GreenTech Media NYC Energy Storage Conference - My Reaction & Proposal

After watching the whole GreenTech Media conference on Energy Storage that took place in NYC the day before, I learned a lot from the speakers: this will be a fast growing market, can save people good money over time and releave stress from the grid - potentialy avoiding black outs -; A Battery ESS will have to be low cost, otherwise not many people will be willing to get one - especially if they are still paying their solar system loan -
Towards the end, these "experts in this field" agree to the conclusion that the batteries still cost too much and are not safe ... and that no real product exists right now ...

Hearing that, I could not help reacting to this "status quo" situation and posted a comment on this Youtube video: After all these months of testing my LiFePO4 Energy Storage System - ESS - , I can tell that I will be able to offer a solution pretty soon, and it will be Low Cost, will use High Quality & Safe LiFePO4 Batteries - actually the best on the market today -, and will be Fully Automatic !

As I wrote it, I think I could start offering this DIY ESS Kit for 2,500 to 3,000 Euros, that is for a 4.5kWh System

Why Is Net Metering Under Attack?

The utilities’ net metering math doesn’t add up.

Customer-sited (or "rooftop") solar provides less than 0.01 percent of the U.S. energy supply -- but the market is growing rapidly, and as costs continue to decline, solar is reaching homeowners of all incomes. This is cause for alarm among utilities that have been providing electric service in essentially the same way for over a century.

A total of 5.9 gigawatts of PV is now in operation in the U.S. That’s more than 271,000 installations, many of which are on customers’ rooftops. GTM Research forecasted that 3.2 gigawatts of PV solar was installed nationwide in 2012, up from 1.9 gigawatts installed in 2011. If new solar capacity added in the fourth quarter of 2012 matches GTM Research predictions, solar PV will see a 70 percent increase in installation growth in 2012 compared with 2011.

Key to solar’s growth is an arrangement known as net metering. Currently in place in 43 states and the District of Columbia, net metering allows a solar customer’s electric meter to “spin backwards” when she generates more solar energy than she uses, ensuring fair credit for the clean power delivered to the grid.

But net metering is coming under increasing attack from utilities. Here’s our perspective on what’s really going on.

Utilities across the country are experiencing major shifts in the way customers use energy, and that’s making them nervous. Growth in electricity demand is slowing across the country: the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects electricity use will increase at the anemic rate of 0.7 percent per year through 2035 -- down from the usual 2 percent to 3 percent growth per year. Beyond a reduction in sales, utilities are worried about retaining customers as solar costs drop like a rock, a situation that could be further exacerbated now that cost-effective micro-storage is predicted to be only a few years away.

The writing is on the wall: clean and reliable rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and smart grid technologies are here to revolutionize the grid. But instead of looking to get ahead of these trends, many utilities are digging in and defending their business-as-usual approach. These utilities make a guaranteed rate of return on infrastructure, including power plants and transmission lines. As a result, utilities continue to invest in conventional dirty energy resources that may become obsolete well before the plants will be retired.

Some utilities are looking to slow the growth of rooftop solar by claiming that net metering shifts big costs onto non-solar ratepayers. In a recent one-sided article in Bloomberg, for example, the three big California utilities alleged net metering is costing non-solar ratepayers $1.3 billion, but gave no details on how they arrived at that staggeringly high number.

The fact is, the utilities’ net metering math doesn’t add up. The calculations inflate the cost side of the equation, while leaving a rather important piece out of the cost-benefit analysis: the benefits. By using fuzzy math to put net metering on trial in the press, these utilities hope to convince policymakers to put a halt to common-sense solar policies.

What’s needed is a rational dialogue among the stakeholders, and an accurate and comprehensive look at the economic impacts of net metering, considering all the costs and benefits. To that end, Vote Solar commissioned Crossborder Energy, a consulting firm, to conduct a new analysis for ratepayers of the three big California utilities. The results show that net metering actually provides a system-wide net financial benefit to non-solar ratepayers, not a cost as the utilities assert.

In total, the non-solar ratepayers of all three IOUs will save more as more net metered systems are installed, up to about $92 million per year once we reach the current 5 percent net metering cap.

Why are these numbers so different from the utility claims? Well, not only did Crossborder Energy analysts look accurately at the costs side of the ledger, but they also counted all the well-documented benefits that net-metered generation brings to the grid. Those benefits include avoiding the cost of purchasing expensive conventional plants and fuel, reducing the need for investments in wires, reducing the power lost over those wires, and avoiding costs associated with meeting carbon and renewable energy requirements.

Net Metering's benefits to the grid outweigh the lost revenue from net metering bill credits. It’s actually solar customers as a group that are subsidizing non-solar customers as a group.

For many utilities, rooftop solar represents a threat to traditional business models. But the people want it, the grid needs it, and it’s helping us take on some of our greatest challenges.

Utilities will have to adapt to a 21st-century energy landscape with new regulatory structures and initiatives, innovative business models, and modernized practices making way for ubiquitous distributed energy.


Graphic from Vote Solar (View fullsize here) 

Source: GreenTech Media , Susannah CHURCHILL

The Numbers Behind Tesla and SolarCity’s Home Energy Storage Play

IDC Energy Insights breaks out how Tesla and SolarCity’s play for residential solar battery backup systems may play out in California and other states.

Have electric carmaker Tesla and solar power installer and financier SolarCity cracked the financial code for backing up residential rooftop solar panels with household batteries?

Over the past year or so, the two companies have been quietly installing Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries to back up SolarCity’s solar panels. That’s no secret -- SolarCity advertises its home energy storage system on its company website.



But battery backup for solar panels has been too expensive to justify for all but the wealthiest of homeowners. Simply put, batteries are too expensive, and the price of power too cheap, to justify the expense.

That’s too bad, because battery backup could really help solve some of the larger-scale problems associated with connecting lots of intermittent, on-again, off-again solar power to the grid. Energy storage could help mitigate the distribution grid voltage sags and surgesthat can occur when clouds pass over neighborhoods with lots of rooftop solar, for example. It could also help shift stored solar power to cover peak loads that may occur slightly later in the afternoon than solar’s peak production times.

Enter the Tesla-SolarCity technology combo. So far, the two companies have submitted about 70 applications to Pacific Gas & Electric under California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). That program offers credits for on-site generation sources like solar power, biogas digesters and fuel cells. Starting in 2009, SGIP started offering credits of $2 per watt for energy storage systems that can store power from an eligible on-site generation system and discharge it at rated capacity for a four-hour period.

IDC Energy Insights analyst Sam Jaffe has reviewed Tesla and SolarCity’s SGIP applications with PG&E, most of which fall in the 5-kilowatt size range, and estimates that the two companies have applied for a combined 500 kilowatts of storage systems. In a Friday blog post, he extrapolates from the SGIP rule requiring four hours of discharge at rated capacity, and projects that the two companies’ applications add up to about 2 megawatt-hours of storage capacity.

That’s a lot of storage, and Jaffe predicts it’s just the beginning of Tesla and SolarCity’s plans. California’s other two big utilities, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, haven’t published their lists of SGIP applicants yet, and even PG&E has yet to announce the next wave to come later this year, he noted in his blog post. Given those variables, he estimates that the two may be eyeing as much as 10 megawatt-hours of home battery-solar backup systems in California in 2012.

Jaffe also states that SolarCity is offering the systems at a cost of $2,000 per kilowatt-hour, which would add up to $40,000 for a 5-kilowatt system. SolarCity bills the system as a way for homeowners to back up their homes in case of power outage, but it’s likely the bigger financial benefit would be to put power back on the grid to manage peak grid power, which could get the utility involved in further subsidies.

If SolarCity sets up the batteries to go beyond backing up solar power -- say, by charging with cheap nighttime grid power and combining it with rooftop solar power in the afternoon to make the home energy-neutral or even a net producer of energy -- that could yield additional payoffs under PG&E’s residential time-of-use tariff, Jaffe noted. That could shave about $500 more off the price of the system, he estimated.

But the big question for Tesla and SolarCity is whether or not they’ll be able to bundle the battery costs into the overall solar system costs that are eligible for the federal government’s 30-percent investment tax credits. Jaffe predicts that the two may be the first to try to do so, which would instantly pay for one-third of the price of the system.

Adding the ITC benefits to the SGIP incentives cuts the cost of the system to a mere $800 per kilowatt-hour, Jaffe estimates. With time-of-use benefits added to that, “the homeowner is paying about $6,000 for the benefit of having reserve power during short-term blackouts, which is roughly equivalent to what an advanced hard-wired generator would cost,” he said.

All in all, it’s still an expensive proposition for most homeowners. Jaffe notes that the two will have to figure out how to cut the price further to create a truly disruptive play in the home energy storage space. Still, if battery prices continue to fall as IDC predicts (down to $600 per kilowatt-hour in 2012), that could cut the overall system cost further.

Tesla and SolarCity aren’t the first to try out batteries to back solar power. Japan’sPanasonic and Hitachi are installing home-based, solar-backed energy storage in pilot projects. In the United States, battery startup Xtreme Power is eyeing smaller-scale solar-backed applications to match their big, substation-sized grid batteries, and utility AEP is working with S&C Electric Co. on “community energy storage” systems that back up grids at the neighborhood level. General Electric just inked a partnership to integrate its nickel-saltDurathon batteries with Arista Power’s power balancing system to back up solar and wind power.

One interesting note on the Tesla-SolarCity effort is that the two are offering the systems for lease in California, according to SolarCity’s website. That could open the door to SolarCity managing the batteries en masse, to maximize the value of the energy they’re storing. That sounds a bit like the plan from Stem, the startup formerly known as Powergetics, which has shifted from a straightforward home energy storage play to a cloud-managed, energy optimization technology play that manages home batteries without the customer getting involved. Of course, SolarCity and Tesla haven’t publicly disclosed any such plans. But it may be one way to squeeze more value out of what could end up being a common good.



Source: GreenTechMedia