POWER March 2021 - 21

ENERGY STORAGE
Range of Solutions
The many types of energy storage
technologies include batteries, with a
range of electrochemical storage solutions,
including advanced chemistry
batteries, flow batteries, and capacitors.
There's also thermal storage, capturing
heat and cold to create energy
on demand or offset energy needs.
Mechanical storage includes technologies
to harness kinetic or gravitational
energy to store electricity.
" We've been following storage for
years, and it's always been 'almost'
there, " said Morten Lund, a partner in
the Energy Development group with
Stoel Rives, and chair of the firm's Energy
Storage Initiative. Lund said having
storage attached to solar power installations
" is almost standard for the U.S.
You can use peakers [gas-fired peaking
plants] for your short-term leveling, and
storage when you need to take care of
overgeneration. It makes it easily the
most cost-effective solution for that
problem in California [Figure 2].
" We've been through a few technology
cycles, " Lund told POWER. " Lithium-ion
is the dominant technology, and
is likely to stay that for the foreseeable
future. It's relatively cheap, and it works,
[and] the stuff that works better right
now is more expensive. In this country,
these decisions are made by the market,
and the market looks for the goodenough,
low-cost thing of the moment. "
Storage tech includes pumped hydropower,
creating large-scale reservoirs
of energy with stored water. And then
there's hydrogen-where excess electricity
generation can be converted into
hydrogen via electrolysis and stored.
" Hydrogen is by far the most exciting
recent technology to be advanced by
industry, albeit, it, too, is an old technology
that has been given a new lease on
life, " said Brian Restall, senior director
for Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners,
a renewable energy investment company.
" Hydrogen is by far the biggest
competition to batteries for stationary
and vehicle applications. "
Restall said it's important to develop
alternatives to lithium-ion-based
storage systems. " As electric vehicles
become more accepted and popular,
lithium-ion batteries' supply chains are
coming under pressure to supply both
stationary and vehicle applications, " Restall
told POWER. " For stationary energy
storage, lithium-ion has a relatively
limited ability to support 2-hour-plus energy
storage needs. As a result of this
March 2021 | POWER
Caribbean's Largest System Takes Shape
Ground was broken in December for
construction of the Caribbean's largest
solar generation and energy storage
system, being built on St. Kitts Island.
It's an example of how storage is supporting
the power grid, particularly in
developing areas. The Government
of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the stateowned
St. Kitts Electric Co. (SKELEC)
launched the project with the owner
Leclanché, a Swiss energy storage
company that is serving as the prime
engineering, procurement, and construction
(EPC) contractor. The system
will provide between 30% and 35% of
the island's baseload energy needs for
the next 20-25 years.
The $70 million microgrid project is
a fully integrated system consisting of
three core components: a 35.7-MW solar
photovoltaic system (the solar field),
a 14.8-MW/45.7-MWh lithium-ion battery
energy storage system (BESS),
and Leclanché's proprietary energy
management system (EMS) software.
The system's batteries will be housed
in 14 custom-designed enclosures near
the main SKELEC power station and
adjacent to the solar field. A portion of
the generated electricity will meet the
island's daily peak power demand; the
remaining energy will charge the largescale
BESS to meet a second peak demand
after the sun sets.
" This clean energy project marks a
significant milestone for our citizens,
tourist economy, our broader business
community, and indeed the entire Caribbean
region, " said Dr. The Honorand
also ESG [environmental, social,
and governance] concerns over cobalt,
it is good to see industry investing in
alternative chemistry such as LFP [lithium-iron-phosphate]
to replace lithiumion,
and also the rise in flow batteries
such as Eos [which offers a zinc hybrid
cathode device]. "
" I am hoping that hydrogen as an
energy storage medium will become viable.
Hydrogen has almost been there
for a long time, " said Kelly Echols, a
partner with Stoel Rives and co-chair of
the firm's Energy Technologies Working
Group. " I'm hopeful that we may actually
be on the cusp, where this P2H
[power to hydrogen] will become a reality,
where it can be produced at a lowenough
point to be cost-effective. "
Echols told POWER, " There does
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able Timothy Harris, St. Kitts and Nevis
prime minister. " The amount of carbon
dioxide emissions we will reduce-
nearly three-quarters of a million metric
tons over 20 years-is a significant
demonstration of our strong policy for
clean, renewable energy. "
Leclanché has worked with SKELEC
to develop the system. The company
will own and operate the facility
under its strategic build, own, and
operate model, and invest through
its St. Kitts subsidiary, SOLEC Power,
with partner Solrid. Its EMS software
will integrate all the components of
the system and efficiently manage
the delivery of electricity to the SKELEC
grid, while also providing spinning
reserve, frequency regulation, and
load-balancing functions.
" Together, we have designed a system
whose construction and ongoing
energy production will be paid for over
time from the sale of clean and reliable
solar energy. We are pleased to have
accomplished both objectives while developing
a project financeable by wellestablished
institutional investors, " said
Leclanché CEO Anil Srivastava.
Once completed, which is anticipated
in the first half of 2022, the solar
and storage system will replace more
than four million gallons of diesel fuel
per year. It is expected to generate
about 61,300 MWh of electricity in its
first year.
-Bryan Urban is executive vice president
North America for Leclanché.
seem to be a demand, essentially in
a fuel cell. You can store it longer, and
with fuel cells, the storage capability,
the ways you can hold onto that hydrogen,
it could be longer. There does
seem to be a lot of interest in this combined
electrical hydrogen future, where
they're complementary to each other,
not competitive ... where hydrogen is
used in long-haul trucking, and we see
interest in air transport. "
Eric Martin, a Stoel Rives partner
focused on natural resource development,
told POWER, " From a hydrogen
perspective, the utilities that are facing
this prospect are where the public
is concerned about GHG [greenhouse
gas] emissions, and climate change. It's
a way to adapt their existing infrastructure
in a less-climate-intensive way.
21
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POWER March 2021

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