PV growth: declining costs, comparably high electricity rates, policies, and incentives. Batte-ry prices have declined 80% over the past six years and total costs are projected to decline more than 40% over the next five years.

As storage costs decline, the value of the solar + storage package increases. The packa-ge cost is higher than just solar but of greater value – so storage will likely increase PV ins-tallation and related employment.

Furthermore, storage makes larger systems more economical. Many residential customers installed smaller, 2kW-3kW systems so as to not exceed the total annual load for their net metering credit. With storage, it becomes ec-onomical to enlarge their system which would result in more jobs.

The fastest growing storage market seg-ment – residential – will likely be driven by solar deployment if states restrict net mete-ring, increase residential time-of-use rates (or demand charges), or encourage virtual power plants as is being done in New York.

Conversely, it is likely that more states will be subject to time-of-use rates; California has already enacted them for residential custo-mers. Virtual power plants have policy and economic appeal and, thus, should experience significant growth. Distributed generation can

be aggregated to optimize both customer and utility needs, providing a return on investment for all parties. With solar coupled with storage, utilities are starting to view distributed gene-ration as a business opportunity. n

Solar + storage related deployment jobs, 2021 (projected)

Sector Storage installation Storage induced Total jobs jobs PV jobs

Utility scale 122 245 367

Non-residential 600 1,200 1,800

Residential 8,305 16,609 24,914

Total 9,027 18,054 27,081

Source: The Solar Foundation, 2016

Storage deployment trends 2015-2021 (MW)

2015 2021

Front of the meter 187 1,061

Behind the meter 35 1,020

Total 221 2,081

Source: GTM Research/ESA, US Energy Storage Monitor, Q2 Review 2016

The job picture

The Solar Foundation looked at two major sources of jobs: 1) storage deployment or installation jobs and 2) storage induced PV installation jobs. The latter would result from the additional solar to be installed because of the added value of storage. In both cases, the jobs include associated installation support jobs, but exclude related manufacturing, sales, and distribution jobs.

Assuming expected strong growth in time-of-use rates and virtual power plants, solar + storage might represent nearly 40% of energy storage MW deployed in 2021. And like solar PV, employment will be more efficient for utility-scale developers than for smaller residential ones, resulting in a much greater amount of residential employment. The table below shows possible jobs created.



Solar+Storage poised to take North American market by stormThere was no doubt about it. But there was a buzz in the air when the doors of San Fran-cisco’s Moscone West exhibition hall opened this July 12.

The reason was simple. Solar plus storage was now one of the

hottest topics in the North American market. And evidence of this was the first stand-alo-ne ees North America event, co-located with Intersolar North America.

Dedicated to achieving a global sustain-able energy supply, ees North America con-nects suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electricity storage systems with solar companies from the US and beyond.

On the exhibition floor and in the nearby conference sessions, professionals learnt about what business models were proving successful, new technologies and how to make connections with new, emerging mar-kets.

Positive reports about the US solar-plus-storage market and the US solar market fueled visitor optimism over the industry’s future. According to GTM Research, the solar-plus-storage market in the US will be worth a $6 billion annual industry by 2021, and the country will install 14.5 gigawatts of

new PV capacity this year alone. (Currently, there are 29GW of solar installed.)

Together, the two events attracted more than 18,000 attendees from over 80 countries, who saw the latest products from more than 550 companies. The storage sec-tor enjoyed particularly strong growth, with an increase of more than 40% compared with 2015. 105 battery and energy storage exhibitors showcased their products at ees and Intersolar North America.

Robust foot traffic on the show floor and a packed exhibition space demonstrated the market interest in pairing energy storage with PV technologies. The two events are the most well attended solar and storage in-dustry shows in North America, and are the places where attendees can see innovations from solar and energy storage first.

“ees and Intersolar are meaningful an-nual events for both the solar and storage industries,” said Boris von Bormann, chief executive officer of sonnen, Inc and an exhi-bitor at ees North America.

“For sonnen, exhibiting and speaking at the show provides an ideal platform to showcase how our smart energy manage-ment products help residential and com-mercial customers take greater control of

their energy future. Additionally we see the true value in bringing together key thought leaders, potential partners and customers in one place for face-to-face conversations and opportunities to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.”

A report from GTM Research and a discussion paper from The Solar Foundati-on — both presented at ees North America — discussed the positive trends for the so-lar-plus-storage industry. The combined so-lar-plus-storage market could create 27,000 new jobs by 2021.

Additionally, as grid penetration of solar in-creases, energy storage technologies will bec-ome more important. Ravi Manghani, GTM’s director of energy storage, said there will be 1.2GW of solar paired with storage installed by 2021. In California alone, solar-plus-stora-ge deployments will reach almost 600MW—150 times the 2015 installation rate.

All market frameworks, including business architecture and the technology landscape, are looking for opportunities to collaborate with smart renewable energy technology, Manghani said, and the storage market is no different.

Visitors to the ees stage exhibition were able to see the companies commercializing



these technologies, both established in-dustry players and up-and-coming early and mid-stage companies. The Powerhouse Pavi-lion featured software, financing and ener-gy companies, and attracted enthusiastic crowds throughout the three-day exhibition.

This marked the first collaboration between ees North America organizers and California-based Powerhouse, the world’s first and only incubator and accelerator dedicated to solar.

Additionally, throughout the exhibition, visitors listened to presentations from exhi-biting companies during free sessions at the ees North America stage. These discussions

echoed conversations from the ees North America conference. Hundreds of attendees heard from energy storage executives on the technologies, policy and market trends sha-ping the industry in nine panel sessions.

Overall, visitors said they’d been well plea-sed with this the inaugural event, and exci-ted about what’s in store for the future. n

The next ees North America will take place between July 11-13, 2017 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Exhibitor applications for 2017 are available online: www.ees-northamerica.com

“ „In California alone, solar-plus-storage deployments will reach almost 600MW—150 times the 2015 installation rate

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION SERIES

FOR BATTERIES AND

ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS

INDIA’S LARGEST SOLAR

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

ENERGY STORAGE

INNOVATIONS

EUROPE’S LARGEST

EXHIBITION

FOR BATTERIES

AND ENERGY

STORAGE SYSTEMS

OCT 19–21, 2016MUMBAIINDIA

MAY 31–JUNE 2, 2017MUNICHGERMANY

NORTH AMERICA'S

ULTIMATE HOT

SPOT FOR ENERGY

STORAGE SOLUTIONS

JULY 11–13, 2017SAN FRANCISCOUSA

CHARGING THE FUTURE

www.ees-events.com

eesGlobal2016_ESJ_Magazin.qxp_Layout 1 04.08.16 11:44 Seite 16

ENERGY STORAGE FINANCE: GAUGING RISK


Power generation from renewable resources has increased its presence across the world’s energy grids in the past decade. Moreover the cost of this electricity is reaching — or has reached grid parity — in many coun-tries.

However, full dependence on renew-able energy sources is limited due to the unpredictable supply of natural resources. Large wind projects, for ex-ample, typically generate more energy at night when demand is low.

Energy storage is crucial to unlock-ing the full potential of renewable en-ergy as it helps to balance the natural intermittency in supply.

In the case of wind power, energy storage can play a key role in load levelling by storing low-cost electric-ity until demand, and, therefore prices increase during the day.

Without such storage, renewables are unlikely to account for a major-ity share of a country’s power genera-tion mix. This is particularly pertinent given leading estimates which predict that the world will need 150GW of battery storage if it is to double the share of renewable power generation by 2030.

Prompted by the declining price of battery storage technology, the need for greater energy security and re-lief for aging electricity networks, a growing number of governments are starting to show enthusiasm in energy storage.

Recent figures from the UK Na-tional Infrastructure Commission, for example, estimate that the coun-try could save £8 billion ($11 billion) per year through the incorporation of smart power with a mix of intercon-

nection, energy storage, and demand flexibility.

A number of key government policy initiatives designed to encourage the uptake of storage are coming into play all over the world. For instance, in California legislation stipulates that investor-owned utilities must procure

1.3GW of energy storage by 2020 — coinciding with the state’s target for achieving 33% of power from renew-ables.

Elsewhere, Puerto Rico was one of the first jurisdictions to require that renewable energy projects include storage as a means of short-term load

In most project finance cases, when looking at a project’s technology track record, we would expect to assess it as commercially proven because we would expect most projects to use off-the-shelf technology. However, that type of technology is not yet the norm for energy storage projects.

Risk assessment — the key to making energy storage commercially viable

Energy storage technology — seen by many as the final piece in the global energy transition puzzle — requires significant financing. Attracting investment, depends largely on understanding and quantifying the associated risks, says Michael Wilkins from credit risk ratings firm Standard & Poor’s.

ANNOUNCED UTILITY-SCALE GLOBAL ENERGY STORAGE PROJECTS*

450

400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

(Megawatts)

*Excluding pumped hydro. Source: United Nations Energy Programme

Copyright © 2016 by Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC. All rights reserved.

2011

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

2012

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

2013

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

2014

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

2015

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4



balancing. Policies that require the implementation of energy storage alongside renewable energy are likely to become the norm as they ensure that renewable energy projects do not add to the current strain on networks through intermittency.

Recent mergers and acquisitions point to this structural shift in global energy systems.

Earlier this year, energy giant, Total SA approved a $1.1 billion takeover of Saft Groupe, a producer of energy storage systems. The move represent-ed the biggest acquisition of an energy storage provider to date.

At the same time, many new and innovative technologies are emerging causing the energy storage market to expand.

These developments are widely seen as following a similar trajectory to so-lar and wind power projects in their need for both government and private sector financing.

Much like renewable energy pro-jects, energy storage presents high up-front costs and a fairly long payback period.

However, unlike renewable tech-nologies, which primarily rely on pre-

dictable and fixed structures financed through debt, equity or PPA (power purchase agreements), energy storage has the potential for multiple-use ap-plications, enabling various revenue streams, and potentially shortening payback periods.

Energy storage offers a world of op-portunities for investors; it also pre-sents significant challenges.

Although the costs associated with energy storage technology are declin-ing rapidly, they are still relatively high.

Moreover, energy storage projects have implicit risks. The associated financial and technical implications need to be identified and assessed. For energy storage projects to become commercially viable, investors must be satisfied that the systems they are investing in are able to store and de-liver the quantity of energy required at any given time — and at the right price to ensure a satisfactory level of return.

At S&P Global Ratings, six main factors contribute to our view of a project’s credit risk profile: planning, construction, operations, resources, counterparties, and the market.

Highlighted below are some of the

most important considerations inves-tors should take into account when assessing energy storage projects:

Planning riskProject planning risk is relatively low down on our agenda for energy stor-age compared with that in renewable energy assets. This is because storage modules are typically smaller than wind turbines or solar panels, often able to fit into standard shipping con-tainers, and are therefore unlikely to face similar opposition to their aes-thetics and implementation.

Construction riskIn general, storage projects, such as battery modular units, are classified as simple building tasks that require minimal construction on site. Con-struction risk is therefore relatively low. However, risk does emerge when interfacing such assets with other pro-jects, such as solar or wind, because there is limited practical experience of this in the market.

This is why one key credit factor that contributes to construction risk is technology.

Operations riskWhen we assess a project’s opera-tions phase stand-alone credit profile (SACP), we first determine its business risk profile, which we call the opera-tions-phase business assessment. The OPBA can be thought of as a measure of how risky a project’s operations are. It ranges from a scale of 1 (low-est risk) to 12 (highest). To arrive at the OBPA value, we assess market and performance risks, both key factors.

Asset class operations stabilityOur assessment of asset class opera-tions stability indicates the risk that a project’s cashflow will differ from expectations as a result of it being un-able to meet the services or products.

Energy storage on a large-scale re-

Battery storage projects, if used for generation purposes and supplied by a single variable renewable energy source, will face resource risk, which, in our opinion, is one of the biggest risks in renewable energy systems.

Etorage projects have implicit risks. The associated financial and technical implications need to be identi-fied and assessed. For projects to become commer-cially viable, investors must be satisfied the systems they are investing in can store and deliver the quantity of energy required at any given time — and at the right price to ensure a satisfactory level of return.

Grid connected energy storage projects (as of May 31, 2016)

Technology type Projects Projects (% of total) Power from rated entities (MW) Power from rated entities (% of total)

Electro-chemical 923 59.4 2,679 1.4

Pumped hydro 350 22.5 179,427 95.3

Thermal energy 203 13.1 3,615 1.9

Electro-mechanical 69 4.4 2,611 1.4

Hydrogen 9 0.6 60 0

Total 1,554 188,338

MW--Megawatts. Source: U.S. DOE Global Energy Storage Database.



quires highly sophisticated technol-ogy that encompasses complex elec-trical components and interlinkages between these components and some-times other infrastructure outside the project. Initially, it is likely we will as-sign asset class operations stability a high score (indicating higher risk) un-til a track record of operational stabil-ity is established.

Resource riskBattery storage projects, if used for generation purposes and supplied by a single variable renewable en-ergy source, will face resource risk, which, in our opinion, is one of the biggest risks in renewable energy sys-tems. This is mainly due to renewable power purchasing agreements which stipulate that suppliers are only paid for the volumes delivered.

Assessment of resource risk is aimed at determining whether the raw mate-rial will be available in the quantity and quality needed to meet produc-tion and performance expectations.

Market riskOur view of market risk reflects the extent to which a project is exposed to market changes. For example, in the case of energy storage projects our analysis of regulatory support and predictability, barriers to entry, delivery cost relative to peers’ and transmission access would help us determine whether a project is able to compete in the market with its competitors given general economic trends.

Counterparty riskReliance on third parties to make pay-ments or perform under a wide range of agreements — such as revenues, construction and equipment supply — is a common feature in project fi-nance. For energy storage projects, equipment counterparties, that deal with interconnection issues, in par-ticular will be a key focus of our as-sessment.

The relatively few players in the bat-tery storage industry, and equipment providers in particular, are not easily interchangeable.

Some larger players have entered the market recently, but many of the ad-vancements seem to be coming from smaller players, which may expose projects to their credit risk.

Technology performanceAssessment in this area predominant-ly focuses on the extent to which a

project may face operating challenges, based on the technology deployed. More specifically, the previous per-formance of the system, equipment, and material, as well as how its design addresses site-specific challenges are scrutinized.

In most project finance cases, when looking at a project’s technology track record, we would expect to assess it as commercially proven because we would expect most projects to use off-the-shelf technology.

However, that type of technology is not yet the norm for energy storage projects, given that the sector is rela-tively new and evolving rapidly.

Unless the storage technology has a proven track record, with large amounts of industry data demon-strating a good operating perfor-mance at a similar scale and under similar operating conditions, tech-nological performance is likely to be assessed as negative until more data is available.

It is without a doubt that energy storage is likely to become one of the most essential contributors to efforts to decarbonize the power sector. It is a rapidly evolving area showing encour-

aging rates of price decline, which is bringing it toward large-scale com-mercial viability.

Right now, the risks are abundant as the industry goes through the early stages of transition.

But these risks will reduce over the next few years as the technology be-comes a mainstream participant in the power sector.

LCOE COMPARISON INCLUDING ADDITIONAL STORAGE COST FOR H2 2015*

Michael Wilkins is managing director for infrastructure finance at S&P Global Ratings

Assessment of resource risk is aimed at determining whether the raw material will be available in the quan-tity and quality needed to meet production and per-formance expectations.

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

0

Japan U.K. U.S. Germany ChinaC

oal

Coa

l

Coa

l

Coa

l

Coa

l

CC

GT

CC

GT

CC

GT

CC

GT

CC

GT

OW

OW

OW

OW

OWPV

PV

PV

PV

PV

($ per MWH)

* Based on storage assets providing 50% of capacity and two hours of storage, with a $800/Kilowatt hour total installed cost and 1% operation and maintenance costs. LCOE: Levelized cost of electricity. MWH: Megawatt hour. CCGT: Combined cycle gas turbine. OW: Onshore wind. PV: Photovoltaic (solar): United Nations Environment Programme data.

Copyright © 2016 by Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC. All rights reserved

LCOE Additional Cost of Storage

Despite a proliferation of highly nuanced business models, utilities, solar-and-storage companies continue to fine-tune their approach to using energy storage as part of a virtual power plant, reports Sara Verbruggen.

Loading weight to take weight off the load

COVER STORY: VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS



In the US a variety of drivers, which vary by region or state, are responsible for the growing de-mand for solar-plus-storage.

In Hawaii, where its island grids are straining under the pressure that peak generation from renewables — mainly rooftop solar — exerts, consumers face some of the highest energy costs, meaning an investment in a solar-plus-storage system can pay for itself with-in 6-1/2 years.

However, back-up is emerging as a key selling point across many parts of the US. In states such as Utah and South Dakota, back-up goes hand in hand with customers wanting more energy independence.

In New York, a recently announced pilot led by Con Edison intends to find out what residential electricity customers are prepared to pay for re-siliency.

Unlike Germany, the largest resi-dential solar-plus-storage market by installed capacity and demand, where the technology might achieve payback in 10 years — that’s with an incen-tive — in the US the conversation has always been about monetizing solar-plus-storage.

That requires joined-up thinking among utilities, technology providers, regulators and the buy-in, of course, from energy customers.

To monetize solar-plus-storage a battery must cater to multiple parties, each of which derive a saving or a rev-

enue stream from the asset. First the battery’s primary applica-

tion must be for the customer’s ben-efit, such as back-up and energy bill savings, by increasing solar consump-tion. The remaining capacity of the individual storage unit can also be harnessed, along with other units, to provide grid balancing.

Eventually, the grid as a whole is expected to benefit from distributed storage on the tips of the network because growth in renewable energy, like rooftop solar, is decoupled from the need to make investments in ex-panding the grid.

But an odd benefit all the same.This requires utilities working with

technology providers to see how dis-tributed solar-plus-storage can be deployed as virtual power plants on their networks, in doing so, extend-ing the potential for rooftop solar PV uptake.

The Molokai solutionOn the Hawaiian island of Molokai, the end of net metering has paved the way for solar-plus-storage. But the grid is unable to connect any of the tail-end of net-metering customers.

So the utility Hawaiian Electric Companies (HECO) is working with energy storage and software devel-oper E-Gear. E-Gear was set up by Chris DeBone and Steve Godmere, the founders of solar installer Hawaii En-ergy Connection.


An E-Gear energy storage system installed in Hawaii, where the company is working with HECO on a small virtual power plant pilot on the island of Molokai, using storage to enable further integration of the remaining rooftop solar PV systems under the net metering programme which has now come to an end.



E-Gear’s offering consists of a hard-ware and software platform that enables self-consumption for the resi-dential electricity customer but which connects individual systems in a net-work and makes them act as a single virtual power plant that the utility can control and manage.

“How does energy storage compare with solar PV? In 2016, you have to be fast, nimble and quick to market. This is a long way from dumb rooftop solar PV systems,” says DeBone.

On Hawaii some solar installers have branched out into installing bat-teries and solar, systems that can en-able consumers to virtually go off-grid by taking solar and pumping it into batteries — DC-coupling.

“What’s left is scraps for the utilities, when consumers start taking loads off the grid. This grid defection is not the way to go. What consumers want is lower bills and security of supply. They shouldn’t have to go virtually off-grid to achieve this,” DeBone says.

E-Gear has developed a proprietary energy management controller — a

circuit board with software embedded in it that interfaces with cloudware. Every system installed is intercon-nected in the cloud. The company has sourced an AC battery from Eguana Technologies in Canada, which com-prises Eguana’s bidirectional inverter connected to a lithium ion battery module from LG Chem.

However, the energy management control and software developed by E-Gear is hardware agnostic.

Software toolsThe software tools, including those for aggregation, which E-Gear has de-veloped, enable the consumer to have functions such as self-consumption and back-up.

But the tools also allow a party such as an installer, an aggregator or a util-ity to manage fleets, which collectively can be deployed as virtual power plants. The software is open platform/protocol — Sunspec — so that it can be overlaid over different inverter hardware makes.

In the pilot on Molokai, HECO is

buying 10 of E-Gear’s energy storage systems, which will interface directly with the utility’s own grid software.

“The problem faced on Molokai is that renewables penetration has reached such high levels no new roof-top solar can be added as it will create system level problems.

“This is because large amounts of intermittent solar generation are now causing frequency and contingency issues on the island. The existing fos-sil fuel generators are not able to idle down far enough on some peak solar days,” says DeBone.

When California Independent Sys-tem Operator (CAISO) presented its now-notorious duck curve chart, it was based on a prediction into how the grid would look with increasing amounts of solar capacity connected, becoming more acute towards the end of this decade.

More solar means greater reliance on base load power generation. On some of Hawaii’s grids the duck curve has already come home to roost and utilities are turning to solar integrated

CAISO’s duck curve chart shows the amount of dispatchable resources that have to come online as more and more solar is connected to the grid, until 2020.

As the evening begins in California, generation output from solar panels recedes, occurring when consumers returning home from work turn on appliances and switch lights on, which drives up electricity consumption.

To fill the gap more megawatts of dispatchable reserves, gas plants mainly, have to be powered up. The problem is exacerbated in the winter months when days are shorter. CAISO’s duck curve is equally applicable to Hawaii’s island grids now, which are feeling the impacts of rooftop solar penetration.

CAISO DUCK CURVE

Growing need for flexibility starting 2015

“It’s very apt to take CAISO’s duck curve and apply it to Hawaii, where Kaua’i’s grid is already experiencing these extreme effects where traditional generation plants have to be ramped up to meet the peak evening energy demand that solar cannot” — Bob Rudd, SolarCity



with battery storage to alleviate the problem.

On a neighbouring island, Kauai, the local utility, Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) signed a power purchase agreement with SolarCity in September 2015 for electricity from what will be the largest integrated so-lar PV and battery storage facility pro-ject commissioned to date.

The facility when fully operational at the end of 2016 will supply power from stored solar energy to the grid in the evening — when demand is high-est.

The 52MWh battery system will feed up to 13MW of electricity into the grid to shave the amount of con-ventional power generation needed to meet the evening peak, which lasts from 5pm to 10pm.

Bob Rudd, vice president of energy storage and microgrids at SolarCity, says: “It’s very apt to take CAISO’s duck curve and apply it to Hawaii, where Kaua’i’s grid is already expe-riencing these extreme effects where traditional generation plants have to be ramped up to meet the peak even-ing energy demand that solar cannot.”

Though the solar and storage facil-ity will meet 5% of the island’s energy demand over the year, which does not sound like much, it will meet between 20%-25% of evening peak demand, as the 13MW can offset the 55MW of base-load generation.

The integrated battery gives KIUC the opportunity to use solar PV as a dispatchable resource, operating it like a thermal generation plant, by sched-uling how much power they need it to provide at various times.

On Molokai, there are about 100 re-maining net-metering customers that are in the queue. It doesn’t necessarily mean that HECO will need to install a storage system with the remaining 90. It may mean that the peak shift-

ALOHA SOLAR … AND STORAGE

Net metering may be over but storage extends the prospects of solar on the Hawaiian islands.

In 2015 the energy regulator, Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, decided to end net metering.

For Hawaii to reach its 100% renewable energy target, growing the installed capacity of intermittent rooftop solar requires dealing with energy storage.

Think the California Independent System Operator’s infamous duck curve, only on Hawaii it is already happening, traditional generators have to be ramped to balance out the growing gap between peak solar generation, which does not correspond with demand patterns, and the period at which solar generation drops off in the evening, while electricity demand increases.

In the place of the net metering programme are two programmes for new solar customers to choose from, a grid supply tariff or a self-supply tariff, both of which facilitate combination of solar-plus-storage.

PV customers that opt for the grid supply tariff can export electricity to

the grid, but are compensated at half the retail rate, which is about $0.15/kWh, and reflects the average cost of wholesale electricity across the islands.

Any solar used at home offsets the retail rate but the export rate is fixed.

However it is the customer self-supply tariff that will become the option for many customers, since the customer grid supply tariff is capped by the Hawaiian Public Utilities Commission at 25MW of distributed solar on Oahu, 5MW on Maui, Lanai and Molokai, and 5MW on Hawaii itself. Those levels are likely to be reached by the end of 2016.

The customer self-supply tariff is intended only for solar PV installations that are configured to not export any electricity to the grid. Customers do not receive any compensation for any electricity inadvertently exported.

The self-supply tariff will ensure that batteries become a necessity if distributed solar is to continue to ensure that Hawaii hits its 100% renewables by 2045.

“As Hawaii nears 100% renewable energy levels, there will likely be a need for storage at the transmission, distribution and meter levels but the recent interest is in what storage at the meter or circuit level can do, because it can do a lot, with the right software” — Chris DeBone, E-Gear



ing that the one battery enables and the grid services that the batteries in aggregate can provide, could allow a further two or three more customers to be grid-connected just with rooftop solar.

DeBone describes Hawaii as a petri dish of problems that larger, more resilient, usually mainland grids will come to face in future. On the islands, which are really a group of separate microgrids, these problems have oc-curred in a compressed amount of time.

“As Hawaii nears 100% renewable energy levels, there will likely be a need for storage at the transmission, distribution and meter levels but the recent interest is in what storage at the meter or circuit level can do, because it can do a lot, with the right software,” says DeBone.

The first storage projects to mitigate intermittent wind and solar built on the islands of Hawaii were bulk stor-age plants designed for energy shifting but little more.

Now intelligent distributed energy resources in the form of solar-plus-storage systems promise a more so-phisticated solution. Not only do these systems control loads in the home, when to charge up and release power, and where to send it, they also let the utility access some of the capac-ity that is not being used to perform critical grid services such as frequency response and reactive power.

In the pilot on Molokai, E-Gear’s storage systems will allow HECO to deploy a suite of tools including fre-quency control, voltage control, fast frequency responses, power factor and control as well as time shifting to ease the duck curve effect.

Autonomous programmingE-Gear’s storage units are autono-mously programmed to start charging, taking into consideration their loca-tion in relation to the sun’s trajectory.

On the eastern side of the island, the sun is up earlier than on the west. Vice versa, the sun sets later in the western side of the island than on the east, so depending on where each storage sys-tem is located on the island they are programmed accordingly.

E-Gear also has a pilot in Califor-nia in Fontana, with Southern Cali-fornia Edison and the Electric Power Research Institute, where nine new homes all on one distribution con-nection will have solar and storage installed to demonstrate that they can have zero impact on the grid.

With battery prices falling and solar-plus-storage becoming more afford-able each year, it could be a blueprint for all new homes construction in fu-ture, says DeBone.

E-Gear has five dealers in southern California and just took possession of a warehouse in the state. It will short-ly begin exporting its battery systems there.

In Hawaii, E-Gear continues to es-tablish further dealerships. Business is brisk and picking up, it says, with the company having ordered a container of battery systems, about 500kWh worth. This is already sold, with the company placing repeat orders.

PG&E, SolarCity pilot SolarCity, one of the largest rooftop solar installation businesses in the US, announced a project in July with investor owner utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

In the pilot, which starts in Septem-ber and runs until December 2017, 150 residential customers in San Jose, in California, will have smart invert-ers, with their rooftop solar systems installed.

Some of the participants will also have residential battery storage sys-tems installed. PG&E will coordinate the smart inverters and behind the me-ter battery storage to improve electric distribution planning and operations.

For the pilot SolarCity is enrolling

new customers in addition to installing the systems within some of its existing customer base in the San Jose. As they are installed, the smart inverters and storage systems will be integrated into SolarCity’s software control platform Gridlogic.

PG&E is running several pilot pro-grammes to demonstrate different technologies and use cases, some of which include smart inverters on their own and some thatinclude smart in-verters paired with batteries. SolarCity is to take part in both versions of the project, by providing smart inverters paired with solar PV, as well as smart inverters paired with batteries.

Grid benefitsSmart inverters — either paired only with solar, or paired with solar and batteries — offer a host of grid ben-efits, including improving power quality, supporting voltage regulation needs, providing reactive power sup-port, reducing line losses, and ena-bling dynamic control of PV genera-tion output.

“By deploying smart inverters along with solar PV, this project will offer services that would otherwise have been performed by traditional grid investments,” says SolarCity’s Ryan Hanley, vice president of grid engi-neering solutions at SolarCity.

Energy storage systems paired with smart inverters offer all the benefits of smart inverters, but with additional capabilities enabled by the battery.

Battery storage systems can provide services such as peak shaving, dynam-ic capacity, spinning reserves, frequen-cy regulation, and frequency response. They can be dispatched almost instan-taneously to provide additional power when it’s needed most, whereas tradi-tional generators often take between 20 and 60 minutes to respond to grid operator control signals.

“By installing smart inverters and home batteries together, pilot partici-pants will be able to provide a wider

“Our products are available for less than it might cost to build traditional generation from fossil fuel plants or T&D infrastructure investments. Grid needs that can be addressed include peak demand shaving, voltage and reactive power support, frequency regulation, and grid situational intelligence” — Ryan Hanley, Solar City


range of services to the grid,” says Hanley.

A virtual power plant is not anas-set that a utility owns and operates in the traditional sense, so there have to be some adaptations to how such platforms are connected to the grid, to respond to the utility’s commands without actually being controlled by the utility.

SolarCity — soon to become part of Tesla after a sale price of $2.6 bil-lion has apparently been agreed — is providing PG&E with two ways to control its virtual power plant of ag-gregated smart inverters through its Grid Logic software control platform.

Software necessitiesHanley says: “The first control meth-od is directly through the Grid Logic user interface, which SolarCity offers to utilities and grid operators to con-trol the portfolio of distributed energy resources.

“Through the Grid Logic interface, utilities can control both the indi-vidual smart inverter or battery assets in the pilot, as well as aggregate and control the entire portfolio as a fleet.

The second control method is through integration with a utility Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) platform.”

In this project, SolarCity’s software will be integrated with General Elec-tric’s DERMS platform. “PG&E will issue controls that are then passed through SolarCity’s Grid Logic soft-ware controls, to control the smart inverters and battery management systems,” says Hanley.

Once control through Grid Logic and DERMS is established, PG&E and SolarCity will demonstrate the ability of the asset portfolio to carry out sev-eral technical use cases. These include

dynamic capacity, peak shaving, and voltage and reactive power support. Grid Logic enables both the control of these assets, as well as monitors them to ensure they perform as expected.

SolarCity provides both utility-scale and distributed grid services for utili-ties and grid operators.

Hanley says: “Our products are available for less than it might cost to build traditional generation from fos-sil fuel plants or T&D infrastructure investments. Grid needs that can be addressed include peak demand shav-ing, voltage and reactive power sup-port, frequency regulation, and grid situational intelligence.

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“These frequently use distributed energy resources, such as smart solar connected inverters, or batteries, that are already deployed, and so are avail-able to utilities at a discount to tra-ditional investments needed to meet these needs.”

Given the company’s integrated product offering, large customer base, operational scale, and full-service sup-port, SolarCity is in a strong position as an energy services provider for util-ities and grid operators.

“The company’s Grid Logic plat-form comes pre-integrated with the systems it installs. As the number one residential solar provider in America, we already have an extensive custom-er base and can rapidly deploy new distributed energy resource portfolios across the country,” says Hanley.

Germany-headquartered Sonnen is working with several utilities, span-ning cooperatives, municipal utilities as well as investor-owned utilities that will be piloting its systems to see how they perform aggregated as vir-tual power plants. These will be an-

nounced later this year. Recently Sonnen partnered with

Enbala Networks, a vendor of aggre-gation software, which is looking to integrate distributed energy storage systems into its platform and take this offering to utilities.

Third party software“From a utility’s perspective they don’t want a Sonnen software platform as well as various other platforms to manage,” says Boris von Bormann, chief executive of US subsidiary Son-nen Inc. “They want to manage these units in the same way, which means that third party software providers, independent of storage system manu-facturers, will be important.”

Enbala was set up seven years ago, initially to design software for ma-nipulating energy loads for purposes of frequency regulation for PJM Inter-connection and continues to manage 10MW of aggregated loads for PJM.

When Enbala’s chief executive Bud Vos joined, the company began ex-tending the software into other areas,

including demand response, and volt-age response/optimization applica-tions.

In its partnership with Sonnen, En-bala is able to overlay its distributed energy control and aggregation soft-ware over Sonnen’s energy storage technology. The partnership will al-low utilities and energy companies, including third party energy service providers, to control and manage solar-plus-storage resources as virtual power plants to provide grid ancillary services.

Sonnen is not the first provider of meter-level energy storage systems us-ing Enbala’s software. It is also used by two other energy storage system providers, which are active in the commercial and industrial segment but which prefer not to publicize that they use the company’s software tech-nology.

Customer baseEnbala’s customers include utilities, grid operators and energy service pro-viders, mainly in North America.

Vos says: “We teamed up after Son-nen could see that unlike the grid system in Germany, which is unified, the system in the US is very different across the various states.”

In the US Sonnen wants to focus on improving its storage system technol-ogy, including the behind the meter energy management system controls side, which addresses how its systems interact with the rooftop solar PV sys-tem as well as the different loads in the house or the building.

The partnership allows Sonnen to focus on expanding its distribution network with installers while Enbala can target utilities and grid operators. Regional markets that the partnership will focus on include Hawaii, Califor-nia and Texas.

As well as trialling various different types of distributed energy resources, such as solar-plus-storage systems connected to advanced software con-trol platforms, the virtual power plant pilots taking place will help inform new policy and regulation.

This is critical if utilities are to be able to adapt what their role is going to be in future — how they continue, fundamentally, to manage the grid and maintain a good quality of service, af-fordably, but not doing it the tradi-tional way of building as many power stations as possible or expanding the grid network via conventional means of installing new cables, wires and transformers.

As well as trialling various different types of distributed energy resources, such as solar-plus-storage systems connected to advanced software control platforms, the virtual power plant pilots taking place will help inform new policy and regulation.

“Hawaii — a petri dish of problems that larger, more resilient, usually mainland grids will come to face in future.”

“On the islands, which are really a group of separate microgrids, these problems have occurred in a short amount of time.”



Sunverge is another end-to-end energy storage provider that has invested in a platform for networking and ag-gregating its energy storage systems together. The company has partnered with several utilities on pilots, in the US as well as in New Zealand and Australia.

As part of New York’s Reforming Energy Vision (REV), this June New

York utility Con Edison, US solar module maker and installer Sunpower and Sunverge announced a $15 mil-lion pilot, the largest to deploy resi-dential solar-plus-storage systems.

In this, 300 homes in Brooklyn and Queens will have solar panels leased from Sunpower and energy storage systems from Sunverge installed and connected. These will be aggregated

together to operate as a virtual power plant to test various applications, in-cluding peak shaving, capacity mar-kets and transmission and distribution deferral.

Con Edison will own the energy storage systems.

One of REV’s goals is for New York to reach a target of 50% renewable energy by 2030. To do so, Con Edison

New York pilots solar-plus-storage VPP

The REV initiative — the ‘reforming energy vision’ of New York State — has a pilot that may serve as the first steps in creating a template for the future.



As more and more rooftop solar PV is built and connected to the grid, utilities are coming under immense pressure to maintain grid infrastructure and quality of supply, provide good levels of service and continue to expand the network’s generation and supply infrastructure as electricity demand rises, especially peak demand.

Virtual power plant technology turns rooftop solar and other types of distributed assets from the problem into the solution.

While networking and aggregating smart inverters connecting rooftop solar PV systems to the grid can provide grid support, such as voltage regulation and reactive power support, connecting solar-plus-storage systems can benefit the individual customer and provide unique grid benefits, such as peak shaving, frequency response and spinning reserves.

As these fleets expand, utilities can defer costly expansion works, be it new distribution equipment or even peaking plants. Everyone

benefits, from the energy customer at the ends of the grid to utilities and operators, as investment in expanding the grid can be administered more cost-effectively.

Like conventional generation plants, a virtual power plant is always on and always available but is much more efficient and cleaner, as well as being less expensive.

The hardware in virtual power plants, such as solar PV, smart inverters, batteries, even loads — appliances and devices that use electricity such as heating and air conditioning units in demand response initiatives — are brought to life using advanced software, automatically dispatching and optimizing these hardware units that are linked to the wholesale power markets.

Elements needed for a virtual power plant include connectivity between the platform running the virtual power plant and the customer sites as well as computing power close to the devices being controlled, according to virtual

power plant software vendor Enbala Networks.

With Enbala’s Symphony platform, the field devices are distributed computing nodes that interface with distributed energy resources, like solar-plus-storage systems, to optimize routines and relay information to the platform’s server. The server consists of three software components that serve different functions. One handles forecasting and optimization, another manages the distributed energy resources, and a third handles resource control and dispatch for energy market interface and interaction.

This market interaction is how virtual power plants derive their value.

By providing a comprehensive interface to grid operations and market systems, a virtual power plant opens up the means to incentivize customers to take part in the programme and generate revenues from market participation.

Virtual power plant technology should include, according to Enbala: • A dynamic bidding and market

interface that can provide market bids, forecasts and operational network information

• Evaluation of all available market opportunities and grid service requirements for the network

• Real-time measurement, verification and evaluation capabilities

• Support for web service interfaces

Cutting edge virtual power plant software can deal with a mix of demand response loads and distributed energy resources of different sizes and descriptions. The technology needs to be robust and rapid enough to accommodate customer constraints.

The system understands the flexibility and ramping characteristics of each distributed energy resource or demand response load and dispatches them within customer-defined constraints as needed.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” may be a cliché — but it is apt for describing the principle of virtual power plants.

Navigant Research forecasts a fivefold increase in virtual power plant capacity by 2023

With major utilities such as Con Edison in New York and Pacific Gas & Electric in California working with emerging energy service providers, like solar installers, software vendors and energy storage technology suppliers to deploy the various technological components that make up virtual power plants, the prediction seems realistic and will help transform grids in the coming years.

THE INS AND OUTS OF A VIRTUAL POWER PLANT



has been trying to understand how it can incentivize adoption of rooftop solar by customers and how the util-ity itself can deploy the technology for distribution grid expansion deferral.

In New York State Con Edison is second after National Grid in terms of installed solar PV capacity. Nearly 10,000 of Con Edison’s customers have had rooftop solar installed, total-ling 115MW, and the utility receives about 4,000 applications a year.

It’s not much compared with a typi-cal Californian investor owned utility, which might have more than 100,000 solar customers, amounting to sev-eral hundred megawatts of installed capacity, and which could be dealing with thousands of applications every month.

“Solar-plus-storage in load pockets that can be reliably dispatched could eliminate or offset the need for addi-tional T&D equipment, which results in bill savings for all customers,” says Griffin Reilly, an engineer leading the project at Con Edison. “Eventually, if many solar-plus-storage systems are dispatched when needed, they could offset the need to run a more carbon costly peaking unit that’s on the bulk transmission system.”

All participants in the pilot will be new solar customers and single family households.

Three phase planThe implementation plan for the pi-lot is happening in three phases. The deadline is to have all 300 systems in-stalled and operational by the end of 2017. As soon as the first solar-plus-storage system is installed and con-nected, Con Edison will begin testing the system’s capability as a dispatch tool, using Sunverge’s platform.

The first phase began on July 18 with Sunpower, which has the role of an energy services provider in the pi-lot, promoting offers to customers for integrated solar-plus-storage systems through the value proposition of resil-iency services.

Though outage rates have been de-clining as a result of Con Edison’s storm hardening investments, there are still customers that want the ex-tra peace of mind that they will have power in the event the grid does go down. Usually these customers buy a back-up generator.

Reilly says: “Solar-plus-storage will be cheaper than most backup gen-erators, in this programme, and will provide power automatically with no interruption and without the need to

refill a gas tank. This is an attractive offering for customers.

“The goal is for this programme to become the new normal, by allowing the battery systems to be used and partially paid for by the grid, which lowers the cost for resiliency for the individual homeowners.”

Sunpower is doing the marketing, customer acquisition, permitting, in-stallation, and O&M for all systems in the virtual power plant pilot, which is to run through to the end of 2018.

Phase one will test customers’ will-ingness to pay for resiliency and the knowledge created during the phase will inform Sunpower on how to fi-nance, or offset, the cost of energy storage deployment.

In addition to understanding what revenues can be made from resiliency payments the pilot will also enable Sunpower to understand what it can earn from dispatch payments using a virtual power plant based on solar-plus-storage units.

Sunpower will retain all resiliency payments during the pilot and in ex-change for that right the company is lowering the total cost of the project that Con Edison is paying from the start. This way it shares the risk of what the total payments might be and a range of prices are being tested.

The second phase will demonstrate system control.

Sunverge’s virtual power plant soft-ware will not run in Con Edison’s con-trol centres. The utility is creating a communication bridge that will allow its own control software to speak with Sunverge which operates the energy storage systems, either independently or in aggregate, and will evaluate their performance under a variety of differ-ent scenarios.

Work is underway to create a con-nection between Con Edison’s control environment and Sunverge’s. The op-erator screens are being built in-house by Con Edison’s supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) engi-neers.

“Ultimately the goal is to be able to send commands and receive data from our one control platform to multiple third party platforms. This is the first of such connections,” says Reilly.

Connecting to Sunverge’s hub means creating a standard in terms of how Con Edison talks to that hub.

“We send out the instructions, such as we want 150 units deployed in the day ahead market and the hub takes the instruction and acts accordingly, communicating it to the units in the virtual power plant. Our SCADA is not controlling individual units but Sunverge’s system will execute the commands,” says Reilly.

Platform controlStandardizing that communication and way of connecting with third par-ties will be important since Con Edi-son wants it to be a flexible platform connecting with demand response loads potentially as well.

“We have systems that give auto-matic notices to our demand response participants but the project with Sun-power and Sunverge will be a first for creating this bridge communication. However, we are several years away from a single platform that controls all distributed and demand response loads and energy resources,” Reilly says.

“The goal is for this programme to become the new normal, by allowing the battery systems to be used and partially paid for by the grid, which lowers the cost for resiliency for individual homeowners.”

“Solar-plus-storage in load pockets that can be reliably dispatched could eliminate or offset the need for additional T&D equipment, which results in bill savings for all customers” — Griffin Reilly



The third phase of the pilot is test market participation and rate design.

Con Edison will investigate and test methods for optimizing dispatch since no process exists to do so. This requires dispatching the solar-plus-storage systems on the grid, without actually participating in the market.

As more of the 300 units come on-line, the utility will have a greater un-derstanding how they work as a vir-tual power plant asset. If the systems are deployed in the capacity market and have to provide 4MW of capac-ity over four hours, it will allow Con Edison to see how to value firm ca-pacity of 100 units as an example and see how many units will be needed to meet the minimum output threshold.

Testing for size Con Edison will also evaluate the vari-ous existing market opportunities to monetize the wholesale market ben-efits of the virtual power plant for ser-vices other than capacity, such as for frequency regulation and reserves in a similar manner, by seeing how many units will be required.

Under REV, extensive regulatory re-forms are reshaping the state’s electric industry and the business practices of utilities. This is to enable entities such as Con Edison to engage the ser-

vices of third party service providers. The third and final phase of the

pilot with Sunpower and Sunverge will identify future opportunities to capture value that evolves over time through REV’s Track Two process.

REV is split into three tracks. “The first is about defining a distributed system platform provider, the role that Con Edison is taking on. Track Two is about how these entities will be regu-lated and incentivized and the third track is about large-scale renewables and meeting the ‘50 by 30’ clean en-ergy standard goals, so the regulatory framework of Track Two may yield distribution markets that do not exist today,” says Reilly.

In addition, alternative residential rate design use cases, as well as dis-patch options will be explored in the final phase of the pilot to examine optimal use of the solar-plus-storage systems for each use case.

“Two use cases considered in our fil-ing are residential demand charges and time of use rates. If we dispatch the units for time of use, they will oper-ate to use as little energy from the grid during the highest cost hours. We can show how the units performed, and what the energy cost savings would be through shadow billing. This could be enough to incentivize solar-plus-storage directly through customer bill savings, rather than through market participation,” he says.

And time of use would offset peak demand, leading to transmission and distribution (T&D) savings for all. “We’re looking at all the ways a residential battery could potentially recover the stacked value within to bring them to this technology faster,” says Reilly.

Ultimately Con Edison does not want to be involved in owning solar-plus-storage units, even though it owns the storage assets for the pur-poses of the pilot.

Ken Munson, chief executive of Sun-verge, says: “Regardless of ownership, we believe all stakeholders derive the greatest value when the units are con-trolled by the utility.”

Traditional tariff-based systems only address one value stream, like peak load reduction as an example, and are often discounted by the utility in integrated resource planning because the utilities have limited visibility into system availability and performance.

“With the Sunverge control plat-form, utilities can use the battery en-ergy storage system to its full extent and it can be counted on as an integral part of the distribution system. That is what Con Edison is focused on achieving,” says Munson.

Testing best casesThe pilot will allow Con Edison to develop and test a wide range of use cases that informs it on how best to work with third party owners while maintaining direct control over the systems.

“This is similar to the methods the New York Independent Service Op-erator (NYISO) uses to control large generating plants,” Munson says.

“In future, we would pay for the third party to control distributed en-ergy resources in a way we designate, and that designation would come through an automatic control system we would have to set up, similar to what we are doing with the SCADA bridge to Sunverge. That’s why we are doing that, to test and learn for future connections,” says Reilly.

Looking ahead, Munson says: “We see the market taking shape through our services being offered directly to utilities and through third-party mar-ket participants such as large solar distributors.

“Sunpower provides valuable ex-pertise in customer acquisition, solar finance, post-sales support and O&M for utility clients.

“In the future, we’ll likely partner with enterprise software providers such as energy trading and risk man-agement, advanced distribution man-agement systems, energy management systems, and distributed energy re-source management systems vendors, as well as, downstream hardware inte-grators that bring battery and inverter systems to market.”

“With the Sunverge control platform, utilities can use the battery energy storage system to its full extent and it can be counted on as an integral part of the distribution system.” — Ken Munson, Sunverge

“Regardless of ownership, we believe all stakeholders derive the greatest value when the units are controlled by the utility.”

RESIDENTIAL PV: INTERSOLAR/EES 2016


Germany is the largest market for res-idential distributed energy resources, in the form of solar-plus-storage sys-tems. That’s thanks to a government incentive introduced in 2013, which has since been extended to late 2018.

By then the government anticipates that solar-plus-storage systems will cross with socket prices for electric-ity, saving on energy from being able to self-consume as much as 80% from solar generated power.

This is not due to retail electric-ity rates in Germany rising, as these should remain steady at around €0.29/kWh ($0.32/kWh).

Self-consumption is becoming more affordable due to the continuing price

reductions in energy storage technol-ogy, as costs of lithium ion batteries come down.

By 2020 some estimates expect an-nual demand for home storage sys-tems in Germany to be in the region of 50,000 a year. To date more than 30,000 systems have been installed, with about 16,000 of these connect-ed in 2015.

According to market research by Federal Network Agency, the state bank KfW, which administers Ger-many’s PV and storage incentive programme and industry association BSW-Solar, 50% of new PV custom-ers in the residential market are opt-ing for batteries too.

The market of KfW-supported by PV plus storage systems by manufac-turer is dominated by four German companies. All-in-one storage system provider Sonnen is the market leader holding a 19% share, followed by Senec with 16%, SMA with 15% and E3DC with 11%.

SMA is the inverter manufacturer with the largest share. The company has developed inverters that are com-patible with most makes of battery modules, and include high as well as low voltage systems.

Historically, Germany’s southern regions, where installed solar capac-ity is highest, has also been the region that suppliers, such as Sonnen have reported the highest sales for their home storage systems. However, with the costs of the technology coming down, growth is picking up across other parts of the country.

Intersolar/EES held in Munich eve-ry June has become Europe’s leading tradeshow for visitors wanting to see the latest energy storage systems, de-veloped for the residential and small-scale commercial solar market.

ESJ caught up with some the energy storage providers active in Germany as well as other European markets.

SonnenIn Germany as well as in other global markets, including the US and Aus-tralia, Sonnen has been an early mov-er.

To date Sonnen has shipped over 12,000 of its energy storage systems and is expecting to ship 10,000 in 2016 alone, mainly for residential demand, though the company also supplies systems for the small-scale commercial applications.

Germany remains Sonnen’s largest

This summer’s conference and exhibition in Munich gave Energy Storage Journal the chance to review some of the latest range of energy storage products for the home.

Market range expands as residential energy storage surges ever onward



market by demand. Elsewhere in Europe the company’s

battery system is available in the UK, where it launched earlier this year and it also reports growing de-mand in Italy. Other markets where Sonnen’s battery system is available include Austria, Switzerland, Luxem-bourg, Sweden and the Czech Repub-lic.

For many consumers considering installing solar-plus-storage, a key advantage of Sonnen’s product is that it is an all-in-one system, which also simplifies things for installers too — they only have one unit to install along with the PV system.

Sonnen’s system incorporates bat-tery modules, a bidirectional inverter, a smart energy management system and metering.

The lithium iron phosphate battery is capable of 10,000 charge cycles.

The system can be programmed to maximize self-consumption, for ex-ample by activating the home’s elec-tric loads, such as washing machines and dishwashers, when excess energy is available to power them.

Consumers get full access to an on-line platform via an app or on their computer, with real time data about consumption, production and stor-age.

Later this year Sonnen will expand its line, by launching a hybrid energy storage product that gives installers the option to DC-couple as well as AC-couple PV and storage.

“For a new installation it might be better to DC-couple since a PV in-verter is not required giving a saving on this component. For retrofitting the DC-coupled option might also be good if the existing PV inverter is already old enough for replacement,” says Mathias Bloch, a spokesperson for the company.

In Germany with its incentive, Son-nen’s system can achieve a payback in around 10 years. The cost of the systems starts at €3,600 ($4,100).

In addition to the behind the meter benefits and features for consumers and households, Sonnen’s system is designed to be grid-friendly. It is able to combine weather and a consump-tion forecast so the production, con-sumption and storage capacity are known for three days in advance.

This allows the battery to store en-ergy at peak production times and release it later on, relieving the grid when solar production is highest. For the grid as a whole the expansion of grid infrastructure does not have to

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Sonnenbatterie eco: an all-in-one system



correspond with the expansion of re-newable energy.

In Switzerland Sonnen recently partnered Swisscom Energy Solu-tions in a pilot study. Swisscom Ener-gy Solutions runs the Tiko network, which forms part of Europe’s larg-est smart grid. The network, which includes over 4,500 participants, links up the heating systems of resi-dential customers to a smart storage network and provides Swissgrid, the transmission system operator with energy balancing services.

Mercedes-Benz At Intersolar last year, Daimler un-veiled its Mercedes-Benz labelled energy storage system, exploiting the car brand’s global reputation for quality, luxury and premium pricing in new stationary storage markets.

The same proven battery technol-ogy that goes into Mercedes-Benz electric vehicles, made by Daimler subsidiary Accumotive, is also used to produce the company’s stationary storage systems, which are replete with the three-pointed star.

Daimler began sales of the system in April, launching its new subsidi-ary Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage in June. Target markets include the UK, Netherlands and the US at some point, where the batteries, which can be scaled from 2.5kWh up to 20kWh can power electricity hungry air con-ditioning units and provide back-up power. The systems are compatible with SMA inverters.

Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage’s solar partners span large, established European businesses, including Kran-nich, Bayware and Segen, one of the UK’s biggest distributors.

Since 2015, Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage has also been working with partners to supply industrial grid-scale projects in Germany, which will total 29MWh, providing services to Germany’s primary power market, when fully connected.

LG Chem Aside from the domestic players, in-cluding Sonnen, Solarworld, Varta, E3DC and Senec, Germany’s residen-tial solar plus storage market is com-petitive and large enough to attract international players, especially those that can sustain aggressive pricing.

According to KfW, which has pro-duced market data on the market share of KfW-supported by PV plus storage systems by manufacturer, South Korean electronics brands LG

© Germany Trade & Invest www.gtai.de 18

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The German PV-storage system market outlook More than 50,000 home storage systems per year in Germany by 2020

Estimated number of newly installed Home PV-battery systems in Germany

Note: assumptions: new annual PV installations 2015-2020: 1.4 GWp Source: year 2015: Federal Network Agency, KfW Speichermonitoring, 2016; years 2016-2020: own calculation and estimate, 2016

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Falling battery prices make storage profitable The cost of Li-systems decreased by ~18% p.a. in the past 2 years

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© Germany Trade & Invest www.gtai.com 15

The German PV-storage system market 2015 Sonnen, DEV (Senec) and SMA leading the market

Note: includes all PV-storage system registered with KfW between Mai 2013 and December 2015; KfW registered PV-storage system make up around 50% of the total PV-storage market; Source: KfW Speichermonitoring, ISEA/RWTH Aachen 2016

sonnenBatterie 19%

Senec 16%

SMA 15%

E3DC 11%

Nedap 5%

LG 4%

Samsung SDI 4%

IBC 4%

Varta 2%

Fronius 2%

Solarworld 2%

RWE 2%

Sony 2%

Kostal 1%

Neeovoltaic 1%

Other 10%

Market share of KfW-supported PV-storage systems by manufacturer

The German PV-storage system market 2015Sonnen, DEV (Senec) and SMA leading the marketSource: Germany Trade and Invest

Falling battery prices make storage profitableThe cost of Li-systems decreased by 18% p.a. in the past 2 yearsSource: Germany Trade and Invest

The German PV-storage system market outlookMore than 50,000 home storage systems per year in Germany by 2020Source: Germany Trade and Invest



Chem and Samsung SDI each have a 4% share of the market.

LG Chem began serial production of its home battery module in 2015, the 6kWh RESU6.4, and this year is expanding the range.

RESU6.5 launched at Intersolar 2016, which replaces RESU6.4, is also compatible with a wider range of inverter makes, both European and Asian.

By October 2016, LG Chem will make available to installers four ad-ditional modules, which the com-pany was promoting on its booth at Intersolar Munich. In addition to RESU6.5, they include two new low voltage (48V) home battery modules, RESU3.3, with a total capacity of 3.3kWh, and RESU10, which has a total capacity of 9.8kWh.

The idea is that customers have more choice to meet their self-con-sumption needs — but can add an additional module if they need more in future.

The other two new modules in the RESU range are high voltage (400V), the RESU7H and the RESU10H. High voltage battery modules offer a better deal for the end customer as high voltage inverters are cheaper than low voltage products since no converter is needed to take the volt-age down to 48V.

LG Chem says the cost of its high voltage battery is competitive with Tesla’s Powerwall.

The company’s storage system orig-inally used its JH2 lithium chemistry but has now switched over to its JH3 chemistry to double the energy den-sity of its cells.

Ads-TecAds-Tec is a German player with a specialized approach in the distrib-uted energy storage market, serving exclusively demand for the technol-ogy in large residential and small commercial applications under its StoraXe range. These include condo-miniums, hotels, schools and other public buildings. The range also in-cludes big batteries for the grid.

The company’s target customers include facilities owners and utilities and it has sold 90MWh of systems to date, mainly for projects such as new apartments.

Ads-Tec sources industrial-size lith-ium ion cells to produce its modules and racks and has developed its own energy management systems and storage system software controls.

It smallest systems start at 9kWh capacities and Ads-Tec also offers

integrated 19kWh or 28kWh sys-tems for larger premises. As well as self-consumption the systems are de-signed with grid resiliency in mind, as they can provide emergency power and can be networked to operate as isolated systems in black-start mode.

Ads-Tec’s StoraXe range is compat-ible with SMA as well as other in-verter makes.

Solutronic Solutronic Energy, which was set up in 2014, following the insolvency of German inverter maker Solutronic, has revamped itself as a provider of power conversion, energy stor-age and energy management systems products for residential and commer-cial applications.

Solutronic Energy is a merger be-tween Chinese company Shanghai Churui Energy Technology (ATFSS) and Scheuerle Vermögensverwaltung, the inverter and related technology is developed in Germany. The lithium iron phosphate batteries used in its systems are made by a Chinese man-ufacturer, set up by one of BYD’s co-founders.

Both AC-coupled storage systems for retrofitting batteries with PV and DC-coupled for new PV plus storage installations are available. In addi-tion to Germany, Solutronic’s invert-ers and energy storage systems are also available elsewhere in Europe, including the UK.

LeclanchéSwiss battery and energy storage sys-tem producer Leclanché is active in Germany, mainly supplying demand for PV retrofits, but due to the in-tense competition in the market has also been expanding across Europe, selling its storage systems in the UK,


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Electricity cost for PV Electricity costs for PV+Battery ² Electricity price for households (2.5-5 MWh/a)

Prognosis

From PV Grid-Parity to Battery-Parity in 2018 Saving energy costs while becoming 60-80% energy independent

1 Model calculation for rooftop systems, based on 802 kWh/kWp (Frankfurt/Main), 100% financing, 6% interest rate, 20 year term, 2% p.a. O&M costs ² based on 5,000 cycles, C2, 87% efficiency Sources: Own calculation; System Prices: BSW 2016; Model Calculation: Deutsche Bank 2010; Electricity Prices 2007-2015: Eurostat 2016; Electricity Prices 2016-2020: own estimate at 0.29ct/kWh.

EUR/kWh 1

PV-energy is cheaper than socket price. Customers get 30-40% independent.

PV+storage is cheaper than socket price. Customers get 60-80% independent.

From PV Grid-Parity to Battery-Parity in 2018Saving energy costs while becoming 60-80% energy independentSource: Germany Trade and Invest

Ads-Tec StoraXe

Solutronic SolPlus 2 phase inverter



France, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Slovakia, Belgium and Italy. It has also sold in Sri Lanka, Australia and Kenya, where its battery chemistry performs well in countries with high and humid temperatures.

The company supplies five prod-ucts across the residential and small commercial markets. These include the Apollion Box and Apollion Cube ranges, which do not use Leclanché’s cells. The Apollion Cube is compat-ible with a range of inverter makes including SMA and Nedap.

The company’s mid-sized offer-ing is the all-in-one battery and in-verter SR2025, which has a capacity of 25kWh, which can be doubled to 50kWh.

With its UK partner North Star Solar, Leclanché is trying to corner a market in the country among resi-dential customers with the discount-ed economy 7 and economy 10 tariffs using off-peak electricity.

North Star is selling Leclanché’s Tibox system, which features its high cycling lithium ion titanate batteries, capable of 15,000 cycles. The idea is the batteries can be installed and can be cycled three times in a 24-hour day to charge up with off-peak elec-tricity for the customer to use during peak rate times.

The TiBox systems along with Son-nen’s storage systems are being of-fered to residents in County Durham, in north-east England, in a partner-ship between North Star Solar and the local Stanley Town Council.

Leclanché also reports growing de-mand in Italy for its energy storage products.

Leclanché’s TiBox: lithium titanate offers 15,000 cycles

CONFERENCE IN PRINT


Recently, molten-sodium beta-alumina batteries have been considered as one of the most attractive stationary electric energy storage systems, which are crucial to stimulate the growth of renewable energy resources and to improve the reliability of electric power grids.

Sodium–sulfur and sodium-metal halide batteries (ZE-BRA) are two typical molten-Na beta-alumina batteries; however, recent fire incidents involving Na–S battery sys-tems have increased general concerns about the application of Na–S batteries as stationary energy storage devices.

Although they share some features (for example, molten-sodium and ß-alumina solid electrolyte) in common with Na–S batteries, ZEBRA batteries can provide several ad-vantages over Na–S batteries, including superior battery safety, high open-circuit voltage, lower operating tempera-ture and ease of assembly in the discharged state without using metallic sodium in the anode.

Among various ZEBRA battery redox chemistries, the sodium–nickel chloride (Na–NiCl2) battery has been most widely investigated in the past. The overall redox reaction of a Na–NiCl2 battery during charging and discharging processes is described as follows:

Equation1:(charged state) 2Na + NiCl2 <–> 2NaCl + Ni (discharged state)E0 = 2:58V at 300°C

Despite the relatively simple redox reaction, cell degra-dation mechanisms of Na–NiCl2 batteries have not been clearly understood in the past. In our recent studies, we have reported detailed correlations between NaCl/Ni par-ticle growth (Ostwald ripening) and battery-operating con-ditions, such as C-rate, cathode formula and cycling capac-ity window.

The main parameters that lead to faster Ni particle growth are higher current density, state of charge (SOC) at end of charge (EOC) and Ni/NaCl ratio. In the case of NaCl, significant growth has a close correlation with the cycling capacity window. To achieve sustainable battery cycle life, the conventional tubular Na–NiCl2 batteries are loaded with excessive Ni content in the cathode and also are operated with a shallow capacity window.

The theoretical specific capacity and energy density of Na–NiCl2 ZEBRA batteries obtained from equation 1 are 305 mAh g−1 (without considering the melt) and 788 Wh kg−1 (open-circuit voltage at 2.58 V).

Despite the quite impressive theoretical energy density of Na–NiC2 batteries, general energy density obtained from a conventional tubular Na–NiCl2 battery (operated at ca. 300 °C) is about 95–120 Wh kg−1 due to excessive Ni con-tent and shallow capacity window. Detailed plots of energy density versus Ni content with different cycling windows are shown in Figure 1.

Resolving this shortcoming on a material and cost level requires creating new platforms based on innovative sci-entific and technical approaches. Excited by the magnitude and implications of revisiting Na–NiCl2 ZEBRA battery technology, the research and industrial communities are seeking a revolutionary breakthrough that could enable substantially lower cost for materials and operations, as well as superior battery cycle life and safety.

Advanced intermediate temperature sodium–nickel chloride batteries with ultra-high energy density

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory — G Li, X Lu, JY Kim, KD Meinhardt, HJ Chang, NL Canfield and VL Sprenkle — have come up a new design for a sodium metal halide battery that offers a storage device that is less expensive, more stable, operates at a lower temperature and increases its energy density.

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Figure 1: Specific energy density. Specific energy densities were calculated on different cycling capacity windows for (a) 100, (b) 60 and (c) 30%. Energy density was calculated without considering the weight of melt required in the cathode.

CONFERENCE IN PRINT


Previously we had found that the operating temperature has significant influence on the cell chemistries during the battery cycling. The cell polarization, an important indi-cator of cell degradation, was found to increase faster at 280°C than at 175°C due to faster grain growth in the cath-ode ingredients.

From a cell-operation point of view, a lower temperature can potentially reduce costs associated with cell packing and reduce heat loss. In a recent report, Gerovasili et al concluded that lower heat transfer losses at 240°C could result in up to 49% reduction in heating energy compared with operation at 275°C. (It should be noted that it is in-trinsically difficult for a tubular ZEBRA battery to operate below 240 °C.)

Drawing inspiration from the temperature-dependent particle growth, we construct a planar intermediate tem-perature (IT) Na–NiCl2 ZEBRA battery technology, which allows the cells to be operated at an IT of 190°C with con-siderable discharge power as high as 75 mW cm−2 (~0.6 C).

Extensive investigations of cell performance and funda-mental understanding of cathode degradation mechanisms at 190°C are studied, and indicate that this novel planar IT Na–NiCl2 ZEBRA battery technology could have a much higher specific energy density (350 Wh kg−1) and much more stable cycle life than the state-of-the-art ZEBRA battery.

ResultsBattery performances of planar IT ZEBRA battery We con-structed a planar IT ZEBRA battery, using a ß-alumina sol-id-state electrolyte (BASE; 3 cm2 effective areas), a Ni/NaCl granule cathode (157 mAh, 52.3 mAh cm−2) and NaAlCl4 as a secondary electrolyte.

All batteries were charged and discharged between 2.8V (EOC) and 2.0V (end of discharge) to prevent side reac-tions occurring due to over-charging and over-discharging.

Figure 2 shows battery performance for cells operated at two different temperatures (190 and 280 °C) with a constant discharge power of 25mW cm−2 (~10 mA cm−2, ~C/5).

An initial capacity of 106 mAh g−1 was observed for IT Na–NiC2 batteries tested at 190°C. Interestingly, IT Na–NiCl2 batteries (Figure 2, black) showed a capacity increase for the first 100 cycles and then stabilized with a capacity of 137 mAh g−1 at the 200th cycle.

The specific discharge energy density for IT Na–NiCl2 batteries was 340Wh kg−1 (200th cycle), which is by far the

highest energy density demonstrated for Na–NiCl2 batter-ies to the best of our knowledge.

Identical batteries tested at 280°C are also shown in Fig-ure 2 (blue). The initial capacity of 140 mAh g−1 was ob-tained for the battery operated at 280°C. The higher initial capacity obtained at 280°C compared with that at 190°C is likely due to better sodium wetting on the BASE at 280°C.

In contrast with IT Na–NiCl2 batteries at 190°C, the ca-pacity of batteries operated at 280°C decreased drastically, to 107mAh g−1 (76% retention) over 200 cycles. The more stable performance of the Na–NiCl2 batteries at 190°C than at 280°C indicates that the lower operation tempera-ture could be the most critical factor for obtaining sustain-able cell performance, which has been surprisingly under-stated in the past.

Cells have been also tested with a higher discharge power (75mW cm−2, ~30 mA cm−2, ~0.6 C) at 190°C and 280°C. Similar to results shown in Figure 2, the capacity was more stable for batteries operated at 190°C than at 280°C. The Coulombic efficiencies shown in Figure 2 (red) of all tested batteries are nearly 100%, which is due to the use of BASE

We have developed a novel planar Na–NiCl2 battery that can be operated at an IT of 190°C. This planar IT Na–NiCl2 technology was able to deliver an ultra-high energy density (350Wh kg−1) with very long cycle life (over 1,000 cycles) and excellent capacity retention (no decay until the 700th cycle, 0.01% per cycle thereafter). This work accomplished a breakthrough towards making Na–NiCl2 battery technology more competitive for stationary energy storage applications.

Sodium-metal halide batteries have

been considered as one of the more attractive technologies for stationary electrical energy storage, however, they are not used for broader applications despite their relatively well known redox system.

One of the roadblocks hindering market penetration is the high-operating temperature. Here we demonstrate that planar sodium–nickel chloride batteries can be operated at an intermediate temperature of 190 °C with ultra-high energy density.

A specific energy density of 350 Wh kg−1, higher than that of

conventional tubular sodium–nickel chloride batteries (280°C), is obtained for planar sodium–nickel chloride batteries operated at 190°C over a long-term cell test (1,000 cycles), and this attributed to the slower particle growth of the cathode materials at the lower operating temperature.

Results reported here demonstrate that planar sodium–nickel chloride batteries operated at an intermediate temperature could greatly benefit this traditional energy storage technology by improving battery energy density, cycle life and reducing material costs.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Figure 2: Capacity retention and coulombic efficiency plots Na–NiCl2 cells were operated at two different temperatures: (a) 190 (black) and (b) 280 °C (blue). Coulombic efficiency is shown in red. Cells were charged with a constant current (7 mA cm−2, ~C/7) and were discharged with a constant power (25 mW cm−2, ~10 mA cm−2, ~C/5).

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT


as the sodium-ion conducting solid-state electrolyte.To further understand the effect of temperature on cell

performance, voltage profiles (1st, 100th and 200th cycles) versus SOC for cells tested at 190 and 280°C are shown in Figure 3 (25 mW cm−2). For the cells operated at 190°C (Figure 3a), SOC at the EOC (SOCEOC) and SOC at the end of discharge (SOCEOD) for the 1st cycle were deter-mined to be 90% and 17%, respectively.

In further battery cycles, SOCEOC was gradually in-creased to 100% and SOCEOD was decreased to 12%. These adjustments are responsible for the progressively in-creasing capacity for the cells operated at 190°C (Figure 2), since the capacity of a battery can be calculated as follows:

Equation 2:Capacity = SOCEOC-SOCEOD

For instance, capacities of the 1st and 200th cycles for the cells operated at 190 °C were 73% and 88%, respectively, as calculated using equation 2. In contrast with the lowest capacity having been observed in the early stage of tested cycles at 190 °C, the SOCEOC and SOCEOD for the 1st cycle at 280 °C were 100% and 14%, respectively, which resulted in the largest initial capacity of 86% as shown in Figure 3b.

The higher initial capacity observed at the operating temperature of 280°C than at 190°C is most likely due to better sodium wetting on the BASE at the higher operat-ing temperature. However, the SOCEOC of cells operated at 280°C rapidly decreased to 79% after the 200th cycle, which results in a capacity of 65% (76% capacity reten-tion).

However, a quite stable SOCEOD observed over 200 cy-cles indicates that degradation on the anode side (sodium wetting) is negligible for 280°C as shown in Figure 3b. The rapid degradation of capacity for the cells operated at 280°C is more likely due to cathode degradation at the higher operating temperature.

Scanning electron microscopy of cathode materialsTo investigate the correlation between morphology changes in Ni/NaCl cathodes and cell performance, the cells oper-ated with a constant discharge power of 25 mW cm−2 were disassembled after 200 cycles and the fracture surfaces were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM)/energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometry (EDS).

Figure 3: Voltage profiles for planar IT Na–NiCl2 batteries. Cells were operated with constant-current charge (7 mA cm−2, ~C/7) and constant-power discharge (25 mW cm−2, 10 mA cm−2, ~C/5). Voltage profiles versus SOC are shown for 1st (black), 100th (green) and 200th (blue) cycles at two different temperatures (a) 190°C and (b) 280°C, respectively.

Figure 4: SEM images for cathode materials. Cathode materials were retrieved from cells operated for 200 cycles. Ni particles are shown for cells operated at 190°C (25 mW cm−2) at (a) × 7,500 (scale bar, 2 μm), (b) × 1,000 (scale bar, 10 μm) and (c) Ni mapping × 1,000 (scale bar, 10 μm). Ni particles from cells operated at 280°C (25 mW cm−2) are shown at (d) × 3,000 (scale bar, 10μm), (e) × 1,000 (scale bar, 10μm) and (f) Ni mapping × 1,000 (scale bar, 10μm). NaCl particles are shown for cells operated at 190°C (25 mW cm−2) at (g) × 2,000 (scale bar, 10μm) and (h) Na mapping × 2,000 (scale bar, 10μm); (i) × 300 (scale bar, 100μm) and (j) Na mapping × 300 (scale bar, 100μm) for 280°C.

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PNNL is testing the use of polymer seals in their new battery design. The research team is also scaling up the battery and will next build a five watt-hour test battery for further research

CONFERENCE IN PRINT


For cathodes retrieved from cells tested at 190°C, light-er spots shown in Figure 4a (high resolution) and Figure 4b represent Ni particles and corresponding images of Ni mapping are shown in Figure 4c. Similarly, nickel particles are shown in Figure 4d (high resolution) and Figure 4e,f (Ni mapping) for cells tested at 280°C.

Quite different sizes of Ni particles were observed for the cells operated at 190°C compared with those at 280°C. The typical particle size of Ni cathodes for the cells tested at 190 °C was 1–2μm (Figure 4a,b), which is similar to the initial particle size of raw Ni powders. However, significant Ni particle growth, up to 10μm (Figure 4d,e), was observed for the cells tested at 280°C.

Particle sizes of NaCl were also determined from SEM images (Figure 4g,i) and corresponding images of Na map-ping (Figure 4h,j). NaCl particle sizes in the cells operated at 190°C and 280°C were ~5μm and ~50μm, respectively.

SEM/EDS measurements were also performed for the cells operated with a higher discharge power of 75 mW cm−2 at 190°C and 280°C. Similar to the cells tested at a discharge power of 25 mW cm−2, larger NaCl and Ni particles were observed in cells operated at 280°C than in cells operated at 190°C with a discharge power of 75 mW cm−2.

Ni and NaCl particle growthThe sizes of Ni and NaCl particles from tested cells, cell cycling conditions and cell performances are summarized in Table 1 for a better comparison. It is quite clear that the particle sizes of Ni and NaCl for the tested cells show a strong dependence on the cell-operating temperature.

For instance, the average Ni particle size at 280°C is around 10μm, which is significantly larger than the aver-age particle size of 1μm–2μm observed at 190°C. Simi-larly, the NaCl particle size at 280°C was 50μm, which is much larger than an average particle size of 5μm–10μm at 190 °C. Considering the particle size of raw Ni powders

(1μm–2μm) and NaCl powders (~5μm), the particle growth at 190°C is much slower than that at 280°C.

The morphology evolution of cathode materials has been considered as the most important cause of the degradation of Na–NiCl2 batteries. For the charging process, the main reactions in the cathode side of Na–NiCl2 batteries are the dissolution of NaCl particles into the melt and the forma-tion of NiCl2 layers on the surfaces of Ni particles.

Larger particles of active ingredients existing in the cath-ode will lead to a sluggish dissolution of NaCl and less surface area of Ni particles, which will eventually cause a limited charging capacity.

This is in good agreement with the observations shown in Table 1.

For example, an IT Na–NiCl2 battery operated at 190°C can still be charged to 100% SOC after 200 cycles due to the minimal morphology changes in the cathode, but iden-tical cells operated at 280°C can be only charged up to 79% SOC after 200 cycles due to the accelerated particle growth in the cathode.

The mechanism of particle growth in Na–NiCl2 batteries operated at 280°C has been proposed in our previous study

From a cell-operation point of view, a lower temperature can potentially reduce costs associated with cell packing and reduce heat loss. A recent report, concluded that lower heat transfer losses at 240°C could result in up to 49% reduction in heating energy compared with operation at 275°C

This planar IT Na–NiCl2 technology was able to deliver an ultra-high energy density (350Wh kg−1) with very long cycle life — over 1,000 cycles — and excellent capacity retention

190 C 280 C

Discharge (mWcm-1) 25 75 25 75

C-rate C/5 0.6 C C/5 0.6 C

Ni (μm) 1–2 1–2 ~10 ~10

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EOD (%)† 12 17 14 20

Capacity window (%) 88 83 65 58

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Degradation (%) 19* 13* –24 –30

EOC, end of charge; EOD, end of discharge.*Positive degradation is due to the increased capacity of the 200th versus the 1st cycle at 190 C.† EOC and EOD of 200th cycle are shown in the table.

Table 1: Grain sizes of Ni and NaCl particles and other battery performance data for cells cycled at different temperatures and discharge powers.

CONFERENCE IN PRINT


by attributing it to Ostwald ripening. Here we would like to extend the particle growth mechanism by including the operating temperature as an important factor.

In the literature, it has been generally understood that the influence of temperature on Ostwald ripening is through its effects on various parameters, such as the equilibrium solubility, the diffusion-influenced growth coefficient, the phase-transition energy and interfacial energy.

Here, temperature effects on equilibrium solubility and diffusion-influenced growth coefficient are particularly im-portant to understanding the enhanced particle growth in Na–NiCl2 batteries at the higher temperature. For instance, the solubility of cathode materials (NaCl and NiCl2) will dras-tically decrease with a decrease in the operating temperature.

The diffusion coefficients of dissolved NaCl and NiCl2 will decrease as well, due to the increased viscosity of the melt. Since the equilibrium solubility and diffusion-influ-enced growth coefficient are proportional to the solubil-ity and diffusion coefficient, respectively, particle growth by Ostwald ripening will be greatly suppressed at lower operating temperatures.

DiscussionFor stationary energy storage, long-battery lifetime and lower materials cost are two critical factors. As shown in Figure 5, long-term cycling of an IT Na–NiCl2 battery showed an excellent stability over 1,000 cycles, which was a testing period of one year and six months.

No battery degradation was observed until the 700th cy-cle, and the degradation rate thereafter was <0.01% per cycle.

The energy density of an IT Na–NiCl2 battery shown in Figure 5 was generally over 330 Wh kg−1. Because of the ultra-high energy density of the IT Na–NiCl2 batteries dem-onstrated in this work, the materials cost of cathodes (no-

tably the cost of Ni) can be greatly reduced compared with the conventional tubular Na–NiCl2 batteries, which would be considered as a significant saving.

One concern with decreasing the operational temperature from 280°C to an IT of 190°C is the inevitable loss in energy efficiency of a Na–NiCl2 battery. Cells operated at the lower temperature showed generally larger overpotentials than cells operated at the higher temperature as shown in Figure 3.

Typical overall energy efficiencies at the 200th cycle are 91.6% (190°C, 25 mW cm−2), 86.5% (190°C, 75 mW cm−2), 92.3% (280°C, 25 mW cm−2) and 88.4% (280°C, 75 mW cm−2). The energy efficiencies of cells operated at 190°C show about a 1% decrease in overall efficiencies versus those operated at 280°C; this is due to the close re-lationship between the operating temperature, interfacial resistance and sodium-ion conductivity in the cell.

However, the decrease in energy efficiency is trivial com-pared with the advantages of the lower operating tempera-ture.

Planar sodium–nickel chloride batteries operated at an intermediate temperature could greatly benefit this traditional energy storage technology

Figure 5: Energy density and Coulombic efficiency.Planar IT Na–NiCl2 cells were operated at 190°C over 1,000 cycles in a period of 1 year and 6 months. No degradation was observed for the first 700 cycles. A degradation rate of <0.01% per cycle was obtained for the test after the 700th cycle.

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Disclaimer: Our editorial board necessarily vets every article that we print and will impartially approve pieces that it believes will be interesting and supportive of the energy storage industry and related products. Articles submitted should not be marketing pieces.

The first is our section called COMMENT — which rather says it all. Here give us your views about what our industry is doing well (or badly) or just needs to open a discussion, this is where to air your views.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS 2016


The Battery ShowNovi, Michigan, USSeptember 13-15

The Battery Show is America’s biggest free-to-attend exhibition for advanced batteries. The very latest battery tech-nology will be on display for a num-ber of applications, from EV’s to Util-ity storage, through to bespoke mobile power applications, personal electron-ics and healthcare. If advanced battery technology is key to your products and services, The Battery Show will help your company stay ahead.

The Battery Show is also a supply chain event, where the latest solutions from raw material and equipment sup-pliers, to materials and testing and re-cycling services. If it happens through the life of a battery, the services to sup-port this will be on display. A must at-tend event for battery manufacturers, from junior engineer to CEO level, The Battery Show will enable you to attain

better battery performance, safety and cost.

Visitors to The Battery Show 2016 will also have free access to Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo, the premier showcase for electric and hybrid vehicle technology and innova-tion, as well as Critical Power Expo, showcasing the latest backup power solutions.

Keep your finger on the pulse of the energy storage industry at The Battery Show Conference 2016. Early-bird reg-istration is now open, so don’t delay!

Discover what’s driving demand, what’s shaping novel technologies, what’s at the cutting edge. Join the hun-dreds of industry delegates and be part of the whole picture at this invaluable knowledge sharing and networking ex-perience.

Our panel of expert voices will again shine a light on all the pressing issues of the day, offering commercial, regu-latory, safety, technological, stationary

energy storage and next-generation battery R&D perspectives.

This well-respected conference offers you multiple benefits, including broad-ening your knowledge base, growing your professional network, becoming part of an unrivaled expert pool, and the opportunity to expand your re-source platform.

In addition to our established paral-lel three-track format, this year there will be a further track on the first two days. Newly introduced features in-clude three interactive tutorials (ther-mal management; functional safety and risk; and fast charging), two special sessions dedicated to improving manu-facturing and a workshop on evaluat-ing different hybrid architectures.

ContactSteve [email protected]: +44 1273 916300US toll free: +1 855 436 8683Fax: +44 1273 774341

Solar Power International (SPI) generates success for solar energy professionals and the global solar industry. SPI is ranked #109 in the Top 250 Largest Trade Shows (by Trade Show News Network), making SPI the largest solar show in North America.

In addition, SPI is a Gold 100 trade show (as ranked by Trade Show Executive), making it the only solar show to make both lists.• SPIisNorthAmerica’spremier

business-to-business event for

professionals in the solar energy and related fields.

• Morethan15,000solarenergyindustry professionals from 75+ countries attend.

• Morethan600leadingmanu-facturers, service providers, and vendors on the exhibition floor.

SPI brings the full range of industry ideas, experts, professionals, and information together in one compre-hensive event that delivers:• Peer-lededucationalprogramming

designed to exchange ideas, share

lessons learned, and provide solu-tions for your business.

• Uniquenetworkingopportunitiesthat allow you to solidify your current relationships and build new ones.

• Connectionswithindustryven-dors and professionals from the US and around the world as they showcase their newest products and services.

Contactwww.solarpowerinternational.com/

Las Vegas • September 12-15

Solar Power International 2016



10th Energy Storage World ForumMelbourne, AustraliaSeptember 12-16

Dufresne, the event management groups, started researching this event in 2009 and The Energy Storage World Forum was the first three day dedicat-ed conference on stationary storage to take place in Europe and in Asia since 2010.

Over 2,000 delegates (in total) and a total of 340 speakers, including more than 80 different utilities/TSOs/DSOs/DNOs from 28 countries have at-tended our past seven Energy Storage World Forums.

These events took place in Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Rome and London bringing together an in-ternational array of speakers combined with local knowledge.

ContactTel: +44 208 09 016 13www.energystorageforum.com/asia

15th European Lead Battery Conference Valetta, MaltaSeptember 13-16

15ELBC will provide an ideal oppor-tunity for those involved with the lead battery industry worldwide to review and discuss the most recent technical advances associated with lead-based batteries, especially for automotive and renewable energy storage applications.

Technical presentations will bring delegates fully up-to-date with the lat-est research and development informa-tion from around the globe. An exten-sive Exhibition – expected to involve over 100 stands – by suppliers to the industry of equipment, materials and technology, will also take place.

Since the first meeting in Paris in 1988, the European Lead Battery Con-ferences have developed a reputation for high quality presentations on the design, manufacture, performance and use of lead-acid batteries. Over 700 delegates and 100 exhibitors attended 14ELBC in Edinburgh 2014 and simi-larnumbersareexpectedinMalta.

ContactInternational Lead AssociationTel: +44 207 833 8090Fax: +44 207 833 1611Email: [email protected]

AIREC — Argentinian Renewable Energy CongressBuenos Aires, ArgentinaSeptember 21-23

ANDREC Week will combine intimate networking opportunities alongside expert-led local content and insights to help delegates break into the potentially lucrative markets of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

The Andes is an up and coming re-gion for the development of renewable energy, with great potential for solar and wind development.

Contact+44 20 7099 0600www.greenpowerglobal.com

Clean Energy LiveOctober 4-6Birmingham, UK

The UK’s largest solar and storage Expo is back and we’re delighted to announce that Solar Energy UK (SEUK) has evolved into the core component of a broader, support-ing exhibition — Clean Energy Live, where converging technologies in-cluding solar, energy storage, energy management and renewable heat will connect.

Evolving from the roof to smart building and centralised to distrib-uted energy, SEUK and Clean Energy Live will integrate solar alongside compatible technologies, opening up new market segments and bring whole building energy solutions to the mainstream.

Clean Energy Live continues to be the premier UK event for the conver-gence of new technologies.

Contacthttp://cleanenergylive.co.uk

TheMENAregionispredestinedasalocation for solar energy production. With some of the highest solar irradi-ance levels in the world, large open spaces and an increasing demand for energy, experts verify the high growth potential of the region’s solar industry.

The organizers of Intersolar, the world’s leading exhibition and confer-ence for the solar industry, have been active in the Gulf region for the past three years. In 2016 the organizers are teamingupwithDMGeventsMiddleEast and Asia to organize Intersolar MiddleEastinconjunctionwithGulf-Sol.WithDubai,IntersolarMiddleEast

has secured the ideal venue to reach all of the Gulf States as well as emerging solar markets such as Egypt, Jordan,

andMorocco.The event’s exhibitionand conference both focus on the ar-eas of photovoltaics, PV production technologies, energy storage and solar thermal technologies. Intersolar Middle East offers you

the best possibilities to network with policy makers and government of-ficials from the MENA region. In-crease your profits at one of the most lucrative emerging solar markets and benefit from direct access to key buy-ers fromacross theMiddleEast andNorthern Africa!

ContactSusanne BregazziTel: +49 7231-58598-0Fax: +49 7231-58598-28www.intersolar.ae

Dubai, United Arab Emirates • September 19-21

Intersolar Middle East 2016



Energy Storage, North AmericaSan Diego, California, USAOctober 4-6

Energy Storage North America is North America’s largest energy storage con-ference and exhibition, recognized and recommended for its focus on projects, customers,anddeal-making.Morethan2,000 attendees from dozens of countries will come together to learn, strategize, network, and ultimately shape this fast-growing market.

The theme this year is Building the Eco-system for Cost Effective Applications of Energy Storage in North America

ContactDaniela Knoll E-mail: [email protected]: +1 312 621-5838

CIREC Week — Building Chile’s 21st Century Energy SystemSantiago, ChileOctober 17-20

CIREC WEEK is back! From October 17-20, over 600 senior level attendees will come together at Casa Piedra- San-tiago, Chile, all with the aim of driving the marketplace forward.

CIREC has been design to provide you with the best insights into coping with an evolving market, while offering the knowledge and a platform to build business relationships and make effective commercial decisions for future project development.

Contact+44 20 7099 0600www.greenpowerglobal.com

INTELEC 2016 Austin, Texas, USAOctober 23-27

INTELEC has an extensive 35-year histo-ry in the field of power and energy in the communications industry and is a unique source of technical information. It is an annual conference which examines and analyzes the latest developments in com-munications energy systems and related power processing devices and circuits.

Technical papers provide results of re-search and new developments in power electronics and communications power systems.

Topics include DC power plants, pow-ering architectures, AC systems, DC-DC converters, batteries, grounding, physical and thermal design, alternative power, such as solar, wind, fuel cells, turbine and diesel engine generators, and building and equipment cooling systems.

ContactTel: +1 512 343 2626www.intelec2016.org

Energy 2016 is back for its second year at the Birmingham NEC as part of UK Construction Week.

Already backed by leading industry bodies such as the REA (Renewable Energy Association), the STA (Solar Trade Association), BPVA (British Photovoltaic Association), the EMA(Energy Managers Association), theElectrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) and many more,

Energy 2016 will unite key busi-ness players in renewables, innova-tion and power generation. Bringing together engineers, project and en-ergy managers, developers, architects and academics, the show will be the perfect platform to showcase new so-lutions, meet new contacts and learn new skills.

Energy 2016 supporter, REA will shape the majority of the show’s edu-cational content and host three half-day conferences in a purpose built seminar theatre.

The talks will uncover recent devel-opments within energy storage and focus the other half day on renewable energy for the built environment. As the organization that has promoted sustainable energy usage and high-lighted key improvements to the ca-pacity market, the REA is a leading voice in the renewables conversation. The conferences will provide essential information to help the sector work together and pre-empt future difficul-ties.

Energy 2016 will now span two halls of the NEC and play host to sev-eral feature areas. Central to the space will be the Energy Hub, a dynamic platform for the show’s comprehen-sive seminar content. Incorporating a mix of live debates, CPD seminars, keynote speeches and workshops, the Energy Hub content will address the core issues in the industry today

as well as give insight into the latest regulations, policies and technologies.

Another area that is certain to gar-ner attention will be the central bar, which will be lit up by Pavegen’s in-novative solar flooring. This technol-ogy converts energy from footsteps into renewable electricity and is inte-grated into the tiles discreetly.

Energy 2016 will also host a VIP lounge bringing a string of high pro-file buyers and visitors to the show.

The Energy 2016 VIP section will be located within the show’s footprint offering exhibitors the unique oppor-tunity to interact with some of the biggest players in the industry.

Nathan Garnett, events director at Media10–theorganisersofEnergy2016 and UK Construction Week, said: “The energy sector is one of the most important and dynamic indus-tries in the UK. Especially with REA’s involvement this year with three workshops on energy storage, this show can play a key role in the de-velopment of a greener, smarter and more efficient Britain.”

Some of the exhibitors already signed up to the show include util-ity provider Scottish Power, global renewable energy provider RES Ltd, energy storage pioneers Cumulus En-ergy Storage and smart flooring ex-perts Pavegen.

Energy 2016 is free to attend and is part of UK Construction Week.. UKCW consists of nine shows under one roof, Timber Expo, Build Show, CivilsExpo,Plant&MachineryLive,Energy 2016, Smart Buildings 2016, Surface & Materials Show, HVAC2016 and Grand Designs Live.

ContactMarlon Cera-MarleTel: +44 203 225 5299Email: [email protected]

Birmingham, UK • October 18-20

Energy 2016



Capture 2016Milton Keynes, EnglandNovember 1

Capture 2016 will address the role for energy storage in the new energy infra-structure and consider the latest devel-opments, strategies and opportunities within UK energy storage. Through a combination of conference discussions and networking the event will provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss key debates and accelerate growth within the UK energy storage industry.

The conference will address the cur-rent status of the industry and provide a strategic overview of the develop-ment needed to enable energy storage technology to flourish in the UK. Cap-ture 2016 will also feature a break-out exhibition showcasing the latest tech-nologies and solutions from across the energy storage industry. The exhibition will also host networking throughout the course of the day, bringing together government officials, project develop-ers, operators, utilities and investors

with manufacturers and system provid-ers. For more information on attend-ing, exhibiting or sponsoring please get in touch with Eric Lewis, Sales at CharlesMaxwellLtd.

ContactTel: +44 151 230 2106Email: [email protected]

BIRECSão Paulo, BrazilNovember 7-10

Seizing the opportunity and overcom-ing challenges in Brazil’s high-risk high-reward renewable energy sector: higher returns, more investment and optimised project development. BIREC is the must-attend event for domestic and in-ternational decision makers looking to develop, grow and succeed in the Brazil-ian wind and solar energy markets.

ContactTel: +44 20 7099 0600www.greenpowerglobal.com

Energy Storage Summit, Japan Tokyo, JapanNovember 8-9

To achieve low-carbon, sustainable so-cieties, the production and storage of renewable energies is a subject which is of concern to scientists, politicians, and businesses all over the world. It is for this reason thatMesseDüsseldorfJapan will hold the 3rd Energy Storage Summit Japan, an international confer-ence and expo on November 8-9, 2016, at Belle Salle Shibuya First in Tokyo.

The Energy Storage Summit Japan 2016 brings — again — together lead-ing international company representa-tives, policymakers and scientists from Europe, the US, India and China with their Japanese counterparts. They will discusse energy market deregulation and explore business opportunities this presents for Japan.

Additional topics cover energy stor-age applications like e-mobility, resi-dential and industrial batteries, hy-drogen storage, thermal storage, and solutions for renewable energy integra-tion, smart grid, micro grid, off grid and decentralized energy supply, as well as the cost efficiency and bankabil-ity of energy storage solutions.

ContactTel.: +81 3 52 10 99 51Fax: +81 3 52 10 99 59Email: [email protected]://essj.messe-dus.co.jp/jp/energy-storage-summit-japan

ees India (electrical energy storage) is the major platform for storage tech-nologies reshaping India’s energy sec-tor and enhancing grid reliability

ees is the industry hotspot for sup-pliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electri-cal energy storage solutions. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technolo-gies — from components and produc-tion to specific user application — ees, a special exhibition at Intersolar India, is the ideal platform for all stakehold-ers in the rapidly growing energy stor-age market.

In conjunction with Intersolar India, it is the country’s largest exhibition and conference for the solar industry. It takes place annually at the Bombay

Exhibition Centre in Mumbai. Theevent’s exhibition and conference both focus on the areas of photovoltaics, PV production technologies, energy storage and solar thermal technolo-gies.

In 2015, 200 international exhibi-tors and around 11,000 visitors at-tended Intersolar India. Some 100 speakers and about 680 attendees discussed current industry topics and shed light on the conditions surround-ing technological, market and political developments at the accompanying conference.

ContactTel: +49 7231 58598 0Email: [email protected]

Mumbai, India • October 19-21

ees India



IranREC 2016: Iran Renewable Energy CongressTehran, IranDecember 4-8

Iran Renewable Energy Congress 2016 (IranREC 2016) is designed to help you access the Iranian renewable en-ergy sector.

A need for greater energy security, falling global oil and gas prices and rising domestic power demand has led to a committed focus on renewable en-ergy development in Iran. The Iranian government and policy makers have set an ambitious renewable energy target of 5GW by 2020.

Following the sanctions relief com-ing into effect and Iran re-entering the international trade and financial markets now is the time to coordinate your strategy for this new renewables market. Our high quality, content lead programme will provide in-depth analysis of the prospects in the Iranian renewables space and highlight best practice in project development and financing.

IranREC 2016 is truly the first and only event dedicated to bringing the in-ternational and domestic communities together to discuss the critical challeng-es and issues facing Iran’s clean energy sector, backed up by the expertise you need to navigate the business landscape and the government figures that will be driving the reform.

IranREC 2016 is not a trade show and is not open to the general public. This will be reflected in the lev-els of senior decision-makers and bud-get holders who will attend.

Don’t miss this chance to capitalise on the country’s growing commitment to green energy – 5GW of electricity from renewable sources by 2020!

ContactTel: +44 20 7099 0600

Solar Asset Management is Solar-plaza’s flagship event and widely con-sidered as Europe’s leading confer-ence dedicated to optimization of the operational phase of PV plants and portfolios

For the third year in a row, Solar AssetManagementEuropewillbringtogether the leading investors, owners and service providers in the European PV industry. The event provides an unparalleled networking opportunity, as well as the best way to learn about innovations and best practices for op-timizing performance, management and financial returns of PV assets.

This must-attend event is fully ded-

icated to the operational phase of PV assets. It will contain:• 400+ attendees, representing the

value chain from service provider to asset manager and investors

• 50+leadingexpertsonstageshar-ing their vision, expertise and expe-rience

• 30+ sponsors and exhibitors pro-filing themselves and their leading products/services

ContactStefano Cruccu Email: [email protected] KhachatryanEmail: [email protected]

Milan, Italy • November 9-10

Solar Asset Management Europe 2016



US Energy Storage Summit 2016San Francisco, USADecember 7-8

Now in its second year, the US En-ergy Storage Summit — organized by the Energy Storage Association — will bring together utilities, finan-ciers, regulators, technology innova-tors, and storage practitioners for two full days of data-intensive presenta-tions, analyst-led panel sessions with industry leaders, and extensive high-level networking.

We will kick-off the event with an overview of the current energy stor-age market on both sides of the meter, examining utility strategies, policies, and market designs. On Day 2, we’ll take a closer look at emerging tech-nologies, business models and financ-ing strategies.

ContactTel: +1 202 293-0537Email: [email protected]

Powergeneration WeekOrlando, Florida, USADecember 11-15

As the world’s largest power genera-tion event, boasting 20,000 attend-ees and over 1,400 exhibitors from around the world, Power Genera-tion Week is designed to connect key suppliers and service providers with influential decision makers in the do-mestic and international power sec-tor. Attendees and exhibitors can take advantage of attending an event that truly covers every aspect of the power generation industry.

Over 300 industry experts will pres-ent new solutions and innovations for the future in 70+ conference sessions offering full conference attendees a chance to earn 10 PDH credit hours.

ContactTel: +1 888 299-8016 Tel: +1 918 831-9160

Energy Storage, India 2017Mumbai, IndiaJanuary 11-13, 2017

Deliberations at Energy Storage India 2016 demonstrated a wider consen-sus that energy storage is the game changing technology that will help India leapfrog its energy infrastruc-ture within the next decade.

Leading ESS companies of the world – AES & Panasonic unveiled huge in-terest in the Indian market with their participation at Energy Storage India 2015.

There are exciting times ahead for energy storage in India!

The 2016 conference attracted 720 delegates from 16+ countries. 80+ speakers shared their knowledge and

views with the participants leaving a prominent image of the show. ESI yet again proved to be the largest and finest gathering ever held in In-dia showcasing the niche topics and discussions.

ContactMs Shradha MalikE-mail: [email protected]: +91 11 4855 0059Cell: +91-9871192345www.esiexpo.inwww.md-india.com

Disclaimer: Our editorial board necessarily vets every article that we print and will impartially approve pieces that it believes will be interesting and supportive of the energy storage industry and related products. Articles submitted should not be marketing pieces.

The first is our section called COMMENT — which rather says it all. Here give us your views about what our industry is doing well (or badly) or just needs to open a discussion, this is where to air your views.

The second is called CONFERENCE IN PRINT. Here we’re looking for scholarly articles looking at the nuts and bolts of what we do. We’re looking for technical papers that can explain advances in chemistry or technology.

Energy Storage Journal is always eager to hear market comment.

Contact: [email protected]

So much so, we’ve dedicated two areas of the magazine just for you to tell it as it is.

Want to get your message across — for free?

Speak to us!

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18–20 OCTOBER 2016 • NEC • BIRMINGHAM

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

18–20 OCTOBER 2016 • NEC • BIRMINGHAM

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ESJ Summer issue