POWER May 2017 - 28

DISTRIBUTED GENERATION
3. A lifetime retreat. For five years, Fluidic Energy's zinc-air long-duration energy storage
technology has helped offset diesel use in microgrids on several Indonesian islands, such as at
Sekunyit Island, shown here. The company says the system's low cost and remote monitoring
capabilities are its biggest advantages. Courtesy: Fluidic Energy
North Carolina that will serve a renewable
energy microgrid at Great Smoky Mountains
National Park.
Fluidic said its
Indonesian
systems,
which can be remotely monitored and are
theft-proof, fare well in hot and humid regions,
and continue to achieve more than
99.5% uptimes. But the technology's most
prominent selling point is cost, which is
achieved with low material, manufacturing,
and installation prices, Fluidic Chief
Technology Officer Ramkumar Krishnan
told POWER. " Just to give you perspective,
about $5 million of capital can produce
about 100 MWh of battery storage on an
annual basis, " he said. " And, this is nearly
20% to 25% lower than a lithium-ion plant
or even a lead-acid plant. "
A Shift to Longer-Duration
Applications
energy storage on Kyushu Island in southwestern
Japan, where huge amounts of solar
power have been installed following the
2012 introduction of a feed in tariff.
Costs for the technology are also continuously
falling. " Also, its high energy density
and operating temperatures along with
the corrosive nature of sodium polysulfide
make it suitable for large grid energy storage, "
said Roy. Yet, as with lead-acid batteries,
the segment will face competition from
lithium-ion technologies, she noted.
Costs for flow batteries have also fallen
and efficiencies have improved in recent
years, but despite the hype surrounding
this segment-they've long been touted as
the logical choice for grid-scale applications
because of their long durations and
lifespans, and because they see less degradation
from repeated charging cycles than
other technologies-advances haven't been
broadly implemented in the field. Progress
is on the horizon, however.
Primus Power recently announced that it
has started production of its second-generation
EnergyPod 2 flow battery, which it says
has a five-hour duration, a 20-year lifespan,
and costs 50% less than the leading conventional
lithium-ion battery system. The com28
pany
is shipping its battery systems to U.S.
and international utilities, such as Puget
Sound Energy in Washington.
At the same time, more companies are
exploring the potential of flow battery systems.
In March, for example, San Diego Gas
and Electric (SDG&E) and Sumitomo Electric
unveiled a 2-MW vanadium redox flow
battery storage pilot project to test whether
flow battery technology can economically
enhance the delivery of power over the next
four years.
Another battery technology that has
flourished-but gets little attention despite
its competitiveness with lithium-ion batteries-is
zinc-air, a battery system that uses
air for the cathode, and cheap, abundant zinc
in the electrolyte. Arizona-based Fluidic Energy
has deployed more than 100,000 zincair
hybrid batteries in 10 countries, with
applications spanning rural electrification
and grid-reliability.
A set of installations at 94 villages for Indonesian
telecom customer Indosat has been
online for five years now, taking the place
of diesel gensets in island microgrids (Figure
3) that cannot connect to the national
grid. The company is currently preparing to
put up a battery system for Duke Energy in
www.powermag.com
The fourth quarter of 2016 marked another
turning point in battery storage history in
terms of application. Over the years, gridconnected
battery storage has been used
in various ways, including for energy arbitrage,
generation capacity deferral, ancillary
services, ramping, transmission and distribution
capacity deferral, and end-user applications-which
entail managing energy
costs, power quality and service reliability,
and renewable curtailment. During 2016,
the burst of new U.S. installments was characterized
by large four-hour systems, noted
GTM Research. That trend is likely to persist
over the coming quarters.
About 88% of installed capacity in the
fourth quarter was in California in response
to a catastrophic natural gas leak at the massive
Aliso Canyon gas storage facility above
the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles in
the fall of 2015. That event, thought of as
one of the worst environmental disasters in
U.S. history, left regional gas-fired generators
in a lurch, but rather than reestablishing
gas supplies, the California Public Utilities
Commission in May 2016 expedited the approval
of around 100 MW of battery storage
in Southern California Edison (SCE) and
SDG&E territories. By the end of February
2017, seven of eight Aliso Canyon-related
projects had been completed under emergency
tenders, with only 5 MW of the 104.5
MW contracted remaining to come online.
On December 31, 2016, energy infrastructure
company AltaGas, which owns six
gas power plants in California, started up
the Greensmith Energy-built AltaGas Pomona
Energy Facility, a 20-MW/80-MWh
system. The company also signed a 10-year
energy storage agreement (ESA) to furnish
SCE with 20 MW of resource adequacy capacity
for a continuous four-hour period.
POWER | May 2017

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POWER May 2017

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