The New York Power Authority and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority recently announced that a first-of-its-kind battery energy storage system using patented, high-safety, lithium-ion superCell technology is delivering energy peak shaving capabilities to NYPA’s White Plains, N.Y., offices, as part of a demonstration project.

The BESS developed by Cadenza Innovation allows NYPA to demonstrate a peak energy demand shaving function that reduces the peak electricity load typical of a commercial building, NYPA said.

The BESS can supply building power at desired demand times and includes the ability to function in a peak shaving mode.

NYPA noted that this can achieve cost reductions for building/site owners, primarily by arbitrage, storing lower cost energy absorbed at time periods of lower power demand and delivering that energy at time periods of higher cost due to higher power demand, and by peak shaving, reducing a building/site maximum power demand and therefore reducing the associated utility peak demand charge.

 “This initial testing phase shows the potential for this type of battery energy storage system to serve as a model for managing energy demands and lowering costs for owners of commercial and industrial buildings,” said NYPA Acting President and CEO Justin Driscoll. “The unit is reducing peak loads at the Power Authority’s main offices, smoothing electricity network operations and showing a safety advantage by demonstrating a reduction in the potential of thermal runaway,” he said.

“Our goal is to demonstrate whether this unit will provide energy storage and power quality services on a scale that can meet commercial, industrial and network demands at buildings that are similar to ours.”

Deployed immediately adjacent to NYPA’s White Plains offices and funded in part with a $1 million award through NYSERDA’s Innovation program, the BESS was developed by Cadenza Innovation in collaboration with Hitachi Energy “to showcase the key role that energy storage can play in enhancing demand management and grid flexibility,” NYPA said.

The project at NYPA is using the energy storage system to demonstrate a peak shaving function that reduces the peak load typical of a commercial building.

The aim is for the BESS to serve as a model for integrating low-cost, safe, high-performance renewable energy resources into the grid – especially in urban areas – that can be replicated at other businesses throughout New York State and beyond.

By packaging components to lower costs and increase safety, the superCell is designed to reduce the need for additional, high-cost fire safety protection and mitigation systems — resulting in improved energy density and supporting the advancement of the Li-ion battery industry.

NYPA and Cadenza Innovation will continue to monitor and evaluate the system’s performance over the next 12 months.

A new battery design shows promise to deliver longer duration with lower costs and safer materials, according to a new report from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The report, published this month in Energy Storage Materials, tested a small, coin shaped sodium-aluminum battery. Adena Power, supplied PNNL researchers with their patented solid-state, sodium-based electrolyte to test the battery’s performance.

“Our primary goal for this technology is to enable low-cost, daily shifting of solar energy into the electrical grid over a 10- to 24-hour period,” Vince Sprenkle, a PNNL battery technology expert, said in a statement.

The test showed that the new molten salt battery design has “the potential to charge and discharge much faster than other conventional high-temperature sodium batteries, operate at a lower temperature, and maintain an excellent energy storage capacity,”

Guosheng Li, a PNNL materials scientist and the principal investigator of the research, said in a statement. “We are getting similar performance with this new sodium-based chemistry at over 100 °C [212 °F] lower temperatures than commercially available high-temperature sodium battery technologies, while using a more Earth-abundant material.”

Because the new design operates at a lower temperature, it can be manufactured with inexpensive battery materials, instead of requiring more complex and expensive components and processes as in conventional high-temperature sodium batteries, David Reed, a PNNL battery expert and co-author of the study, said in a statement. The PNNL researchers estimated that a sodium-aluminum battery design could cost as little as $7.02 per kilowatt hour for the active materials.

The new sodium-based molten salt battery uses two distinct reactions. The PNNL team previously reported a neutral molten salt reaction. The new discovery shows the neutral molten salt can undergo a further reaction into an acidic molten salt that increases the battery’s capacity, the researchers found. Specifically, they reported that after 345 charge/discharge cycles at high current, the acidic reaction mechanism retained 82.8 percent of peak charge capacity.

The tests showed that new battery design could deliver up to 11 watt hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) of discharge energy. Lithium-ion batteries used in commercial electronics and electric vehicles typically deliver an energy density of about around 170–250 Wh/kg.

However, the new sodium-aluminum battery is inexpensive and easy to produce in the United States from much abundant materials, the PNNL researchers said. It uses sodium, which is relatively abundant, and aluminum wool, a manufacturing byproduct.

The new design is a variation on the sodium-metal halide battery that has been shown effective at commercial scale and is already commercially available, but with a significant change. “We have eliminated the need for nickel, a relatively scarce and expensive element, without sacrificing battery performance,” Li said. In addition, the aluminum cathode charges more quickly than nickel, which is “crucial to enable the longer discharge duration demonstrated in this work.”

State-of-the-art for grid energy storage using lithium-ion batteries is about four hours. The new design is “especially adept at short- to medium-term grid energy storage over 12 to 24 hours,” PNNL said.

The PNNL team is now focusing on further improvements to increase the discharge duration of the new battery design to improve its ability to work in coordination with renewable power sources.

“This research demonstrates that our sodium electrolyte works not only with our patented technology but also with a sodium-aluminum battery design,” Neil Kidner, a co-author of the study and president of Adena Power, said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with the PNNL research team towards advancing sodium battery technology.”

APPA Storage Tracker

The American Public Power Association’s Public Power Energy Tracker is a resource for association members that summarizes public power energy storage projects that are currently online. The tracker is available here.

APPA Energy Storage Working Group

APPA’s Energy Storage Working Group (ESWG) is part of a cooperative agreement between APPA and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management to lower barriers to integrating battery storage with the operation of fossil fuel generation assets.

In 2022, the ESWG developed a report on energy storage challenges, solutions, and opportunities for public power.

APPA is continuing to convene members to get feedback, advice, and other input on the energy storage challenges and opportunities for integrating energy storage. The next ESWG virtual meeting is scheduled for February 23, 2023, from 2 – 3:30 PM ET. The main goal for the meeting will be to discuss the baselines for an energy storage maturity model framework.

If you are interested in joining or learning more about the Energy Storage Working Group, please contact EnergyTransition@PublicPower.org.

The U.S. Department of Energy should ensure that its implementation of funds authorized in Section 40207 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “advances a diverse portfolio of market-ready technologies that includes both lithium and non-lithium alternative battery chemistries,” a bipartisan group of Senators said in a recent letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

To date, all programmatic funding awards for IIJA Section 40207(b) were for projects related to the lithium-ion battery supply chain, the lawmakers said in their Jan. 30 letter.

“We are pleased to see this funding awarded and recognize the importance of domestic lithium-ion batteries, especially in the transportation sector. However, going forward the Department should also seek to accelerate the deployment of domestic alternative battery manufacturing for grid-scale battery energy storage, in addition to lithium-ion technologies, in line with Congressional intent,” they wrote.

Signatories to the letter were Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Angus King (I-Maine), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Shelley Capito (R-WV), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

The lawmakers noted that according to the DOE’s recent report on supply chains for grid energy storage, ensuring more than one technology and different chemistries among the options for grid energy storage systems will increase the resiliency of the overall supply chain.

In December 2022, Congress provided additional clarity and direction to the DOE via report language expressing the desire for a wide array of battery chemistries.

Click here for a recent feature in Public Power Current that details how 2023 could prove to be a key inflection point for the emergence of alternative energy storage technologies.

Texas public power utility CPS Energy has reached agreements with three companies for solar capacity, firming capacity and energy storage capacity, closing out the utility’s FlexPOWER Bundle initiative stemming from a request for proposals that was launched in 2020.

In total, the FlexPOWER Bundle will deliver 580 megawatts of solar, 50 MW of storage, and 500 MW of natural gas firming capacity.

Calpine will provide a total of approximately 500 MW of firming capacity located in Guadalupe County at the Guadalupe Energy Center. The Calpine agreement will make power available to CPS Energy in the Spring of 2023.

Ahstrom Renewable Energy, in collaboration with OnPeak Power, will provide 100 MW of the El Patrimonio solar project, which will be located in Bexar County.  The power purchase agreement is a 20-year contract with an anticipated commercial operation date of May 2025.

Additionally, as part of the agreement, Ashtrom Renewable Energy will provide community benefits, including the contribution of funds towards CPS Energy student scholarships, as well as on-site field day mentorship to local students during the construction of the facility in Bexar County. Ashtrom Renewable Energy will also grant funds towards the construction of an outdoor classroom that can be used for field trip instruction.

Eolian L.P. will provide San Antonio-based CPS Energy the exclusive right to dispatch a 50 MW, 2-hour duration energy storage project located in Bexar County. This location, combined with the operating flexibility offered by energy storage, will further improve CPS Energy system resiliency as well as customer reliability, the utility said. The agreement is a 20-year contract with an anticipated commercial operation date of December 2024.

CPS Energy will issue a new and separate RFP in the first quarter of 2023 to procure up to an additional 320 MW of solar, to include community solar proposals, to add to its generation portfolio.

In 2022, CPS Energy successfully executed agreements for 300 MW of solar capacity with Consolidated Edison Development Inc. and 180 MW with Ashtrom Renewable Energy.

While lithium-ion technology has been king of the hill when it comes to energy storage options for utilities, this year could prove to be a key inflection point for the emergence of alternative energy storage technologies in the U.S. if recent developments are any indication.

For several years, lithium-ion batteries have dominated the energy storage landscape for electric utilities, but one of the limitations of lithium-ion batteries is the limited amount of storage hours they can provide. And there have also been safety concerns raised about fires occurring at lithium-ion facilities.

There is a wide array of storage technologies that differentiate themselves from lithium ion by offering longer storage durations, which is becoming increasingly important as intermittent renewable energy sources continue to expand across the U.S. power grid.

“The value of long-duration energy storage, which helps address variability in renewable energy supply across days and seasons, is poised to grow significantly as power systems shift to larger shares of variable generation such as wind and solar,” a report posted on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory notes.

IRON FLOW BATTERIES

One of the companies making a splash in the iron flow battery space in recent months is ESS Inc. Two California public power utilities, SMUD and Burbank Water and Power, in 2022 announced agreements with ESS.

SMUD and ESS on Sept. 20, 2022 announced an agreement to provide up to 200 megawatts (MW)/2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of long duration energy storage that will be provided by ESS. The agreement calls for ESS to deliver a mix of its long-duration energy storage technology for integration with the SMUD electric grid beginning in 2023.

In November, ESS and Burbank Water and Power entered into an agreement for ESS to deliver BWP’s first utility-scale battery storage project. Under the agreement, a 75 kilowatt (kW)/500 kilowatt hour kWh ESS “Energy Warehouse” will be installed and connected to a 265 kW solar array on BWP’s EcoCampus.

The iron flow battery will support the increased use of renewable power and allow excess renewable energy to be stored and used as baseload energy for Burbank, improving the resilience and reliability of the grid.

IRON AIR AND COMPRESSED AIR BATTERIES

In late January, Form Energy announced that it had entered into definitive agreements with investor-owned Xcel Energy to deploy Form Energy’s iron-air battery systems at two of Xcel Energy’s retiring coal plant sites.

Xcel Energy–Minnesota will deploy a 10 MW/1,000 MWh multi-day storage system at the Sherburne County Generating Station in Becker, Minnesota. Xcel Energy–Colorado will deploy a 10 MW/1,000 MWh multi-day storage system at the Comanche Generating Station in Pueblo, Colorado. Both projects are expected to come online as early as 2025 and are subject to regulatory approvals in their respective states.

In December, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced that Form Energy will partner with the state of West Virginia to build its first iron-air battery manufacturing facility on 55 acres of property in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, along the Ohio River.

Meanwhile, California community choice aggregator Central Coast Community Energy in January said that it signed a 25-year power purchase agreement for a compressed air energy storage project with Hydrostor.

The nearly $1 billion power purchase agreement calls for the delivery of 200 megawatts, 1,600-megawatt hours of energy storage to 3CE from Hydrostor’s planned Willow Rock Energy Storage Center that will use the company’s Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage technology. Hydrostor says the project, when completed, will abate up to 28 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime.

Hydrodstor’s technology combines elements of a compressed air storage system with a pumped hydro system. The process stores energy as compressed air but captures and stores the heat of compression for future use. The compressed air is stored in a purpose-built underground cavern that uses a water reservoir to maintain constant pressure. The facility discharges energy by reversing the process, using the stored heat and pressure to power a conventional turbine generator. The system has no performance degradation over its 50-year plus expected lifetime, Hydrostor said.

Hydrostor said its technology offers the same services as a natural gas plant while having zero emissions because it uses surplus electricity as fuel. The company is targeting high value grid applications such as transmission deferral and fossil fuel generation replacement.

HYDROGEN

In early January, Energy Vault Holdings, Inc. and California investor-owned utility Pacific Gas and Electric announced the companies are partnering to deploy and operate a utility-scale battery plus green hydrogen long-duration energy storage system with a minimum of 293 megawatt-hours of dispatchable energy.

The system is designed to power downtown and the surrounding area of the City of Calistoga, Calif, for a minimum of 48 hours during planned outages and potential Public Safety Power Shutoffs, which is when the powerlines serving the surrounding area must be turned off for safety due to high wildfire risk.

PG&E submitted the project contract for review and approval to the California Public Utilities Commission on December 30, 2022, with a request for the issuance of a final resolution approving the project by May 15, 2023.

The energy storage system will be owned, operated and maintained by Energy Vault while providing dispatchable power under a long-term tolling agreement with PG&E.

The system’s capacity may be expanded to 700 MWh, which would allow it to operate for longer without refueling, enabling further flexibility for PG&E and the City of Calistoga.

Energy Vault’s system will replace the typical, mobile diesel generators used to energize PG&E’s Calistoga microgrid during broader grid outages.

Construction is anticipated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2023 with commercial operation expected by the end of second quarter of 2024.

Upon completion, this project is expected to be the first-of-its-kind and the largest utility-scale green hydrogen project in the United States.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power told Public Power Current that it recognizes the benefits of green hydrogen as a “power-to-gas” long-duration energy storage solution, through the use of electrolyzers, a system that uses electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called electrolysis.

LADWP was asked to provide additional details on where things currently stand in terms of LADWP’s possible pursuit of green hydrogen for storage.

As a purchaser of power produced by the Intermountain Power Project (IPP), LADWP is involved in installing two, 420 MW each, combined cycle generating units at IPP that will be capable of using hydrogen fuel (blended with natural gas) when placed in service in July 2025. The hydrogen will be produced using renewable energy and electrolyzers, and then stored in salt caverns for long-duration energy storage that can store and provide a seasonal supply of hydrogen, LADWP officials noted.

LADWP does not plan to be directly involved in the production of green hydrogen in the Los Angeles area at this time, but it will work with energy developers to implement green hydrogen projects to provide grid reliability and a zero carbon energy source.

LADWP officials said that its strategic long-term resource plan includes options for eventually purchasing green hydrogen from the market to spur development of green hydrogen capacity in the Los Angeles area.

The utility believes this technology is necessary to ensure the power system remains resilient during emergency events, such as an earthquake, wildfire, or other situations when clean dispatchable generation capacity may be necessary to maintain grid reliability and resiliency as it transitions to 100% clean energy.

LADWP officials said the utility is looking at a variety of energy storage technologies as well as green hydrogen as its transition to a 100% clean energy future.

The officials said the utility will need energy storage to mitigate the intermittent generation challenge posed by renewable resources (variable wind and solar) and to provide resources for periods of low renewable generation, high energy demand periods, and loss of generation and/or transmission lines to maintain grid reliability and resiliency.

LADWP officials point out that there are trade-offs with different technologies: Batteries are limited in their ability to store large quantities of energy economically and shift the energy beyond the daily or hourly timeframe. Pumped hydro is limited by location (it is challenging to find new sites for large hydroelectric plants) and is constrained by water availability, the officials noted.

Green hydrogen offers the potential for long-duration energy storage that uses excess renewables available in the spring when electricity demand is low to produce hydrogen for use in the summer when electricity demand is high — referred to as seasonal storage, they said. Another benefit is that, in some cases, the existing power generating units can be modified to use green hydrogen.

As the green hydrogen economy scales up, LADPW expects that it will become a viable, low-cost solution for seasonal energy storage that offers the flexibility to decarbonize the electric grid and other sectors of the economy.

Orlando Utilities Commission Explores Deployment of Long-Duration Energy Storage Facility

In early January, Florida public power utility Orlando Utilities Commission said it will explore deployment of a long-duration energy storage facility as a way in which to help achieve the utility’s net-zero carbon emission goals.

The facility will be provided by Malta Inc. Malta’s storage technology converts excess electricity into thermal energy that is stored in salt and coolant. When needed, the plant regenerates gigawatt hours of electricity for residential and commercial use.

The Malta facility would be situated at OUC’s Indian River Plant in Brevard County on Florida’s East Coast.

Malta’s more than 100-megawatt utility-scale system provides more hours of energy storage than lithium-ion batteries and could provide energy storage diversity for OUC. The increased duration facility has the potential to help OUC ensure grid reliability despite the variable nature of clean and renewable energy resources like solar.

NYPA Signs Agreement for Planned Deployment of Zinc-Air Storage System

Another public power utility pursuing long-duration energy storage technology is the New York Power Authority.

In April 2021, NYPA signed an agreement with Zinc8 Energy Solutions Inc. and the University at Buffalo for the planned deployment of Zinc8’s zinc-air energy storage system, marking a first demonstration of a long-duration use in New York State and a development that could support further integration of renewable power sources into the electric grid.

In January 2022, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that Zinc8 will relocate its $68 million manufacturing facility and U.S. headquarters to Kingston, N.Y.

Zinc8’s technology has been developed around the utilization of zinc as the anode fuel, which is expected to offer advantages over other metals due to its high energy density, abundant availability, low cost, and ease of storage and handling.

When the system is delivering power, the zinc particles are combined with oxygen drawn from the surrounding air. When the system is recharging, zinc particles are regenerated, and oxygen is returned to the surrounding air. The regenerative system does not require fuel replacement and offers scalable energy capacity through the simple introduction of additional fuel tanks.

Wisconsin Utility Pilot Project Tests New Form of Long-Duration Energy Storage

In early February, WEC Energy Group, a Wisconsin-based investor-owned utility, announced that the company will lead a pilot project at its Valley Power Plant in Milwaukee to test a new form of long-duration energy storage.

WEC Energy Group is collaborating with the Electric Power Research Institute and CMBlu Energy, the developer and manufacturer of the long-duration battery based in California and Germany.

This 1-to-2-megawatt-hour pilot project will be one of the first to test this type of energy storage system on the U.S. electric grid, WEC Energy Group said.

The CMBlu Organic SolidFlow energy storage system uses a proprietary flow battery technology with components from recyclable materials.

The project will test the performance of the battery system, including discharge durations of five to 10 hours — up to twice as long as the typical lithium-ion batteries in use today.

The pilot project is planned for testing in the fourth quarter of this year.

Findings will be shared with the utility industry. EPRI will share a complete analysis of the project in early 2024.

APPA Storage Tracker

The American Public Power Association’s Public Power Energy Tracker is a resource for association members that summarizes public power energy storage projects that are currently online. The tracker is available here.

APPA Energy Storage Working Group

APPA’s Energy Storage Working Group (ESWG) is part of a cooperative agreement between APPA and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management to lower barriers to integrating battery storage with the operation of fossil fuel generation assets.

In 2022, the ESWG developed a report on energy storage challenges, solutions, and opportunities for public power.

APPA is continuing to convene members to get feedback, advice, and other input on the energy storage challenges and opportunities for integrating energy storage. The next ESWG virtual meeting is scheduled for February 23, 2023, from 2 – 3:30 PM ET. The main goal for the meeting will be to discuss the baselines for an energy storage maturity model framework.

If you are interested in joining or learning more about the Energy Storage Working Group, please contact EnergyTransition@PublicPower.org.