Latest news with #batterystorage
News24
3 days ago
- Business
- News24
Ramokgopa announces preferred bidders for third battery energy storage
616MW of battery storage will be added across five sites in the Free State, with operation expected by 2028. The projects will store excess solar energy generated for use during the peak demand periods. Four of the five winning bids went to SA company Mulilo, reflecting increased local capacity and competitiveness. South Africa's push to stabilise its power grid through battery energy storage systems has advanced with the announcement of preferred bidders for the third bid window of the Battery Energy Storage Independent Power Procurement Programme. Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced this during a press briefing on Friday, confirming that 616MW of new battery storage capacity would be added to the national grid. This allocation is the final portion of government's 1 744MW target, as laid out in the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The latest bid window will see an investment of R9.5 billion, with project completion expected in January 2028. Battery storage to support solar during peak demand Ramokgopa explained that battery energy storage plays a critical role in improving grid flexibility by capturing excess electricity generated during the day, mostly from solar photovoltaic (PV) sources and discharging it during peak periods in the morning and evening. This approach aims to reduce reliance on costly diesel-powered open-cycle gas turbines during peak hours. 'During the day, our solar PV plants generate more electricity than we need.' Instead of wasting that surplus, these batteries will allow us to store it and release it later in the evening, when demand is at its highest. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa Currently, peak electricity demand occurs between 6am and 8.30am and again between 5.30pm and 7.30pm, with the evening peak particularly severe. The battery systems are designed to provide four hours of storage capacity, enough to cover both peak periods daily, adding up to 730 charge-discharge cycles annually. Five projects located in the Free State The 616MW capacity will be installed across five sites in the Free State, identified by the National Transmission Company of SA as strategically suitable for new grid support infrastructure. Each site has one preferred bidder assigned: Scatec was appointed for the Leander Substation site. Mulilo Energy was selected for the remaining four sites, including Everest, Harvard and Merapi. Ramokgopa noted the increasing competitiveness of domestic developers: 'We're seeing more South African companies winning bids in these programmes. Four out of five of the projects in this round have gone to a local developer, which is encouraging for the sector.' The minister also noted the geographic spread of the three bid windows to date: the first was concentrated in the Northern Cape and parts of North West; the second was mainly in North West and the third was focused on the Free State. Procurement process and technical considerations The third bid window was launched in March last year, following an open and competitive process. According to Ramokgopa, the process considered several technical criteria beyond pricing, including: Round-trip efficiency: The ability of batteries to return the same amount of electricity that was used to charge them. Rapid voltage change factor: A metric based on the battery's proximity to substations, affecting technical losses and bid scores. Government intends to improve fairness in future bid windows by pre-procuring land near substations to prevent distance-related disadvantages for bidders. The power purchase agreements signed with the preferred bidders will span 15 years, which aligns with global industry norms for battery storage contracts. Commercial close was targeted for January next year, with full commercial operation scheduled by January 2028. However, the minister encouraged developers to accelerate this timeline where possible. Programme outlook and future plans The 616MW announced on Wednesday concluded the initial 1 744MW target for battery energy storage outlined in the current IRP. This included: 513MW from bid window 1 615MW from bid window 2 616MW from bid window 3 The updated IRP, which will outline new targets and procurement rounds, is currently under review by the National Economic Development and Labour Council. SA is considered a continental leader in deploying battery energy storage and government aims to maintain this position as part of its broader transition to cleaner energy. However, Ramokgopa emphasised that coal remained the backbone of the country's energy generation capacity and plans involved a mix of energy sources rather than outright replacement. 'We are not pitting one energy source against another.'
TechCrunch
4 days ago
- Automotive
- TechCrunch
Volteras wants to connect to more EVs than anyone else
For years, people have been worried — both rightly and otherwise — that electric vehicles could strain the grid to the breaking point. But as they spread, and as EV technology advances, some think these rolling battery packs could become a lifeline for the United States' aging electrical system. 'In the future, the electric vehicle will be the center of the entire energy grid,' Peter Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Volteras, told TechCrunch. The potential is there: Last year, the U.S. installed 37.1 gigawatt-hours of grid-scale energy storage. The country could increase that amount by nearly 10 times if every EV on the road today was hooked up to a charger that can feed electricity back into the grid. There are a few hurdles, of course. Many new EVs today don't support vehicle-to-grid connections, though that's changing, and there's a lack of affordable bidirectional chargers. But Volteras has been making headway on the software side. Recently, the London-based startup closed a $11.1 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Edenred, Exor, Long Journey Ventures and Wex, Volteras exclusively told TechCrunch. Volteras is building virtual connective tissue that will allow plugged-in EVs to offer their batteries to support the grid. When massed together, they can serve as virtual power plants, giving utilities quickly dispatchable power that's distributed across the grid. Along with control over the car's battery, Volteras also gets access to a host of other connected-car features, like remote unlocking and telematics. The company integrates with automakers' own APIs and offers those functions to other companies interested in using them. In the case of a virtual power plant, a utility can pay EV owners to sell some of the car's stored electricity back to the grid. Car rental services might subscribe, too, so they can remotely unlock vehicles for stranded motorists. Volteras charges those companies a monthly fee per connected car and passes on some of that revenue to automakers. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Several companies are working on similar solutions to smooth the connection of EV batteries to the grid — Texture, and Greenely, to name a few — but Wilson argues that Volteras has a head start because his company is currently working with more than 30 automakers which include Ford, BMW, Tesla, Stellantis and Volvo. 'We're going to cover like 90% of the automotive market worldwide by the end of the year,' he said. Automakers have been salivating over the financial prospects of connected cars, though progress has been spotty. GM, for example, in 2021 set a bold target for its subscription services: $25 billion in revenue by the end of the decade. But in its most recent annual report, the automaker didn't offer an update. (Usually when things are going well, companies tell the world about it.) Wilson still sees potential in connected services, starting with the battery. In addition to virtual power plants, Volteras is courting fleet managers, EV routing apps, and insurers interested in offering usage-based plans. 'This kind of hidden data layer that you don't see — that'll be the crux of how companies offer services to you, give you discounts, and make it more affordable to own an electric vehicle,' Wilson said.
CBS News
4 days ago
- General
- CBS News
Orange County's proposed battery storage plant causes concern for residents
A proposed battery storage facility in San Juan Capistrano has sparked concerns about potential fires. "The fire risk is insanity," homeowner Debbie Haag said. "There's horses. There's people. There's homes; so much at stake here, and we have to stop this." If the California Energy Commission approves the project, the facility will be built in an open field next to thousands of homes, a railroad, the 5 Freeway, San Juan Creek and a school. The CEC will hold an information meeting on May 29. "No decisions will be made at the meeting and the CEC does not advocate for or against proposed energy projects," staff wrote in a statement. "The safe development and operation of battery energy storage systems is a top priority for the CEC and its partner agencies." The proposal in San Juan Capistrano calls for Compass Energy to build a 250 megawatt lithium battery storage system. The homeowners are worried about their safety after a facility at the Moss Lander Power Plant in Northern California and another in San Diego County caught fire. "This facility, with all of those batteries, is equivalent to 12,000 Teslas, is not going to be manned," homeowner Theresa Ford said. Ford started the group BLESSIN, which stands for Banning Lithium Energy Storage Systems in Neighborhoods. "There will not be a single employee at this facility," she said. "It will all be monitored by the cameras or alarm systems." Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley joined the homeowners and objected to the state commission taking away local control of the land. The county is working on a zoning plan for future battery storage systems. "Right now, just plopping it down in a high-risk fire zone next to a river, a neighborhood, schools, open space and creek in the railroad tracks is just a terrible idea," she said.
Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Times
Two big UK battery storage developers favour zonal pricing
Two of Britain's biggest battery storage developers have come out in favour of regional electricity pricing, despite opposition from their peers who argue that the radical shake-up will deter investment. Gresham House and Statera both told The Times that zonal pricing would cut the costs of operating Britain's energy system, ensuring that batteries were built in the right locations to help deal with surplus wind power. Ben Guest, head of energy transition at Gresham House, operator of the UK's largest battery storage fleet, said it believed zonal pricing was 'an essential step for the UK's electricity system' to help 'motivate investment where it is most needed'. The government is expected to decide imminently whether to ditch Britain's national wholesale electricity price and introduce a system with about seven to twelve regional zones. Prices in each zone would vary depending on the supply and demand balance in the area, ensuring that wind farms in remote locations could not sell their electricity to consumers at the other end of the country if there were not sufficient cables to physically deliver the power. At present the National Electricity System Operator spends hundreds of millions of pounds every year dealing with such cabling constraints by paying wind farms to switch off and gas plants nearer demand to fire up and replace them. Batteries installed near wind farms could address the problem by storing surplus power when it is windy and discharging it in calm weather, smoothing out supplies. However the national market does not always provide the correct price signals: batteries in Scotland might discharge because the national price is high, even if their area is already swamped with power. In a zonal system, the excess power would depress the regional price, encouraging the battery to charge up. Zonal pricing is highly divisive in the energy industry, with wind farm developers and other generators generally opposed and some household suppliers and consumer groups in favour. Guest said Gresham's analysis showed that 'a well-designed zonal pricing system can reduce wholesale energy costs and reduce the need for a lot of the planned electricity network upgrades and associated pylons'. Zonal pricing would 'incentivise energy storage, the cost of which has been falling sharply, to store renewable energy when generation exceeds demand and then deliver it across zonal boundaries when renewable generation is low and constraint limits are not reached', he said. Tom Vernon, chief executive of Statera Energy, which is building Britain's largest battery storage site at Trafford Park in Greater Manchester, said: 'Developing and dispatching batteries in the right locations is critical for cost-effectively balancing the grid. At Statera, we support zonal pricing because it will make the power system more transparent, and provide a clear price signal for the efficient operation and location of demand and generation.' He said he was 'confident that zonal pricing will lower costs in the long run'. However, other leading battery storage developers said they opposed the change. Harmony Energy said it feared that 'the uncertainty created by such a fundamental shift in market design creates an unnecessary risk in relation to investor confidence at a time when the country needs to get on building out critical infrastructure'. And Amit Gudka, chief executive of Field, said zonal pricing would 'slow down investment' and building out the network should be the priority instead of 'tinkering with the market'. Zenobe, another battery storage company, has claimed that even the prospect of zonal pricing has already 'slashed investor confidence and is inhibiting battery build-out', as the complexity and uncertainty of zonal pricing makes it harder to secure agreements to sell power. A spokesman for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: 'We are considering reforms to Britain's electricity market arrangements, ensuring that these focus on protecting bill-payers and encouraging investment. We will provide an update in due course.'
ABC News
25-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Why energy giants want to control solar batteries
Sam Hawley: It was a decision driven by spite for Sydney man Peter Anderson. He was determined to buy a solar battery for his home so he could take money away from the big power companies while never receiving a hefty power bill again. But his plan came unstuck after agreeing to participate in a so-called virtual power plant. Today, energy reporter Dan Mercer on Peter's dilemma, how giving back to the grid really works and whether it's worth it. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Dan, we're going to explain what a virtual power plant is, and it sounds pretty high tech. Dan Mercer: It does, Sam, but it's actually not. A virtual power plant is a real power plant in many ways. It's just made up of hundreds or thousands of individual households. I mean, if your house has solar panels, it's a power plant. And if you add in batteries, a household has the ability to sell power even when the sun goes down. Virtual power plants are really about coordinating all of this diffused capacity. The theory is that if you can coordinate or aggregate, as it's known, enough of them, then the combined capacity can be very significant indeed. Critically, though, they involve householders signing up to become part of a VPP and giving up some control over their batteries and their solar panels in the process. And they can use that to prop up the market when it's under stress. And the market is under stress more and more as we get deeper into this transition. The quid pro quo is that the householder is supposed to be better off overall. As we're going to hear, there's a sticking point, though, because you might want all of your stored power at the same time as the grid needs it. Sam Hawley: OK. So you've been speaking with Sydney resident Peter Anderson. Now he signed up his house to be part of a virtual power plant. And that is a completely optional decision, right? He didn't have to. He agreed to. Dan Mercer: Yeah, Peter was like millions of Australians in that he already had solar panels on his roof, but he was keen on getting a battery so he could store some of the excess power those panels were generating. And it was the lure of a deal that got him to buy one in the end. In his case, it was from one of the biggest energy retailers in Australia, AGL. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: It was a very gentle kind of, hey, this is what it is. We promise we won't do these things. We promise we will do these things. We knock a thousand bucks off the battery. We put you on a five year deal to stay on the program for five years. And if you don't, we pro-rate that thousand dollars and ask for that back, which all seemed very reasonable. Dan Mercer: In exchange, Mr. Anderson says he agreed to participate in a VPP that was being run by AGL. Funnily enough, he says he didn't really need a battery. He just wanted to stop paying power bills. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: Our solar installer, when I first spoke to her, she's like, oh, you don't need a battery. I said, it's not about needing a battery, Lily. It's about spite, taking money away from the power companies. Sam Hawley: Don't we all want to stop paying power bills? All right. Dan Mercer: It's the dream. Sam Hawley: It is. It is. So for a while for Mr. Anderson, it was fantastic. He got this thousand dollars off a battery and he didn't notice anything for ages. Dan Mercer: Yeah, that's right, Sam. Peter told me that in the first year after joining the scheme and getting the battery, he barely noticed a thing. Given that he thought it was a great deal, money for pretty much nothing. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: You know, we'd been on that for a few quarters and the best they got out of us was like 22 cents. So we were pretty smart. Sam Hawley: Yeah, and that sounds good, too. But things then started to go not quite as he had hoped for. And he accused AGL of pretty much draining his battery until it was almost empty. Dan Mercer: Yeah. So after about a year, Mr. Anderson reckons he started noticing some fairly dramatic shifts. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: It was just little bits and bobs and they weren't pulling huge chunks of it. And then one sort of wet Thursday night, they just drained the battery. But completely drained it down to 5 percent. And we thought, oh, OK, that's new. Dan Mercer: Was that a one off or? Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: No, because they did it again the next day. So they charged it and then drained it. Dan Mercer: Worse, he says the depletion of his battery forced him to buy power from the grid at just the wrong time. The evening peak when prices are highest. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: They changed the way they use the battery from these little bites every now and again to just dragging everything out of it. And you could map when they were doing that to when the price skyrocketed. Dan Mercer: And he says it meant he couldn't run his house of his own battery just when he needed it. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: This is an obvious misuse of the virtual power plant solution where they're draining the battery to service other clients and you're left in the lurch. Dan Mercer: There's a side note to this, too, Sam. Peter reckons AGL placed him without proper warning on a type of complicated, dynamic charge called a demand tariff. Under a demand tariff, consumers are charged according to their single greatest half hourly period of electricity use from the grid across an entire month. They're supposed to discourage people from using lots of power in the peak. But a lot of people hate them. AGL insists it gave Peter adequate notification and it says the two matters are completely separate. Peter says the changes amounted to a double whammy because he was not only having to pay peak prices, he was getting hit by the demand tariff as well. Peter Anderson, Sydney resident: They were basically forcing us to power our house from the grid and trapping us into using the demand tariff. Dan Mercer: Peter told me it was such an unsatisfactory experience that he actually left the VPP scheme shortly after all of this went down. He says he'll manage his own energy needs from now on. Sam Hawley: OK, so what has AGL had to say about all of this? Dan Mercer: Well, first of all, AGL disputes any suggestion it drained Peter's battery. A spokeswoman told me the company's policy was to leave at least a fifth of the charge remaining. And as mentioned, on a demand tariff, AGL has very much disputed Mr. Anderson's version of events. But on top of this, AGL says it's the poles and wires companies and not the retailers like AGL that instigate these tariffs in the first place. I should say, Sam, I don't think AGL is applying demand tariffs any longer. There's been such a backlash that I think they've actually walked away from them. Network poles and wires companies, for their part, they say it's completely up to the retailer to decide how to charge households. And it always has been that way. Sam Hawley: But tell me, Dan, would Peter have been better off if he just didn't sign up to this in the first place? How would it have worked if he didn't do it? Dan Mercer: It's hard to know, to be honest. He got a thousand dollars off the upfront cost of his battery, which isn't nothing. He pulled out of the VPP scheme before the costs of AGL's alleged actions were able to add up to much. But I think it raises very interesting questions about how much value there is in household storage and who should capture it. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Dan, governments and energy companies are really working on storing renewable energy at a very large scale. So just tell me how significant could homeowners like Peter be to that? Dan Mercer: Right now, it's not a lot, but I don't think there are many people out there, in the energy industry at least, who doubt that it'll be big. Just take a look at the number of households with solar. About one in three has an installation. Now, fewer than one in 10 of those has a battery. But that will change because the cost of batteries is going to come down. Governments will throw more money at them in the form of subsidies. And the technology will mature. The Australian energy market operator expects VPPs to become a big part of the energy mix over the coming decade. Gabriel Kuiper is an expert in this space. She reckons the number of households that are part of VPPs could eventually number in the millions. Gabrielle Kuiper, renewable energy consultant: Once we have a lot of batteries and also a lot of electric vehicles with the capacity to feed back into people's homes or the grid, we will see this become a really significant part of the electricity system. Sam Hawley: And I guess the regulators, they really don't want virtual power plants to get a bad rap. They need them, right? They need people to trust that it's great and they want to opt in. Dan Mercer: Absolutely. That's fundamentally a part of this. And I think it's totally fair to say that there's this nagging concern about the risks of VPPs being rejected by the public, particularly if there are more stories like Peter's. If VPPs are going to work, Gabriel Kuiper says consumers have to be able to trust them. She reckons there's too little information that can help the average householder navigate and make sense of the market. And she's worried consumers could end up missing out on many of the benefits of their own investments, which can be substantial. Gabrielle Kuiper, renewable energy consultant: The risk is that the aggregators earn a very high proportion of the profits from household and businesses' energy technologies, particularly batteries, and households and businesses don't end up with good value from participating in those VPPs. Dan Mercer: It goes to a fundamental point, I think, which is that householders are going to want to be properly rewarded if their gear is going to be used to help the grid. Sam Hawley: All right, well, Dan, of course, Labor had a resounding win at the federal election and they're promising to give big subsidies to people to buy home batteries. So I gather that is going to see a lot more of these installed and probably pretty quickly. Dan Mercer: That's certainly the expectation. And judging by the news that's out there, since Labor made the announcement, the installers have fully booked. Sam, we've already got a lot of solar in Australia, as mentioned, but AEMO is forecasting the number of installations to double again by 2050. It expects the increase in battery numbers to be far more dramatic. It thinks the number of battery systems in Australia's two biggest grids will soar from about 270,000 battery systems now to 5.6 million by 2050. So quite an extraordinary growth. In the election campaign, Anthony Albanese pledged $2.3 billion for home battery subsidies. It'll apply to people with existing solar as well as those wanting to invest in new solar battery combinations. It won't be means tested and it'll give about 30 percent off the cost of getting one of these things. Some of the most popular batteries currently on sale in Australia from the likes of BYD, a Chinese company, and Tesla, the big American firm, they cost roughly $12,000 to $14,000 installed. That's before subsidies. Sam Hawley: Yeah, so they're still pretty expensive, but there will be a lot more homes with solar and batteries. So if virtual power plants are really important to keeping the grid stable, I guess the question is, will it stay opt in or will regulators and the government be quite tempted to force people with batteries to send their power back to the grid when it's needed? Dan Mercer: It's a great question, Sam. And to be honest, I'm not sure that it's one which has a clear answer yet. Interestingly, one of the caveats that Labor has put on its battery subsidy scheme, and which other states have also done, is that in order for the battery to be eligible, it has to be what they call VPP ready. It means the battery can technically be integrated with a VPP scheme. In reality, there are some battery manufacturers that don't particularly like or want their products being ultimately controlled by any party other than themselves, by extension, I suppose, the householder that bought them. Tesla is the prime example here. What's pretty clear though, is that there's a pressing need to better orchestrate all of the household clean tech that's out there. Lots and lots of small scale systems can add up to very big challenges for an energy system. Equally, they are huge opportunities as well. Sam Hawley: All right. Well, Dan, you must hear from customers all the time with concerns. So what's your advice to people considering installing a battery and then potentially signing up to a virtual power plant? Dan Mercer: Like in any deal you might enter, always read the fine print.I think the more engaged energy consumers, they're going to be fine. The big challenge will be ensuring VPPs can serve the mainstream where most of us are. There's no doubt that rooftop solar combined with batteries and other clean tech can provide immense value to the grid. It can smooth out the troughs when there's too much supply and not enough demand and vice versa with the peaks. But of course, energy companies know this. And let's be honest, many of them want to capture that value themselves. So what I'm going to be most interested in is whether governments and regulators and the industry itself can get ahead of it to make sure punters get their fair share of the value. And VPPs provide the broadest possible benefit. So if this doesn't happen, VPPs, I think, will struggle to work. Most people will do their own thing and we'll all end up paying more than we should. Sam Hawley: Dan Mercer is the ABC's energy reporter. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Sam Dunn. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
