Storage | EnergyNorthwest.com

MHPS, Magnum Will Build 1-GW Renewable Energy Storage Facility in Utah

June 3, 2019

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) and Magnum Development, the owner of a large and geographically rare underground salt dome in Utah, have teamed to develop a massive project that could store up 1,000 MW of renewable energy year-round and provide it to variability-challenged Western power markets.

The companies this week signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop the $ 1 billion Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project in Millard, in central Utah, MHPS CEO Paul Browning told POWER on May 30. The project has the backing of Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R), who lauded the project for its potential to “put Utah on the map as the epicenter of utility-scale storage for the Western U.S.”

A Rare Opportunity

ACES will comprise a series of facilities above and within the Magnum Salt Dome, a geologic formation that was tectonically developed from a bedded salt deposit, and which seismic mapping suggests measures at least one mile thick and about three miles wide.…

APS Will Add 850 MW of Battery Storage to Solar Plants

February 23, 2019

| No Comments

| Industry News

Arizona’s largest utility wants to support its renewable power portfolio by adding as much as 850 MW of battery storage capacity to its solar power plants by 2025.

Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) made the announcement February 21. Don Brandt, the utility’s chairman and CEO, in a statement said, “Arizona is already a national leader in solar energy. The challenge is, no one has figured out how to stop the sun from setting at night. As storage technology improves and declines in cost, we will increasingly be able to store the power of the sun cost-effectively to deliver when our customers need it.”

The plan includes installing batteries at existing solar facilities, and at future sites. APS would not talk about the cost of the program, citing confidentiality agreements, but said it would build at least 100 MW of new solar capacity by 2025. Analysts have said the utility currently generates about 14% of its power from renewable sources.

The U.S.…

Dominican Republican to Get Floating Combined Cycle Gas Plant Outfitted with Battery Storage

December 8, 2018

| No Comments

| Industry News

A novel floating power plant that combines a 145-MW gas-fired combined cycle power plant and a battery energy storage system could begin operating in the Dominican Republic by early 2021.

Siemens and the marine arm of Singapore-based ST Engineering on December 3 said they jointly received an order for a SeaFloat barge-mounted power plant from Bermuda-based Seaboard Corp. subsidiary Transcontinental Capital Corp. The independent power producer is developing the Estrella del Mar III project in the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo.

The hybrid project is based on Siemens’ SCC-800 2×1 SeaFloat concept. The shipyard-constructed floating power barge includes two Siemens SGT-800 gas turbines and one SST-600 steam turbine. “The gas and steam turbine generation sets are of single lift package design for floating applications utilizing integrated based frame design with three-point mount,” the company said in a news release.

The project also includes a SIESTART solution; Fluence Energy, a joint venture between Siemens and AES, will provide a 5-MW/10-MWh battery energy storage system to provide frequency regulation control.…

Net Metering and Time-Variant Rates Drive Solar Power and Energy Storage Growth [PODCAST]

April 29, 2018

| No Comments

| Industry News

Nevada law has included net metering provisions for more than 20 years. Net metering is an arrangement that allows energy generated by a customer’s leased or purchased solar system to offset monthly power bills. It also permits excess energy supplied to the grid to earn credits, which are then automatically applied to future billing periods in which more energy is consumed than produced.

Historically, net metering was a one-for-one transaction in Nevada. For every kWh supplied to the grid, a credit was given to the customer for one kWh in the future. The scheme changed in 2015 when the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) created a laddered approach that ratcheted down the value of customer-generated energy over a period of years to about 2¢/kWh, which was much less than the retail rate of about 11¢/kWh. The change effectively stopped all construction on new residential rooftop solar systems.

Through Assembly Bill 405 (AB 405), the Nevada Legislature modified the net metering rate structure effective June 15, 2017.…

Moody’s: Battery Storage Viability is Increasing

March 24, 2018

| No Comments

| Industry News

Battery storage’s emergence as a tool to boost grid reliability and a viable project finance opportunity is good news for utilities and grid operators, said Moody’s Investor Service in an infrastructure and project report on March 19.

The ratings agency noted that currently, lithium ion battery costs hover at about $ 400/kWh installed—the battery itself which is about $ 200/kWh, and the balance of the plant (with traditional electric components) at another $ 200/kWh. While that figure is the result of an already significant cost decline over the last several years, if current trends continue, costs will continue to decline to $ 100/kWh between 2020 and 2022.

The cost decline could translate to a “significant reduction in project costs, which will make storage applications more economically viable,” it said.

Cost declines for battery storage can be pegged to growing economies of scale in manufacturing and improvements in battery technology, Moody’s noted. The energy storage sector also has regulatory backing. Along with energy storage mandates in several states, including California, Massachusetts, New York, and Hawaii, a 30% investment tax credit is available for energy storage coupled with renewable generation at a federal level.…

CAISO Expansion, 100% Zero-Carbon Bids Flatline, But Bills for Energy Storage, DERs Thrive

September 22, 2017

| No Comments

| Industry News

California’s legislature last week wrapped up its 2017 session without authorizing the broad expansion of the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) into other Western states or passing a zero-carbon bill, which would have put the state on a path to 100% clean energy by 2045. It did, however, succeed in passing bills to encourage development of energy storage and distributed energy resources to reduce its reliance on gas-fired generation in light of the Aliso Canyon debacle.

A Freeze on CAISO Regionalization

CAISO and a number of participants within the Western Interconnection have been exploring the creation of a more fully integrated regional electricity market that would be managed by a single system operator and include day-ahead and real-time markets, but the measure will now need to be revived next year.

As some of the initiative’s proponents point out, power within the Western Interconnection is managed by 38 separate balancing authorities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. While all balancing authorities, including CAISO, are part of a synchronized grid, each authority is responsible for its own territorial supply and demand balance.…