Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.
ESR-Horizonal-Briefing-Header-v4
Welcome

Welcome to our weekly ESR intelligence briefing from Tamarindo Group. If you have questions, please contact us at richard@energystoragereport.info

 
Analysis
Falling prices draw corporates to storage
By Richard Heap

 

The falling cost of batteries is attracting data-hungry corporates to energy storage. This was a key trend at the annual conference of the US Energy Storage Association last week.

On 27th August, experts from Google and Microsoft set out their investment plans for storage during a session called ‘The New Consumers’. They explained how storage would complement their renewables investment plans; and how it would help both their own operations and the grid. For both, cost is vital.

We'll look at what they said shortly.

To put their plans in context, let's look at the presentation from Manuel Perez Dubuc, president and CEO of Fluence, earlier in the event. On 25th August, he explained how falling prices made new uses of batteries commercially viable.

He said battery cells cost around $750/kWh in 2011, which meant they could be used economically for frequency regulation and generation enhancement.

By 2014, this had fallen to around $400/kWh, which meant they could also be used for peak power. And continued falls to $100/kWh in 2019 opened up a huge range of additional uses, such as pairing storage with solar and wind at hybrid projects. Now they can be used to enhance transmission grids too.

“This is a massive solution to transmission bottlenecks all over the world,” he said, adding they would be economic to use for critical power from 2021/22 as costs keep falling.

These improvements are also attracting interest from corporates, which now see energy storage systems – not just batteries – as key to their energy plans.

Corporate storage plans

“Energy storage has come a very long way over the last 5-10 years and is now what I would call a more mature technology,” said Maud Texier, carbon free energy lead at Google. “In terms of cost, batteries have opened the doors to a lot of applications in a lot of markets… We see a lot of value in adding storage within our portfolio.”

Google has used 100% renewables for electricity since 2017, and now wants to use carbon-free energy 24/7 across its operations.

The firm will do this by continuing to sign large wind and solar off-take deals, but wants to go beyond that by buying clean energy on every grid in which it runs data centres or other operations. Texier said Google is set to become more reliant on storage for load shifting to help achieve these goals.

Brandon Middaugh, director of the climate innovation fund at Microsoft, set out three ways energy storage would help the company to achieve its energy goals, which include 100% energy from wind, solar and hydro by 2025; going carbon negative by 2030; and removing all of its historic emissions by 2050.

First, it plans to cut carbon emissions in its cloud computing infrastructure, which includes over 100 data centres and more than 2million miles of fiber optics. To do this, the company needs to ensure renewables can be reliable back-up power, and so plans to pair its renewables assets with storage.

Its first project to do this is the 37MW Tullahennel wind farm in Ireland.

Second, the company is looking to use energy storage, either long-duration systems or green hydrogen, to replace diesel back-up generation at its sites. Middaugh said it has piloted long-duration flow batteries and hydrogen to do this for some servers.

And third, she said Microsoft is looking at business models where it could use large storage systems at its sites to support grids. This could provide additional resilience for electricity grids and support the rollout of more renewables.

She said: “It’s essential that the [storage] technologies come down the cost curve, as well as get proven out in the market, so that we know that we can adopt these solutions to balance the renewables in our portfolio as well as support our critical infrastructure as back-up.”

The session also included a talk from Adam Kramer, executive vice president of strategy at US data centre operator Switch.

He explained how the improving economics of solar-and-storage has enabled the company to start work on four such projects in 2020, with a total 555MW solar capacity and 800MW battery storage using Tesla technology.

Kramer said recent falls in battery prices had enabled the company to commit to solar-and-storage projects that it wouldn’t have been able to as recently as 2017: “This is why we were finally able to move ahead and pull the trigger on these four massive projects in the state of Nevada.”

Corporate confidence can only be good for storage. It shows that not only is the industry on the right track when it comes to cost reductions, but also that further reductions are possible as corporates with huge financial and technical clout enter the market. A great message for tough times.

 
The Market in Minutes
Eos wins 1.5GWh deals in two US states

Eos Energy Storage has secured deals totalling 1.5GWh in California and Texas. International Electric Power is set to use Eos long-duration battery systems for 1GWh of projects attached to the ERCOT grid in Texas; and Carbon Hybrid Energy Storage has opted for 500MWh in Los Angeles. Read more

Hanwha Q Cells wins 315MW Portugal deal

Hanwha Q Cells has won the right to build a 315MW solar-and-storage project in Portugal's Alentejo and Algarve regions. This complex represents six of the 12 generation capacity lots awarded in a Portuguese state auction late week. Construction is due to complex in 2024. Read more

NextEra pushes on with 2.7GW in California

NextEra Energy Resources is pushing on with 2.7GW of battery projects in California, of which 700MW are due to be online by the end of 2022 and the other 2GW by the end of 2024. The firm is also seeking to develop the 1.3GW Eagle Mountain pumped storage in the state. Read more

Wykes picks GE for 25MW UK battery

Wykes Engineering has picked GE Renewable Energy to supply a 25MW battery storage system to the Chelveston Renewable Energy Park in the UK. This will double solar capacity at the hybrid site to 120MW. The development also includes 26MW of operational wind turbines. Read more

Wasatch commits to 24MW in California

Wasatch Energy Group and Sonnen are developing a 24MW / 60MWh solar-and-storage virtual power plant in California that uses solar-plus-battery systems in 3,000 homes. The $130m project is being funded by Wasatch and external investors. Read more

Gresham House buys 100MW Arenko duo

Gresham House has bought development rights for two 50MW energy storage projects from Arenko. Both are due to be complete in early 2022. Read more

SunPower concludes Maxeon spin-off

SunPower has concluded the spin-off of Maxeon Solar Technologies, which it said would help SunPower to focus more on its activities in sectors including storage. Total is majority shareholder in SunPower. Read more

Candela secures 104MW Texas PPA

Solar and storage developer Candela Renewables has secured a 104MW power purchase agreement with Google in Texas. Read more

Leclanché and S4 complete Dutch flywheel

Battery company Leclanché and flywheel storage firm S4 Energy have completed an 8.8MW / 7.12MWh pilot project in the Netherlands, which provides frequency stabilisation for TenneT. Read more 

 
 
  twitter-esr   linkedin-esr  
 
 
Alternative energy via Pexels
Power People
Taylor Hopkinson
Project Developer - Hybrid Renewables
Canada

A leader in renewables is looking for a project developer to help grow its pipeline of hybrid renewables-and-storage projects.

Find out more
Jobs
Project Developer
Canada

Taylor Hopkinson is seeking a project developer to help grow a portfolio of hybrid projects including storage. 

Learn more
Project Engineer
Europe

Taylor Hopkinson is hunting for an engineer with a track record in delivering battery energy storage systems.

Learn more
See your job advert here

Are you recruiting? If you'd like to get your role in front of our community of wind's top decision-makers, please contact our sales team now.

GET IN TOUCH

 
About us
Tamarindo Group
Energy Storage Report is part of Tamarindo Group, which is a specialist networks, communications and insights agency that seeks to accelerate the global adoption of renewable energy and clean technology.
 

Tamarindo Group was founded in 2011 to work exclusively with companies in these industries, and in the last year has helped more than 300 such businesses to grow. We have clients in six continents including developers, financiers and other businesses in the value chain. Tamarindo Group’s main brands are:

Our global headquarters is in Oxford, England, and our North American headquarters is in Austin, Texas. You can find out more at: www.tamarindogroup.com

 

Want to comment? Get in touch.
richard@energystoragereport.info

Tamarindo Group

Tamarindo Group
3rd Floor, Tyndale House, 134 Cowley Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX4 1JH, UK

You received this email because you are subscribed to
Tamarindo Group - Energy Storage Report from Tamarindo Group.

www.tamarindogroup.com  |  +44 020 7100 5134

Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive.

 Unsubscribe from all future emails