Page 9 - ESJ – ENERGY STORAGE JOURNAL

NEWS

Renewable energy forecourts to

allay range anxiety for EV drivers

Plans to build a UK-wide all 100 multi-MW battery principal partner for bat- goods vehicles) to recharge
network of solar farms cou- sites due to be completed teries was Sungrow Sam- in less than 30 minutes. The
pled with battery storage to within five years. sung, which it is using at forecourts will have up to
deliver power to more than Construction on the first the first sites in York and 24 battery-supported, ultra-
100 forecourt charging sta- 35MW solar farm and Hull. However, the com- fast charging bays with an
tions were announced by 27MW lithium ion battery pany remains technology/ ultimate rate of 500kW for
energy storage firm Grid- storage system at York is chemistry agnostic. cars and light commercial
serve on March 29. under way, with work on Each forecourt will have vehicles and multi-MW
Initial construction of another in Hull also ex- dedicated zones to allow charging options for buses
the £1 billion ($1.3 billion) pected this year. private and fleet vehicles and heavy goods vehicles.
programme is scheduled to A company spokesman (such as taxis, buses, deliv- An app will allow drivers to
begin later this year, with told ESJ that Gridserve’s ery vehicles and heavy reserve charging slots.

V2G testing
centre opens to
increase solar
penetration on
Texas grid

The US state of Texas has
deployed its first vehicle-to-
grid research and testing fa-
cility as it looks to increase
renewable penetration on
its power supply, energy re-
search center Pecan Street
and utility Austin Energy
announced on February 6.
The technology will be
used to offset peak demand
and provide greater flexibil-
ity in accessing energy re-
sources, namely smoothing Macquarie secures funding to build
the intermittency of renewa-
bles on the grid and avoid 340MWh ESS projects in California
curtailment.
The initiative is part of Project developer Mac- host sites in the Los Ange- ing Corporation and ING
Austin Energy’s Sustain- quarie’s Green Invest- les and Orange counties. Group.
able and Holistic Integra- ment Group, the busi- Once completed, the Macquarie acquired the
tion of Energy Storage and ness formed when Green system will deliver grid original project portfolio
Solar Photovoltaics project, Investment Group was services including flexible from virtual power plant
which is investigating how bought by Macquarie and reserve capacity, so- firm AMS in August 2016.
to integrate more solar pow- Group in 2017, announced lar integration and voltage Last month, AMS an-
er on to the area’s grid. on March 26 it is to build management. nounced its VPP project
The goal of the 39-month 97MWh of storage in It will also deliver servic- in Southern California
project is to increase the Southern California, US, es such as demand man- had delivered more than
city’s renewable energy pen- after closing its final debt- agement, back-up genera- 2GWh of grid services to
etration to 65% by 2027. financing round. tion and security of supply. the California Independ-
To date, the initiative has The third funding will The US CIT Group led ent System Operator in its
included two lithium ion en- allow the group to com- the initial financing round first year of operation.
ergy storage systems, one a plete construction of a in 2017 through its Power Last June, Irvine Ranch
solar array connected 63MW/340MWh project and Energy Finance unit, Water District and Mac-
1.5MW/2MWh system sup- for power utility Southern and was the lead lender in quarie completed a
plied by LG Chem, the other California Edison. the second round last De- 2.5MW/15MWh installa-
a 1.75MW/3.2MWh You- The project includes cember. tion in Orange County
nicos supplied system which behind-the-meter systems It was joined in the fi- that is powering the dis-
is connected to rooftop so- for large-load commercial, nal round by Rabobank, trict’s largest water recy-
lar. industrial and government Sumitomo Mitsui Bank- cling plant.

www.energystoragejournal.com Energy Storage Journal • Summer 2019 • 7