Sonoma Clean Power Program Helps Commercial Customers Navigate Storage Options
June 23, 2020
California community choice aggregator Sonoma Clean Power (SCP) has developed a program under which commercial customers can receive a complimentary backup energy audit.
SCP said the audit can help these customers to answer the following questions:
* Whether battery storage is financially feasible;
* How much storage would be needed to power critical electrical loads during a power shutoff; and
* How storage could be integrated into existing operations to benefit their business throughout the year.
The CCA said that as investor-owned utility Pacific Gas & Electric’s Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events become regular occurrences for communities in California, “and as natural disasters such as wildfires intensify, having a reliable source of backup power has become a necessity for nearly every business.”
That is why SCP developed the Energy Resiliency Audit Program (ERAP).
ERAP will help businesses have a better understanding of their backup energy options, including more sustainable options such as battery storage. Battery-stored energy is cleaner, safer, and quieter to use than gas powered generators, and can also help lower a site’s overall electric costs.
SCP has partnered with the Center for Sustainable Energy, a nonprofit energy program administration and advisory services organization, to connect local businesses with energy experts and engineers who will evaluate businesses’ operations and advise the best steps to take moving forward.
An ERAP audit will provide the information needed to implement a solution to improve resiliency during PSPS events, develop a cost-saving strategy which may lower electricity bills, and estimate the cost of installing commercial battery storage.
Small and medium commercial customers, essential businesses, and businesses that were impacted by prior PSPS events are all eligible to participate in the program for free.
Omaha Public Power District Wins Grant For Its First Utility Scale Storage Project
June 22, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
Posted June 22, 2020
The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) has won a $600,000 grant to fund a pilot project that would be the first utility scale battery energy storage device on the utility’s system.
The grant, from the Nebraska Environmental Trust, included matching funds from OPPD. Together, those funds are being used to build an approximately 1 megawatt (MW) battery at an OPPD substation.
The aim of the pilot project is to test how battery storage can be integrated into OPPD’s grid to provide load relief and voltage support at the substation level.
“This is a very big deal and the grant helps us accelerate our utility scale storage efforts,” Michal Lisowyj, alternative energy specialist at OPPD, said in an article in The Wire, OPPD’s newsletter. “We want to understand how various use cases and recurring cycling degrades the battery, much like a cell phone battery that doesn’t hold the same charge over time.”
OPPD said the battery would be small enough to fit in a storage container, enabling the public power utility to perform research that could be beneficial for its operations and customers, as well as for other utilities in Nebraska.
In addition, OPPD says the research gleaned in the pilot project will help it understand the procurement, construction, and operations of small energy-storage applications and how to scale for potential future applications.
“Given changes to OPPD’s generation mix – adding more variable renewable resources and retiring conventional resources – and grid operations, we see energy storage as a valuable technology in the future,” Courtney Kennedy, manager of alternative energy programs at OPPD, said via email.
“As costs come down, policies are being developed, and technology is evolving. We see now as the right time to test out the technology on a smaller scale to understand its opportunities and challenges to integrating it in our operations.”
For the past 10 years, OPPD has been growing its renewable energy portfolio, which has been primarily wind generation with smaller amounts of landfill gas, community solar, and hydroelectric power.
The public power utility is in the process of adding between 400 MW and 600 MW of solar power and natural gas backup to meet load growth and maintain system resiliency.
OPPD has set of goal of having net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and is studying several initiatives to meet that target.
Nebraska Environmental Trust is funded by Nebraska Lottery proceeds. The organization says it has awarded more than $320 million in conservation projects in the state since 1994.
NPPD solar project tied to storage
Another public power utility, Nebraska Public Power District, has also been pursuing energy storage.
In 2019, the City Council for Norfolk, Neb., approved an agreement for the state’s largest community solar project with NPPD that will be tied to a battery energy storage system (BESS) demonstration project expected to be in operation by mid-2020.
APPA storage tracker
The American Public Power Association recently launched a Public Power Energy Tracker, which is a resource for association members that summarizes energy storage projects undertaken by members that are currently online.
The tracker is available here.
Company Plans to Build 15 Utility-Scale Storage Plants in Texas
June 15, 2020
by Peter Maloney
APPA News
Posted June 15, 2020
Independent power producer Broad Reach Power plans to build 15 utility-scale battery storage plants totaling 150 megawatts (MW) in areas near Houston and Odessa, Texas.
The Houston-based company is building the storage plants on a merchant basis “on our balance sheet” and aims to sell the output into the wholesale power market run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Steve Vavrik, managing partner and CEO, said.
The company is also targeting public power utilities, retail electricity providers and even individual large industrial customers to enter into financial contracts that can help ensure those entities a reliable and predictably priced stream of electric power.
“We are essentially selling risk management products with a fleet of batteries behind us,” Vavrik said.
Vavrik anticipates that much of his sales into ERCOT will be in the ancillary services market where batteries can sell power in microbursts to balance out the intermittency of renewable resources on Texas’ grid.
Texas leads the nation in wind power with over 29,000 MW of installed wind turbines. Solar power is also gaining ground in Texas with ERCOT reporting 1,500 MW of installed utility scale solar projects and 4,300 MW of solar projects, out of 40,000 MW under study, that have already signed interconnection agreements and could be in service by year end.
“Power is getting cheaper and cleaner in Texas,” Vavrik said. The problem, he said, is matching supply and demand, not just when renewable output declines but also when it overproduces.
Batteries can inject power into the grid when the wind dies, but they can also absorb power when there is more than enough wind power to meet load. That gives Broad Reach Power more flexibility in designing financial products, such as swaps, that can allow energy providers and consumers to better manage their energy budgets. There are more risks to reliability, “so grid players have to come up with new risk management tools,” Vavrik said.
Though he declined to name individual utilities, Broad Reach Power is approaching large public power utilities in Texas, as well as retail electric providers, that want more certainty and predictability in the cost of wholesale power that they buy.
“Peak demand in ERCOT is at about the same level it was before the pandemic,” Vavrik said. “All municipalities are facing this challenge.” In addition, large technology companies are seeking sites for facilities or data centers and, often, they want the assurance that their power supply will not only be reliable but clean. A financial instrument that can pair price stability with Texas’ low emission generation mix is a strong selling point for those companies. And, for public power utilities, it could be a “real opportunity” for economic development, Vavrik said.
Despite the large amount of wind power on its system, energy storage has been slow to take hold in ERCOT. States that have legislated energy storage mandates have taken the lead in energy storage, but Vavrik is bullish on the Texas energy storage market.
“Texas is designed to be very open to private ownership,” and is not subject to federal regulation, Vavrik said. More specifically, the transmission of electric energy occurring wholly within ERCOT is not subject to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s jurisdiction under sections 203, 205, or 206 of the Federal Power Act.
“ERCOT has been leaning into this. We are working with them to change the rules.”
As of January 2019, ERCOT reported 89 MW of operating utility-scale battery resources in its region. As of December 2019, there were interconnection requests submitted for 7,214 MW of battery capacity in ERCOT’s queue.
Broad Reach Power expects six of its planned energy storage plants to be in operation this summer with the other nine under construction by this fall.
The company is also planning more similarly sized projects, as well as larger storage projects, in Texas’ Panhandle and Rio Grande Valley regions and has some early stage storage projects under way in California and solar and storage projects in Montana.
Broad Reach Power says it has begun the development or construction of nearly $100 million of storage assets since it was formed in July 2019. The company has financial backing from EnCap Investments, Yorktown Partners, and Mercuria Energy.