News in Energy Storage

Energy storage consulting group CleanHorizons offers this week’s top five projects in this space:

1. The European Commission green-lit a €3.2 billion aid for the European Battery Alliance.
2. The Homer Electric Association will be replacing one of its peaker units with a 46.5MW/93MWh battery system in Alaska.
3. After several delays, Infigen commissioned a 20MW/52MWh Tesla battery storage system at its South Australian Lake Bonney wind farm.
4. Enel X started operations at a 4.8MW/16.4MWh storage system, New York City’s largest and part of the Brooklyn-Queens Neighborhood Program.
5. Energy storage is being brought to focus thanks to BlackRock’s latest $1 billion renewable fund raise.

Storage is a key ingredient in dealing with the variability of solar and wind, especially if either a) the project is small, e.g., a microgrid, or b) the project contemplates integrating large percentages of these resources.

As noted above, storage often competes with gas peaker plants and is becoming an increasingly competitive option versus all the construction and operational costs of the latter.  In addition, we’re becoming more alert to methane leakages that are releasing large amounts of this highly potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

The final take-away from CleanHorizons’s report may be that big money is flowing into storage; the whole enterprise has a growing level of credibility with the investment banking community.