POWER November 2020 - 29

ENERGY STORAGE
Institute of Technology and Princeton
in a recent report identified several applications
where storage brings value,
including providing operating reserves
to power system operators, avoiding the
cost of fuel, and eliminating the wear
and tear incurred by cycling on and off
gas-fired power plants. Putting storage at
locations along the grid also can enhance
transmission reliability and resiliency.
" Utilities can defer capex [capital expenditures]
by incorporating distributed
energy storage as a non-wires alternative
to replace or upgrade transformers
or distribution lines, " Dan Schnitzer, CEO
and co-founder of SparkMeter, a grid
management solutions company, told
POWER. " They can also reduce exposure
to peak wholesale energy costs
through energy arbitrage by charging
batteries during off-peak hours, and discharging
at peak times. "
Schnitzer noted the importance of
that value to C&I enterprises (Figure 2).
" Some of the highest energy cost exposure
to a C&I user is coincident peak demand
charges. These coincident charges
are incurred at extremely high rates
when the peak demand of a large user
of power occurs at the same time as a
system peak demand, " said Schnitzer.
" Having on-site storage can reduce exposure
to such charges. "
Hohenstein provided an example.
" Many C&I clients have utility tariffs with
both an energy (per kWh) and demand
(per kW) charge component. Sometimes
the demand charge can be 40-60% of
the total monthly electricity bill. Battery
energy storage systems can flatten the
load profile of the client by charging during
off-peak times and discharging during
the client's peak. As a result, C&I customers
can reduce their demand charge
by 25-50%, which would reduce the total
electricity bill by 10-30%.
" We are deploying our first storageas-a-service
project with MW storage
and Siemens for Finnish brewery Sinebrychoff.
The customer didn't want to
take on market, financial or technical
risk, but did want the benefits of energy
storage, including improved energy efficiency
and a new revenue stream, " Hohenstein
said. " The new revenue stream
comes from compensation Sinebrychoff
receives from Finland's national grid operator
[Fingrid] for playing a role in enabling
grid flexibility. "
Large-Scale Adoption
Widespread, large-scale adoption of battery
energy storage will likely be driven
by utilities, such as the installations in
California supported by Southern California
Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric that
at present are the world's largest.
" Before utilities are able to deploy
DERs [distributed energy
resources],
including distributed storage assets, at
scale, they need to have a better understanding
of the performance of their
existing distribution network on a more
granular basis, " said Schnitzer. " Right
now, utilities have little visibility into the
'secondary' or low-voltage side of their
network-the part of the network that
serves most of their customers. "
DeRosa said utilities need to identify
the ancillary services storage provides.
" Many times it doesn't pencil, because
the value of the many services may not
align with the single service " a customer
is looking at, she said. For example,
a utility could upgrade or build a new
power plant to provide additional generation.
" But now you could put energy
storage there, and if it could participate
in the wholesale market, it could help
the grid, " DeRosa said. " That's an example
where the market design doesn't
fit [storage] yet. You want to defer your
distribution upgrades, so put in storage,
and along with the [capital] deferral,
you use the storage for other services.
Those rules don't necessarily exist [today], "
she said.
Utilities are listing storage as part of
2. This is a rendering of Fluence's 6th-generation
technology, in this case its Edgestack
system for commercial and industrial customers.
Courtesy: Fluence
November 2020 | POWER
their future resource plans. Wood Mackenzie
research earlier this year showed
combined resource plans anticipate 6.3
GW of battery deployments this decade.
" With non-wires alternatives, it requires
a market design that has to evolve,
to allow for the non-wires alternatives to
do multiple things ... to make the different
uses of energy storage work within
the market design, " DeRosa said. " The
world wasn't designed for this initially. "
www.powermag.com
Schnitzer said the evolution includes
tools to help utilities better analyze the
value of storage and other DERs. " At
SparkMeter, we are building a platform
for smart meter data analytics that shows
the real-time and historical performance
of system assets like transformers and
lines at the secondary level so that utilities
can have a precise understanding of
the size, location, and cost for DERs like
storage to be most useful, " he said.
Technology and Investment
Improvements in storage technologies,
particularly batteries, should bring more
investment to the space. Rick Luebbe,
CEO of Group14 Technologies-a company
recently selected by the U.S. Department
of Energy to receive $3.96
million in a project to develop advanced
battery
technology-told POWER advancements
likely will include a move
beyond today's lithium-ion batteries that
dominate the space.
" The battery landscape is crowded,
and the winners will be the ones that
can deliver the highest energy density
at the lowest possible cost, " Luebbe
said. " In order to revolutionize the
energy storage market, we need to
displace incumbent lithium-ion technology
with novel approaches such
as silicon-carbon, which creates outstanding
first-cycle efficiency and longer
lifecycle, so we can overcome the
energy density limitations of traditional
lithium-ion batteries. "
Group14 has developed SCC55. Luebbe
said the product is " a silicon-carbon
composite anode material with 5x the energy
density of graphite, with cost, scalability,
and performance, all top of mind.
New technologies must deliver better
performance without adding cost to any
aspect of the product. This means the
improved technology must be fundamentally
less expensive, and not push cost to
other aspects of the storage system. "
Luebbe said his company's " improved
anode technology is a drop-in for current
anode materials. No changes are required
for any other element of the product
design or the manufacturing process.
On top of that, the flexible nature of our
manufacturing technology gives us the
ability to provide application-specific performance
across a spectrum of diverse
markets including electric vehicles, consumer
electronics, medical devices and
aerospace. This value simplicity is the
key to rapid product adoption. " ■
-Darrell Proctor is associate editor
for POWER.
29
http://www.powermag.com
POWER November 2020

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