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Expansion plan to take world’s biggest battery storage project to 3GWh capacity

Posted on January 27, 2022 by dishanth

Plans to nearly double the output and capacity of the world’s biggest battery energy storage system (BESS) project to date have been announced by its owner, Vistra Energy.

The Texas-headquartered integrated utility and power generation company said it wants to add another 350MW/1,400MWh BESS to the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility in California’s Monterey Bay.

The existing facility is 400MW/1,600MWh and was brought online in two phases, with the most recent 100MW/400MWh Phase II commissioned in August 2021. Phase I’s 300MW/1,200MWh of batteries went online at the end of 2020, although in September they were temporarily taken offline after overheating in some battery modules had been detected. Phase II remained operational at that time.

Vistra has worked with battery module and rack provider LG Energy Solution, engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) partner Burns & McDonnell and system integrator Fluence among its contractors on the project so far.

At 750MW/3,000MWh, Moss Landing would retain its crown of being the biggest in the world, although large-scale BESS project announcements are gathering in pace, not least of all in California, which is the leading US state for energy storage online and contracted to come online.

A 15-year Resource Adequacy agreement has already been signed with California investor-owned utility (IOU) Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) for the new capacity and submitted to the regulatory body California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for approval on 21 January.

A decision is expected within 180 days, Vistra said yesterday. Construction could then begin in May, for the new BESS to come online in just over a year by June 2023.

The agreement is one of nine new contracts PG&E has in place with four-hour duration energy storage projects in the state, which Energy-Storage.news has reported full details of in a separate news story today.

PG&E was ordered to procure 2,200MW of clean energy by CPUC last June, as part of a wider 11.5GW of resources which California’s load-serving entities, including IOUs, must procure and bring online by 2026 to meet the need for capacity as a number of natural gas power plants and the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant — which is an asset in PG&E’s service area — reach retirement.

Vistra said that as Moss Landing — itself built on the site of an existing gas power plant owned by Vistra subsidiary Dynegy — already has development permitting in place, and has existing grid interconnection and infrastructure, it can move quickly on the proposed Phase III.

The company has previously said that the site and its interconnection allow for it to eventually bring Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility to 1,500MW/6,000MWh, if market conditions allow it to meet demand.

Vistra CEO Curt Morgan described Moss Landing yesterday as “a shining example of the pivot of our generation fleet toward carbon-free technologies”.

Separately, PG&E itself is executing a build-own-operate BESS project, Elkhorn, at the Moss Landing site, using 182.5MW/750MWh of Tesla Megapack BESS units.

In September, Vistra Energy said that it also plans to repurpose a number of its fossil fuel plant sites in Illinois to host a mix of solar-plus-storage and standalone battery storage projects by 2025. That announcement was made after Illinois legislators approved a plan to transition the state away from its largely coal-based energy mix to clean energy. Illinois’ target date for achieving carbon-free electricity is 2045, the same as California’s.

Vistra is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050 meanwhile. Last February it unveiled plans for a 600MW BESS project in California’s Morro Bay, which the company said could come online by 2024 and further help PG&E ease through the retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. Vistra is also expecting to bring DeCordova Energy Storage Facility, a 260MW BESS project in Texas, online before this summer to join that state’s ERCOT market.

Source Energy Storage News

California tackles food waste with largest recycling program in US

Posted on December 10, 2021 by dishanth

California will soon enact the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the US in January, an effort designed to dramatically cut down on organic waste in landfills and reduce the state’s methane emissions.

When food scraps such as banana peels and leftover veggies and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Organic material such as food and yard waste makes up a fifth of the state’s methane emissions and half of everything in California landfills, according to CalRecycle.

California plans to start converting food waste into compost or energy in order to avoid these emissions, becoming the second state to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.

“This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” said Rachel Wagoner, the director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.

Most California residents will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.

A truck unloads organic waste to be used for composting at a facility in Woodland, California. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

Recycling food waste “is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change”, Wagoner said.

The effort reflects growing recognition about the role food waste plays in damaging the environment. Up to 40% of food in the US is wasted, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

A handful of states and countries, including France, have passed laws requiring grocery stores and other large businesses to recycle or donate excess food to charities, but California’s program targets households and businesses. In 2016, California passed a law aimed at reducing methane emissions by significantly cutting down on discarded food.

Starting in January, all cities and counties that provide trash services are supposed to have food recycling programs in place and grocery stores must donate edible food that otherwise would be thrown away to food banks or similar organizations.

“There’s just no reason to stick this material in a landfill, it just happens to be cheap and easy to do so,” said Ned Spang, faculty lead for the Food Loss and Waste Collaborative at the University of California, Davis.

Vermont, home to 625,000 people compared with California’s nearly 40 million, is the only other state that bans residents from throwing their food waste in the trash. Under a law that took effect in July 2020, residents can compost the waste in their yards, opt for curbside pick up or drop it at waste stations. Seattle and San Francisco have similar programs.

Students discard their uneaten lunch into a food waste can at an elementary school in Connecticut. Photograph: Dave Zajac/AP

Under California’s new law, the state must cut organic waste in landfills by 75% from 2014 levels by 2025, or from about 23m tons to 5.7m tons.

Most local governments will allow homeowners and apartment dwellers to dump excess food into yard waste bins, with some providing countertop containers to hold the scraps for a few days before taking it outside. Some areas can get exemptions for parts of the law, such as rural locations where bears rummage through trash cans.

The food waste will go to facilities for composting or for turning it into energy through anaerobic digestion, a process that creates biogas that can be used like natural gas for heating and electricity.

But only a fifth of California’s composting facilities may accept food waste, and they face a strict permitting process to take food waste alongside traditional green waste such as leaves.

The state also set a 2025 goal of diverting 20% of food that would otherwise go to landfills to feed people in need. Supermarkets must start donating their excess food in January and hotels, restaurants, hospitals, schools and large event venues will start doing so in 2024. The donation part of the law will contribute toward a federal goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.

Davis, California, already has a mandatory food recycling program. Joy Klineberg puts coffee grounds, fruit rinds and cooking scraps into a metal bin labeled “compost” on her countertop. When preparing dinners, she empties excess food from the cutting board into the bin.

Every few days, she dumps the contents into her green waste bin outside, which is picked up and sent to a county facility. Unpleasant countertop bin smells haven’t been a problem, she said.

Joy Klineberg lives in Davis, California, where residents are already required to recycle their food waste. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP

“All you’re changing is where you’re throwing things, it’s just another bin,” she said. “It’s really easy, and it’s amazing how much less trash you have.”

Implementing similar programs in bigger cities is more challenging.

Los Angeles and San Diego, the state’s two most populous cities, which together account for about one of every eight Californians, are among those that won’t have their programs ready for all households next month.

That’s because it takes time to buy the necessary equipment, such as green waste bins for households that don’t already have them for yard waste and to set up facilities to take the material. Trash collection fees will go up in many places.

CalRecycle also wants to focus more on education and less on punishment. Governments can avoid penalties by self-reporting to the state by March if they don’t have programs in place and outlining plans for starting them. Cities that refuse to comply could eventually be fined up to $10,000 a day.

Ken Prue, the deputy director of San Diego’s environmental services department, said the city put nearly $9m in this year’s budget to buy more waste bins, countertop containers and trucks to haul the additional waste.

Prue hopes San Diego residents will quickly realize the importance of recycling food waste after the program starts next summer.

“Hopefully before they know it, it becomes second nature,” he said.

Source The Guardian

California Aims to Ban Recycling Symbols on Things That Aren’t Recyclable

Posted on September 13, 2021 by dishanth

The triangular “chasing arrows” recycling symbol is everywhere: On disposable cups. On shower curtains. On children’s toys.

What a lot of shoppers might not know is that any product can display the sign, even if it isn’t recyclable. It’s false advertising, critics say, and as a result, countless tons of non-recyclable garbage are thrown in the recycling bin each year, choking the recycling system.

Late on Wednesday, California took steps toward becoming the first state to change that. A bill passed by the state’s assembly would ban companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most California communities, and is used to make new products.

“It’s a basic truth-in-advertising concept,” said California State Senator Ben Allen, a Democrat and the bill’s lead sponsor. “We have a lot of people who are dutifully putting materials into the recycling bins that have the recycling symbols on them, thinking that they’re going to be recycled, but actually, they’re heading straight to the landfill,” he said.

The measure, which is expected to clear the State Senate later this week and be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is part of a nascent effort across the country to fix a recycling system that has long been broken.

Though materials like paper or metals are widely recycled, less than 10 percent of plastic consumed in the United States is recycled, according to the most recent estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency. Instead, most plastic is incinerated or dumped in landfills, with the exception of some types of resins, like the kind used for bottled water or soda.

For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global convention now bans most trade in plastic waste, though U.S. waste exports have not completely ceased.

This summer, Maine and Oregon passed laws overhauling their states’ recycling systems by requiring corporations to pay for the cost of recycling their packaging. In Oregon, the law included plans to establish a task force that would evaluate “misleading or confusing claims” related to recycling. Legislation is pending in New York that would, among other things, ban products from displaying misleading claims.

In the past year, a number of environmental organizations have filed lawsuits seeking to combat misleading claims of recyclability by major corporations. Environmental groups have also criticized plans by the oil and gas industry to expand its production of petrochemicals, which are the main building blocks of plastic, because the process is highly polluting and creates new demand for fossil fuels.

The recycling symbol is “subconsciously telling the people buying things, ‘You’re environmentally friendly,’” said Heidi Sanborn, the executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council, which advocates corporations to shoulder more responsibility for recycling their products.

“Nobody should be able to lie to the public,” she said.

In California, the bill won the backing of a coalition of environmental groups, local governments, waste haulers and recyclers. Recycling companies say the move will help them cut down on the non-recyclable trash thrown in recycling bins that needs to be transported, sorted and sent to the landfill.

Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability at Republic Services, one of the country’s largest waste and recycling companies, said in an interview that more than a fifth of the material his company processes nationwide is non-recyclable garbage. That means that even on its best day, Republic is running at only 80 percent efficiency, processing materials it shouldn’t be processing, he said.

Some of the most common forms of non-recyclable trash marring operations at Republic’s 70 facilities across the United States, which processes six million tons of curbside recycling a year: snack pouches, plastic film, grocery bags and packing material. Plastic bags, in particular, can’t be recycled in most curbside recycling programs and notoriously gum up recycling machines.

“There are a lot of products in the marketplace today that have the chasing arrows that shouldn’t” Mr. Keller said. “There aren’t really any true end markets, or any real way to recover and ultimately recycle those materials in curbside programs.”

The plastics and packaging industry has opposed the bill, saying it would create more confusion for consumers, not less. An industry memo circulated among California lawmakers urges them to oppose the bill unless it is amended, arguing it “would create a new definition of recyclability with unworkable criteria for complex products and single use packaging.”

The letter was signed by industry heavyweights like the American Chemistry Council, the Plastics Industry Association and Ameripen, a packaging industry group. California should wait for Washington to come up with nationwide labeling standards, the groups said.

In discussions over the bill, opposition industry groups also said that if a product is deemed non-recyclable, companies won’t invest in technologies to recycle it. Supporters of the bill say the opposite would be true: Tougher rules would incentivize manufacturers to make their products truly recyclable by investing in new packaging, for example.

Dan Felton, Ameripen’s executive director, expressed concerns that the bill would actually reduce recycling rates. The bill “could have the unintended consequence of sending more packaging material to landfills at the very time when California needs to boost recycling,” he wrote in an email.

The American Chemistry Council referred questions to Ameripen. The Plastics Industry Association, which represents plastic manufacturers, warned that the bill would determine a slew of products to be unrecyclable and therefore would be landfilled. (Supporters of the bill point out those products are landfilled anyway, despite displaying the recycling symbol.)

Environmental groups said that strengthening government oversight is critical. “It’s the wild, wild West of product claims and labeling with no sheriff in town,” Jan Dell, an engineer and founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, an environmental organization, wrote in an email.

The bill would make it a crime for corporations to use the chasing arrows recycling symbol on any product or packaging that hasn’t met the state’s recycling criteria. Products would be considered recyclable if CalRecycle, the state’s recycling department, determines they have a viable end market and meet certain design criteria, including not using toxic chemicals.

In addition to plastics, the bill covers all consumer goods and packaging sold in the state, excluding some products that are already covered by existing recycling laws, such as beverage containers and certain kinds of batteries. Through its environmental advertising laws, California already prohibits companies from using words like “recyclable” or “biodegradable” without supporting evidence.

Source The New York Times

Swell Readies $450M in Financing for Solar-Plus-Battery Virtual Power Plants

Posted on December 16, 2020 by dishanth

Swell Energy has lined up $450 million in financing to give homeowners and business owners batteries and solar systems at no upfront cost, and then earn the money back by turning them into virtual power plants serving utilities’ grid needs.

Ares Management Corp. and Aligned Climate Capital will provide up to $450 million to back projects Swell is developing with four undisclosed utilities in three states, according to Thursday’s announcement. The projects will deliver a combined 200 megawatt-hours of dispatchable energy capacity spread across about 14,000 solar-storage systems, to be completed by 2023.

It’s a massive potential investment in a form of distributed energy resource aggregation that’s growing by leaps and bounds across the country. Multiple companies are bundling solar-battery systems to earn revenue from their flexibility as wholesale energy market capacity or utility grid services.

U.S. residential solar leader Sunrun has taken a lead with projects in California, Massachusetts, New York and Hawaii. Solar and battery provider Tesla has virtual power plants with Vermont utility Green Mountain Power and in Australia, and Shell-owned sonnen has expanded its extensive VPP work in its home market of Germany with projects in Utah and California. Generator maker and recent battery entrant Generac is also seeking to crack the residential VPP market with its acquisition of Enbala.

On the commercial side, a host of European energy giants have acquired distributed energy companies, giving them stakes in the U.S. market. Enel X is aggregating batteries, electric vehicle chargers, and commercial and industrial demand response; Engie is pulling together solar, storage and demand response; and Centrica Business Solutions is integrating the load flexibility of acquisition REstore Power into distributed energy offerings.

This year, two grid giants have formed energy-as-a-service joint ventures: Schneider Electric with Huck Capital and Siemens with Macquarie Capital. These ventures can combine on-site natural gas generation for resiliency with solar and batteries for utility bill reduction and to meet clean energy goals.

These behind-the-meter assets are increasingly becoming targets for infrastructure investors. Earlier this week, demand response aggregator OhmConnect landed $100 million from Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners to finance smart thermostats and smart plugs to add up to 550 megawatts of flexible capacity to OhmConnect’s roughly 100 megawatts of load from about 150,000 residential customers in California.

Swell’s behind-the-meter battery-based VPP proposition

Venice Beach, Calif.-based Swell doesn’t make its own solar PV or battery systems. Instead, it packages batteries from partners LG Chem, sonnen and Tesla with rooftop solar and home energy controls in its EnergyShield offering, and charges customers monthly payments based on the size of the system.

The primary proposition for homeowners is reliable backup power during grid outages, an issue that’s risen to the fore with wildfire-prevention blackouts in California, its primary market. Thursday’s announcement includes the launch of Swell’s “home energy subscription agreement,” which offers monthly financing for systems that manage home energy generation, storage and consumption “in an optimized and transactive manner.”

But the same solar PV systems, batteries and home energy control platforms can be tapped to reduce load to help mitigate peaks in systemwide electricity demand or avoid localized grid pressures that could lead to expensive grid upgrades. Research firm Wood Mackenzie predicts that U.S. distributed energy resources (DERs) will reach 387 gigawatts of capacity by 2025, with $110.3 billion in cumulative investment over that time.

California is a key early market for companies eager to tap into their growing potential to earn money for helping to balance an increasingly clean-powered grid. WoodMac forecasts that the state’s DER capacity will grow from 4.7 gigawatts today to 13.5 GW by 2025, with EV chargers and behind-the-meter batteries making up the majority of new growth.

Swell has already announced one VPP contract with utility Southern California Edison, aimed at delivering 5 megawatts of load-reduction capacity from batteries in 3,000 homes. This is likely the first project to be funded by its newly announced capital investment financing vehicle, which Swell identified as its first utility VPP set for delivery in January.

While Swell hasn’t revealed the utilities or the locations of its most recent VPP plans, California is an obvious target. Other states with utility programs or wholesale energy market structures that could support these kinds of developments include Massachusetts, Vermont, Hawaii and New York.

A land grab for distributed energy investors

Solar-battery systems being sold to customers with the promise of reliable backup power and utility bill reduction must be carefully managed to assure those use cases aren’t compromised as systems are tapped for utility grid benefits or wholesale energy market revenues, said Elta Kolo, content lead for Wood Mackenzie’s grid edge team.

This differentiates efforts like Sunrun’s work to aggregate existing solar-battery customers into VPPs from the kind of investments that have become more prevalent over the past year, she said. The new wave of “asset-backed flexibility” is aligned with the imperative to reduce costs for customers’ DER installations and then find ways to monetize those DERs as market opportunities open up, she said.

“It’s a land-grab situation — building out these resources over the next five years and then…weaving these assets together into virtual power plants,” Kolo said. And in this model, “you won’t necessarily see customers owning these. You’ll see third parties owning them.”

Swell’s partnerships with sonnen and Tesla raise the question of whether its new financing vehicle will end up boosting the sales of those partners’ batteries into VPP projects already in the works in multiple states, said Chloe Holden, a WoodMac energy storage analyst focused on behind-the-meter batteries.

“In the behind-the-meter market, the objective right now is figuring out financing arrangements that are palatable for customers and deployment partners, while offering attractive services to utilities and grid operators,” Holden said.

By Jeff St John

Source Green Tech Media

California Governor Signs Order to Ban Sale of New Gas-Powered Cars by 2035

Posted on September 27, 2020 by dishanth

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Wednesday that would ban the sale of new cars in California that run only on gasoline by the year 2035. The bid to reduce emissions and combat the climate crisis would make California the first state to ban the sale of new cars with internal combustion engines, according to POLITICO.

“This is the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change,” said Newsom in a statement that accompanied the signing of the executive order. “For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe. Californians shouldn’t have to worry if our cars are giving our kids asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse – and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.”

The threats posed by the climate crisis are playing out in dramatic fashion in California. This summer, the state has seen record-setting wildfires, heat waves and drought. Those mounting climate crisis-related challenges have spurred the move away from the state’s leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, as The Washington Post reported.

“We can’t continue down this path,” Newsom said at a briefing, as The Guardian reported. “If you care about your kids and your grandkids, if you care about disadvantaged communities, if you care about seniors, if you care about rural communities, if you care about inner city communities that have been underserved by our fossil fuel economy, then you care about the core construct that we are advancing here in this executive order.”

Newsom added that the order will create “green collar jobs” that Californians are well-positioned to capitalize on since 34 electric car manufacturers are already in the state.

“Our second largest export in the state of California are electric vehicles,” he said, according to The Guardian. “Those 34 manufacturers, those public trading manufacturers, represent close to half a trillion dollars of market capitalization, some $500bn … this is an economic opportunity.”

For the order to be successful, the technology, scalability, and affordability of electric cars would have to improve dramatically in the next decade. Also, the state will need to make sure charging stations are readily available. California currently has the largest market for electric and hybrid vehicles, with roughly 257,000 new registrations for electric vehicles in 2018, according to The Washington Post. Yet, that number was not even 10 percent of the state’s new car market.

While the order is sure to meet legal challenges, it may set the trend that carmakers need to increase their investment in fossil-fuel-free vehicles.

“The automotive industry was already on the road toward electrification as a long term goal, but many automakers have been guilty of setting short term targets for their electrification strategy that never came to fruition,” said Jessica Caldwell, director of insights at Edmunds, an online resource for car data, in an emailed comment to CNN. “This rule, if implemented, establishes a specific timeline that they’ll collectively need to adhere to. California is a major market that automakers desperately need to maintain sales within to ensure their own viability.”

The announcement also earned the praise of environmental groups.

“The Governor’s Executive Order is a meaningful step in addressing the climate crisis and protecting the health of Californians,” said Coalition for Clean Air in an email to NPR. “Electrifying transportation will also create jobs and help California move forward in its economic recovery.”

By Jordan Davidson

Source: Eco Watch