CAISO board moves to integrate storage resources and improve reliability for fall 2021
November 23, 2020
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
November 23, 2020
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) Board of Governors last week adopted market tools that it said will help integrate new battery storage resources and improve overall reliability for next fall.
The board’s approval of Hybrid Resources Phase 2 was expedited to accommodate more than 1,500 megawatts of storage capacity expected to connect to the grid by the end of next year.
The storage capacity is part of California’s procurement goal of 3,300 MW of battery resources by 2023 to help replace retiring fossil fuel generation.
The proposal adopted by the board:
- Allows hybrid storage resources to provide energy and ancillary services to help maintain the reliability of the transmission system. Additionally, the hybrid resource owners will use a newly developed tool that gives grid operators visibility into the amount of energy these hybrid energy resources can provide in real-time;
- Expands the functionality of co-located batteries by allowing such storage resources to provide grid reliability services; and
- Requires both hybrid and co-located storage resources to provide the battery’s maximum output data to help with forecasting and improve operators’ visibility into the resource during the day.
In related news, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 19 adopted CAISO’s Hybrid Resources Phase 1 tariff.
FERC’s order responded to a September filing made by the grid operator. In that filing, CAISO proposed revisions to its open access transmission tariff regarding modeling separate resources that are co-located at a single generating facility, and data requirements for hybrid resources that include a wind or solar generation component.
The Board of Governors approved the first phase of the Hybrid Resources proposal at its July 27 meeting.
Implementation of Phase 1 is scheduled for fall 2020.
Energy Northwest, partners bring solar-battery project online
November 17, 2020
by Ethan Howland
APPA News
November 17, 2020
Energy Northwest and its partners started operating Washington State’s first utility scale solar-plus-battery project.
The Horn Rapids Solar, Storage and Training Project, which includes 4 megawatts of solar and a 1-MW/4-megawatt-hours vanadium flow battery, came online this month.
The City of Richland, Wash., where the project is located, will buy electricity from the project.
Excess electricity from the solar panels will be stored by the battery system for later use, according to Energy Northwest, a joint action agency serving public power utilities with 1.5 million customers.
The battery storage component will help smooth the project’s solar output, support energy time shifting with peak demand reduction, offer demand side management options, and provide voltage and var support, according to the project’s developers.
Tucci Energy Services, a Seattle-based company, owns and operates the solar portion of the poject. Energy Northwest owns and operates the battery storage system.
“This project will provide clean and reliable power to families in this community while showcasing the role utility-scale solar and battery projects can play in our statewide energy strategy moving forward,” said Mary Tucci, Tucci Energy Services chief operating officer.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, and the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute will monitor and analyze data from the project to evaluate the financial benefits of incorporating battery energy storage, Energy Northwest said.
The information will be used to improve battery designs and develop tools for incorporating intermittent renewables onto the grid more reliably and economically, according to Energy Northwest.
The facility also houses a training program for solar and battery storage technicians. The program will be run and managed by Potelco Inc., an electric utility contracting firm based in Sumner, Wash.
Energy Northwest expects hundreds of workers from across the United States will use the training facility a year.
The roughly $6.5 million project received a $3 million grant from Washington’s Clean Energy Fund. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 77, which owns and leases the land where the project is located, worked with Energy Northwest and Potelco since 2015 to develop the project.
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to build storage systems
November 9, 2020
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
November 9, 2020
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is preparing to build four new battery energy storage systems.
The agency’s board of directors in October voted to authorize $2.2 million to design the battery systems at water treatment plants in Granada Hills, La Verne and Riverside’s Temecula Valley as well as a pump station in Lake Forest.
The systems will boost the district’s energy resilience and cut operational costs by optimizing solar power and reducing peak load at its facilities, it noted in a news release.
With completion expected in mid-2022, the projects will allow Metropolitan to store excess power to use during peak periods.
The energy storage systems will be built with a microgrid configuration, meaning they can be connected to the larger electricity grid, or function independently to continue powering the facilities during a grid outage, Metropolitan noted.
The projects at Metropolitan’s Jensen, Weymouth and Skinner plants, along with its OC-88 pump station, also are in line with Metropolitan’s Energy Sustainability Plan. The plan identifies ways to contain energy costs, move toward energy independence and reduce price volatility through cost-effective alternative energy projects.
The projects are estimated to cost $11-12 million. However, Metropolitan said that through energy savings and incentives from the California Public Utilities Commission, Metropolitan is expected to recoup its costs within three years.
“Over the last decade, Metropolitan has invested about $28 million in solar power systems at the Jensen, Weymouth, Skinner plants and our Diamond Valley Lake Visitors Center to reduce our operational costs, protect against energy market price increases and cut our carbon footprint,” said Metropolitan Chief Engineer John Bednarski in the news release. “These battery energy storage systems take our commitment a step further – allowing us to store excess energy generated during peak solar hours for later use.”
The four Metropolitan sites identified for the energy storage systems were selected because of their on-site solar power generation, their location within high-threat fire districts and/or their location in low-income/disadvantaged communities, conditions for approval for the CPUC incentives.
The American Public Power Association this year launched a Public Power Energy Storage Tracker, which is a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.
Utility scale battery costs down about 70%, according to the EIA
October 27, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
October 27, 2020
The costs of utility scale battery storage in the United States fell about 70% between 2015 and 2018, according to data compiled by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a part of the Department of Energy.
The average energy capacity cost of utility-scale battery storage went from $2,152 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in 2015 to $625/kWh in 2018, according to the EIA. The agency noted, however, that costs vary widely by region and by application.
Regionally, average utility scale battery costs between 2013 and 2018 ranged from $1,946/kWh in the PJM Interconnection to as low as $947/kWh in Hawaii. And in California, which had the most battery capacity of any state in 2019, average battery storage cost was $1,522/kWh.
In its analysis, the EIA grouped cost data into regions based on regional transmission organizations and independent system operators and aggregated entities to avoid disclosing confidential information.
Battery storage costs are usually published in terms of energy capacity, that is, cost per kilowatt hour or the total amount of energy that can be stored by a battery. But costs can also be expressed in terms of power capacity, or cost per kilowatt. Power capacity is the maximum amount of power a battery can provide at a given point in time. In power capacity cost terms, short-duration batteries cost less than long-duration batteries. In energy capacity cost terms, long-duration batteries are less expensive.
In PJM where most batteries are used for frequency regulation, there is an emphasis on shorter duration batteries rather than batteries capable of discharging over longer periods of time. That makes power capacity installed costs a better indicator of price for value in PJM, EIA said.
About two-thirds of battery storage capacity in California is used for frequency regulation. Batteries in the state also provide ancillary services, black start service and are used to help ease transmission congestion, EIA added.
At the end of 2018, the United States had 869 megawatts (MW) of installed battery power capacity and 1,236 megawatt hours (MWh) of battery energy capacity. In 2019, there was 152 MW of battery storage capacity installed in the United States and another 301 MW added through July 2020, according to EIA data.
The EIA expects battery storage to increase by more than 6,900 MW in the next few years with about 2,300 MW of that total being reported April and June. Large battery storage systems are increasingly being paired with renewable energy plants to increase grid reliability and resilience, EIA noted.
Just before the EIA published its data on Oct. 23, investment bank Lazard released its annual report on energy storage costs.
Lazard’s latest annual Levelized Cost of Storage Analysis (LCOS 6.0) shows that storage costs have declined across most use cases and technologies, particularly for shorter-duration applications, in part driven by evolving preferences in the industry regarding battery chemistry.
Calif. PUC votes to provide storage incentives for low-income customers
October 26, 2020
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
October 26, 2020
The California Public Utilities Commission on Oct. 22 revised its Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) to increase focus on supporting energy storage for low income customers and communities, medically vulnerable customers and facilities that provide critical services.
Specifically, the CPUC approved $108.5 million in additional funding for the SGIP “Equity Budget.” This funding provides incentives for customers who install energy storage systems and who are low-income residents or local governments, schools, nonprofits, or small business customers located in disadvantaged or low-income communities, or in Indian Country.
The CPUC noted that after it authorized increased incentive amounts for the Equity Budget in late 2019, customer demand for the program greatly increased. All authorized funding was quickly allocated and waiting lists were created.
Last week’s decision does not increase the absolute amount of funding for SGIP, but transfers funds to the Equity Budget from funding set aside for general large-scale storage projects, i.e., non-residential storage systems installed by customers that are not low-income or located in disadvantaged or low-income communities.
After the transfer of funds, the general large-scale storage budget will still have funding available for future projects.
The proposal voted on by the state utility commission is available here.
The SGIP was established in 2001 to increase deployment of distributed generation and energy storage systems to facilitate the integration of those resources into the electrical grid, improve efficiency and reliability of the distribution and transmission system, and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, peak demand, and ratepayer costs.
Additional information about the SGIP is available here.
California community choice aggregators issue RFO for long-duration storage
October 20, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
October 20, 2020
Eight Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) in California late last week launched a joint request for offers (RFO) to procure up to 500 megawatts (MW) of long-duration energy storage.
The RFO was issued on Oct. 16 by Central Coast Community Energy, CleanPowerSF, Marin Clean Energy, Peninsula Clean Energy, Redwood Coast Energy Authority, San Jose Clean Energy, Silicon Valley Clean Energy, and Sonoma Clean Power.
The CCAs are looking to sign a minimum 10-year contract for grid-charged technologies in the form of one or more projects that would come online by or before 2026 with a minimum discharge period of eight hours. Responses to the RFO are due by Dec. 1.
“By working together, the eight CCAs are able to procure large-scale projects that would be challenging for one CCA to procure on its own,” Girish Balachandran, CEO of Silicon Valley Clean Energy, said in a statement. “Collaborating on this long-duration storage solution allows the CCAs to manage financial and technology risks while still diversifying portfolios with cost-effective and innovative resources.”
The CCAs say long-duration energy storage will do more to help support higher concentrations of renewable energy on the grid. Most of the energy storage devices deployed to date have durations of about four hours, which can provide energy for a few hours in the evening after solar power resources fade.
The CCAs are looking for long-duration storage that would be able to charge from the grid when renewable resources are at their peak and discharge for eight to 16 hours when renewable production is lower.
A recently released preliminary analysis by the California Independent System Operator, the California Public Utilities Commission, and California Energy Commission into the root causes of the state’s Aug. 14 and 15 rotating outages found that the simultaneous decline of solar power and rise of demand in the evening has resulted “multiple critical periods during the day” rather than a single peak. The report recommended the procurement of more resources, including energy storage, and changes to the state policies to address the new challenge of “net peak demand.”
The CCAs say the addition of long-duration storage to their portfolios will aid renewable integration on the grid while advancing California’s aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2030.
Earlier in 2020, the joint CCAs issued a Request for Information for long-duration storage and received more than 58 project entries with 14 different technologies, which they said signaled “significant supplier interest.”
The RFO is available here.
The American Public Power Association has initiated a new category of membership for community choice aggregation programs.
Energy storage Q2 deployments sees second-highest quarterly total on record
September 8, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
September 8, 2020
A total of 168 megawatts (MW) were deployed in the second quarter, a 72% increase from the previous quarter and a 117% increase over the same quarter last year.
The increase in year-over-year energy storage installations is the second highest quarterly total recorded, falling just behind the 186.4 MW installed in fourth-quarter 2019, according to Wood Mackenzie and U.S. Energy Storage Association’s (ESA) third quarter 2020 US Energy Storage Monitor report.
The increases came amidst lockdowns and slower business activity as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.
At the outset of the COVID-19 crisis, Wood Mackenzie and ESA lowered their energy storage outlook for 2020, forecasting a 44% decline in commercial and industrial installations and a 39% decrease in residential installations compared with pre-pandemic expectations.
The non-residential energy storage market did decline by 7% quarter-over-quarter, to 29.5 MW, but still booked its fifth-highest level of quarterly deployments because of a surge of installations in Massachusetts, according to the report.
The residential storage sector, however, exceeded expectations in the second quarter with 48.7 MW (112 megawatt-hours) installed in the second quarter, a 10% increase from the previous quarter and a 28% year-over-year increase, which shows that California and Hawaii are moving ahead with installations through coronavirus lockdowns, according to the report.
The increase in residential storage installations is notable because home batteries are almost always sold as an add-on to rooftop solar, and the leading rooftop solar installations fell in second quarter.
Several leading installers saw solar deployments drop by 20% from the first quarter to the second quarter, the report noted. “Even as the solar market has slowed down slightly, the pairing rate for storage continues to grow,” Daniel Finn-Foley, energy storage director at Wood Mackenzie and an author of the report, said in a statement.
The biggest increase in quarterly energy storage installations came from the front-of-the-meter (FTM) sector, which includes utility scale storage projects. The US FTM market grew more than fourfold compared with the first quarter, hitting its fifth-best quarterly total, 89.8 MW, and the largest second quarter total, the report found.
The authors of the report noted that the FTM sector tends to be volatile because large projects can contribute disproportionately to totals. The second quarter was no exception. A single FTM project came partially online in California, accounting for more than two-thirds of the total FTM installations in the quarter.
The first phase of LS Power’s Gateway energy storage project in the East Otay Mesa community in San Diego County came online in June, adding 62.5 MW to the grid. The full 250 MW capacity of the project is expected online in the third quarter, which should help boost total installations for the year. “We expect the rest of the year to come in strong as growing interest in residential storage, emerging new markets for C&I and massive FTM systems are set to break quarterly records,” Finn-Foley said.
“The year is going to close out in a big way,” Finn-Foley said. “We’re going to top a gigawatt of storage deployed annually for the first time in the U.S. market.”
The authors of the report expect the FTM sector will continue to make up the bulk of the market through 2025, driven by investments from vertically integrated utilities in regulated markets and by developers taking advantage of wholesale market opportunities and incentives.
The authors also expect the residential sector will continue to grow, beating 2020 installations by a factor of six in 2025, and they expect the non-residential sector will be eight times larger than the 2020 market by 2025.
The American Public Power Association has launched the Public Power Energy Storage Tracker, a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.
Construction starts on NYPA large-scale, 20-MW energy battery storage project
August 27, 2020
by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
August 27, 2020
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) on Aug. 26 announced the start of construction on a large-scale, 20-megawatt (MW) energy battery storage project in Northern New York, one of the largest such projects in the nation.
The facility, located in Franklin County at the top of the state, will advance progress toward achieving New York’s target to have 3,000 MW of energy storage deployed by 2030, NYPA noted.
The project is expected to be in service early next year.
The battery storage facility, which is located in Chateaugay, adjacent to an existing NYPA substation, will be the second of its kind in New York State — the only battery storage project that is New York State owned and operated.
The project will include a unique one-hour lithium-ion battery system that will help New York State meet its peak power needs by absorbing excess generation that can be discharged later, based upon the changing needs of the grid.
The NYPA Board of Trustees approved $23.8 million for the project in 2019 at its July 30 meeting. The total estimated project cost is $29.8 million, $6 million of which was initially approved by the NYPA board in October 2018.
NYPA said that increasing energy storage capabilities also helps to realize New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s climate change mitigation policies which aim to reduce the state’s carbon footprint to zero by 2040 and ensure that 70 percent of the state’s electricity supply comes from renewables by 2030.
The work is being undertaken by O’Connell Electric Company, Inc., of Victor, N.Y. in Ontario County in the Finger Lakes region. The firm was awarded a three-year engineering, procurement and construction contract in the amount of $22.6 million by the NYPA Board of Trustees last year in a competitive bidding process.
The project’s strategic location in Northern New York is significant in encouraging efficient, reliable renewable energy growth, NYPA said.
More than 80 percent of the region’s electricity supply comes from renewable resources, including NYPA’s St. Lawrence hydropower project and more than 650 MW of local wind generation. Having the capability to store renewable energy for later delivery also will help eliminate current transmission constraints that can prevent energy from being delivered to consumers.
The energy storage system will supply the New York wholesale energy and ancillary service markets and will contribute to the reliability of the supply of electric power in New York.
“This transformative energy storage project will enable us to integrate more renewable energy, such as hydro, wind and solar, into the New York State grid,” said Gil Quiniones, NYPA president and CEO.
“These large-scale batteries are one of the keys to growing renewables,” he said. “With these projects, we can store energy for times of high demand and give our transmission system greater flexibility and resiliency. Storing renewable energy also is critical to helping New York State meet Governor Cuomo’s aggressive clean energy targets and to fighting climate change.”
The American Public Power Association earlier this year launched the Public Power Energy Storage Tracker, a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.
DOE Issues RFI Seeking Input On Its Draft Energy Storage Roadmap
July 22, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
Posted July 22, 2020
The Department of Energy on July 14 released a Request for Information (RFI) seeking stakeholder input for its energy storage roadmap.
In January, the DOE released its Energy Storage Grand Challenge Draft Roadmap, which aims to accelerate the development, commercialization, and utilization of next-generation energy storage devices.
The goal of the program is by 2030 to create and sustain U.S. leadership in energy storage utilization and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing base and supply chain that is independent of foreign sources of critical materials.
The draft roadmap provides planned activities for each of the five tracks:
* The technology development track will focus DOE’s ongoing and future energy storage research and development around user goals and leadership;
* The manufacturing and supply chain track will develop technologies and strategies for U.S. manufacturing;
* The technology transition track will work to ensure that DOE’s R&D transitions to domestic markets through field validation, public private partnerships, bankable business model development, and the dissemination of high quality market data;
* The policy and valuation track will provide data, tools, and analysis to support policy decisions and maximize the value of energy storage; and
* The workforce development track will educate the workforce, who can then research develop, design, manufacture, and operate energy storage systems.
The DOE says that between fiscal years 2017 and 2019, it has invested over $1.2 billion into energy storage research and development, or $400 million per year, on average establishing a long-term strategy to address energy storage.
The draft roadmap also identifies six use cases that will be translated into a set of technology neutral functional requirements. The use case topics include facilitating an evolving grid, serving remote communities, electrified mobility, interdependent network infrastructure, critical services, and facility flexibility, efficiency and value enhancement.
The DOE intends to use those categories to help identify new and augmented research and development paths for a portfolio of energy storage and flexibility technologies that meet emerging needs.
The draft roadmap focuses on three key challenges that it is applying to each of the five tracks:
* Innovate Here – How can the DOE enable the United States to lead in energy storage R&D and retain intellectual property developed through DOE investment in the United States?
* Make Here – How can the DOE work to lower the cost and energy impact of manufacturing existing technologies, and strengthen domestic supply chains by reducing dependence on foreign sources of materials and components?
* Deploy Everywhere – How can the DOE work with relevant stakeholders to develop technologies that meet domestic usage needs and enable the United States to successfully deploy technologies in domestic markets, as well as export technologies?
Responses to this RFI are due Aug. 21. Interested stakeholders can view the draft roadmap and the RFI on the ESGC website.
Largest Battery Storage System In U.S. Connects To California ISO Grid
July 17, 2020
by Taelor Bentley
APPA News
Posted July 17, 2020
The California Independent System Operator (ISO) connected the largest battery storage resource in the nation to its power grid last month.
The initial phase of LS Power Group’s Gateway Energy Storage Project in San Diego County came online June 9 and added 62.5 megawatts (MW) of storage interconnection to the ISO grid.
Serving about 80% of California and a small portion of Nevada, the CAISO power grid currently has over 216 MW of storage capacity in commercial operation. If all planned projects in the interconnection queue are completed on schedule, storage capacity will jump to 923 MW by the end of 2020. Making it a six-fold increase from 136 MW at the beginning of the year.
Steve Berberich, ISO president and CEO, predicts that as much as 15,000 MW of battery storage of different duration levels and various technologies will be needed to help the state reach its goal of cutting carbon from power grids by 100% by 2045. The ISO expects large increases in its battery storage resources through 2023 based on the state’s procurement targets.
The Gateway project is a lithium-ion battery system that will have a total capacity of 250 MW when it is in full operation. The company plans for it to be fully online in August 2020, when it will reportedly be the largest operating Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in the world. The initial 62.5 MW of storage already makes it the largest BESS in the nation. Out of a total of more than 170 BESS facilities of 1 MW or more currently operating in the United States, the two second-largest are 40 MW, one each in California and Alaska.
Larger projects are also in the works in the United States, including plans for a system of more than 400 MW in Florida, and another in Nevada expected to be 380 MW.
Additional battery storage is expected to be added to the ISO market in the new few years, most notably 300 MW of a 400-MW project planned by Vistra Energy Corp. at Moss Landing in Monterey Bay, and the remaining 187.5 MW at the Gateway station.