Battery storage take 4: Skinny connections to yield fat savings

Last week at Clean Energy Week in Brisbane there were lots of energy storage products on display. Most of them were focused on the emerging “self use” market where householders attempt to maximise the use of their own solar generated energy in preference to buying power from the grid.

Reports from Europe indicate that “Self Use” is really taking off now that feed-in tariffs are being wound back in key solar markets like Germany. Our local solar market is also preparing for the shift in market behaviour and expected surge in the uptake of energy storage systems.

It now appears that these very same energy storage systems may also be the key to managing a new direction in electricity network charges, and it’s not Time of Use tariffs.

In a disappointing move earlier this year the Queensland Competition Authority increased the standing service fee for Queensland’s 12-month-old Time of Use Tariff 12 from $0.78 per day to $1.13 per day, a dramatic 44.8% rise. Anecdotally, few people have signed up for Tariff 12 in its first year and that’s unlikely to change given that the flat rate Tariff 11 continues to have a much lower $0.50 connection per day.

Given the enthusiasm for Time of Use (TOU) tariffs by the electricity utilities in the southern states, Tariff 12 has been seen by many in the Queensland solar industry as the end game for tackling residential peak load. Why then would the Queensland Competition Authority make this new, opt-in TOU tariff so unpopular? It seems that another solution may be waiting in the wings.

It has been highlighted a number of times that in Queensland, due to the flat rate connection fees charged to residential electricity customers, there is a heavy degree of cross-subsidisation by small peak load homes to support high peak load homes. Or in other words if your house doesn’t have an air-conditioner you’re effectively subsidising the connection costs of your neighbour that does.



With utilities like Queensland’s Energex and Ergon building out their networks to cope with peak load events that occur just a few hours per year, everyone pays so that some can enjoy heating and cooling during the coldest and hottest periods. Much political attention has been given to the alleged inequality of solar homes being subsidised by households without solar power systems. This begs the question “what’s being done about the inequality of connection fees for air-conditioning owners?”

Taking a look at how other markets are dealing with peak load can be instructive because the pressures on network costs being felt in Australia are hardly unique. A recent trial conducted by electricity network operator Alliander in the Netherlands limited household grid connections to just six amps – less even than a single lighting circuit from an average Australian home.

To ensure that the participants in the trial didn’t experience a dramatic reduction in their life styles, the utility provided each home with a 5kW PowerRouter solar power / energy storage system from Dutch manufacturer Nedap. This allows the local loads of each house to actually draw up to 25 amps as required without tripping the six amp connection.

PowerRouters are already available in Australia along with other products with similar Self Use capabilities such as the locally manufactured Selectronic SP Pro.

Restricting the size of the network connection into a house delivers a range of clear benefits to utilities in terms of network augmentation and complexity as well as to customers by driving increased energy efficiency. From the utility’s point of view they don’t have to estimate peak load, they just add up the connection sizes for each customer on each suburban transformer.

For consumers, especially small ones, being given the option to pay a network connection that’s just the right size is a great opportunity to save money and stop cross subsidising high electricity users.

Considering the Queensland government’s recent investigation into “Fair and Reasonable” Solar Feed-in Tariffs, it seems like offering customers the chance to pay only for the connection size they need will deliver great social benefits as well.

A further benefit is that inefficient and high draw devices like air-conditioners, electric storage hot water systems and pool pumps will be more closely scrutinised when customers can see the implications to their bills.

Under such a scheme Time of Use tariffs become effectively obsolete and utilities can continue to charge flat rate tariffs, which are far lower risk from a technology point of view.

Combined solar power and energy storage systems offer a clear path forward to make such skinny network connections a reality and deliver savings for both utilities and consumers. These systems produce solar power during the day with excess production “banked” for evening use. The integrated energy storage also acting as a buffer to ensure the network connection is never exceeded.

Advanced capabilities available with these energy management systems also include modern luxuries like customer web portals, household consumption monitoring and daily power production summaries. In the near future it’s expected that utility fleet management will also be rolled out to placate any fears the network operators might have.

Energy management systems featuring solar power and energy storage systems are the future for household electricity and now we just need skinny connections to unleash fat savings for frugal consumers and network operators alike.



Dane Muldoon is commercial sales director of Solar Guys, a Queensland company that installs solar panels and battery storage products.



Source: Renew Economy

Energy Management with SMA Smart Home

An older video from SMA at InterSolar Europe in 2012, but quite instructive on their vision of Solar Energy use at home, and already talking about their idea of Lithium-ion Battery embedded in a Grid Tie Inverter ....



Interview with Andreas Umland, Director Strategic Product Management, about SMA Smart Home at the Intersolar Europe 2012.

What is the German Energiewende? - German Energy Transition

Germany has drawn a lot of international attention for its aim to switch to a renewable energy economy and leave nuclear and fossil energy behind. A lot of the international reporting about the German Energy Transition, or Energiewende, has, however, been misleading -- for instance, when it comes to the role of coal power, energy price trends, and carbon emissions.



The website www.energytransition.de aims to explain what the German Energy Transition is, how it works, and what challenges lay ahead. It is intended to provide facts and explain the politics and policies to an international audience. The website highlights the effects of the Energiewende on the German economy, environment and society and addresses the most important questions.

SMA to Part Ways with Windy Boy Inverters

 

SMA will withdraw from the small wind turbine industry at the end of 2013 at which time production of the Windy Boy inverter will cease. We spoke to Volker Wachenfeld, Executive Vice President in the Hybrid Energy Solutions division, about the reasons and what the new markets of the future will be.




Volker, what are the reasons for withdrawing from the small wind turbine industry?

Volker: Unfortunately, changes to the political landscape in important sales markets have caused the market for small wind turbines to collapse. The UK government, for example, has cut funding for wind power plants below 1.5 kW – the size typically used in domestic applications – so unfortunately, in some cases, it is simply no longer worthwhile for the customer. In Denmark, the subsidy model has been modified to the point where it is no longer worth it to operate small-scale wind turbines. There has been a clear downturn since 2010 and for this reason, we made the decision to pull out of this business area and to discontinue the Windy Boy, Windy Tripower and Windy Boy Protection Box protects.



Windy Boy – the inverter for small wind turbine systems – was one of SMA’s first products. Won’t it hurt a bit to say goodbye to it?

This has not been an easy decision. As an engineer, I am probably even more affected than others by the withdrawal from this area as it is very interesting in terms of system technology. It is really enjoyable to tailor wind turbine systems to the specific wind conditions of a location. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that these markets must also be lucrative for a company like ours, particularly when times are as tough as they are now for the solar industry. As a result, it makes sense for us to concentrate on important topics for the future. This also means that we have to be resolute in stepping back from business segments that are less promising.

How does this change impact projects that have already been planned with Windy Boy? Depending on the particular site, the approval processes and certification for wind energy systems can take a very long time.

For this reason, we informed our customers right away that we would be phasing out the products gradually throughout the year. This gives our customers the opportunity to stockpile an appropriate supply of inverters and corresponding system technology. And we will of course continue to offer related services.


So the customers have already been informed, how did they react?

Of course, customers were not exactly thrilled. After all, we were the only supplier in this fragile market to offer products from large-scale production of PV technology that were tailored to the requirements of small wind turbine systems. The quality we offered was undoubtedly above average for the market segment. On the other hand, we noticed that this market was becoming increasingly fragmented with more and more smaller manufacturers offering very specialized systems, all with their own special requirements that needed to be met by inverter manufacturers. Even if the market volume trend in the segment we are interested in had declined in recent years, a shift toward more diversified system suppliers was evident. This type of supplier is also capable of operating successfully in a smaller market, whereas some of the larger plant manufacturers have reduced their involvement. This environment particularly tends to favor highly specialized electronic start-ups, which are a great deal better at fulfilling the customers’ very specialized requirements than large-scale manufacturers like us.

You have addressed some important topics for the future. What is on SMA’s agenda?
One of the really hot topics at the moment is energy management. In order to manage the energy transition, we need intelligent solutions that help us exploit renewable energies preferably on-the-spot. For the market here in Germany, we are developing system solutions for increased self-consumption. The aim is for photovoltaic systems operators to be able to use as much as possible of the solar energy generated on their roof for their own consumption. This will help them save on costs associated with buying electricity. And, on an international level, we see tremendous potential in the area of industrial photovoltaic diesel hybrid systems. By this, we mean the use of photovoltaics to supplement existing diesel systems. This will allow operators of large-scale industrial systems to save diesel costs and reduce CO2 emissions.


So how do photovoltaics and diesel systems fit together?
Actually, they complement each other perfectly. With the aid of solar energy, the power output from diesel systems can be reduced. And by the way, this topic is not all that new at SMA. Most conventional PV systems for rural electrification have an integrated diesel generator that takes over the energy supply when there is little sunlight. In large-scale industrial plants this situation is reversed. Instead of the diesel system being used to supplement photovoltaic output, photovoltaics supplement the diesel. This field combines our core competencies in the areas of off-grid electrification and large-scale PV power plants. The combination of rising diesel prices and falling prices for PV system technology means that this development is already a commercially attractive alternative for industrial large-scale consumers in off-grid but sun-rich regions. SMA’s first system was installed at the end of 2012 in Thabazimbi, South Africa. Since then, we have been working on PV diesel hybrid projects all around the world – in South Africa, Australia and India. Two additional projects have already been sold. Out of approximately 500 gigawatts worldwide of installed power from diesel generators, there’s a potential of approximately 50 gigawatts that could benefit from being supplemented with photovoltaics.


Volker, thanks a lot for the interview.



Source: SMA Sunny. The SMA Corporate Blog

Global market for Residential PV Storage expected to boom

Global installations of residential PV storage systems will grow to 2.5 GW by 2017, according to a new report by research group IHS, which finds that Germany's energy storage subsidy has kickstarted the surge.

With incentives and subsidies such as FITs being cut, it is increasingly attractive for end-consumers to self-consume. It has thus become less attractive to feed excess generated PV electricity into the grid and retail electricity prices have been increasing as well. This is boosting the incentive for on-site energy self-consumption as the new IHS report “The Role of Energy Storage in the PV Industry” highlights.

"Residential PV customers are striving to maximize their own consumption of the energy they are generating," said Abigail Ward, PV analyst at IHS. "This is because rising electricity prices and decreasing feed-in-tariffs (FITs) are serving as a disincentive for consumers to export their power to the electricity grid."

The cumulative installations are expected to grow to 2.5 GW by 2017, a leap from 12 MW in 2012. The number of PV residential energy storage installations are expected to be greater than the total number of residential solar systems in Germany today.



"An energy storage solution enables a PV system owner to shift energy from when it is generated to a later time for consumption," Ward added. "As a result, demand for residential energy storage products will continue to accelerate as PV energy reaches grid-parity in a number of countries."

Kickstart in Germany

The introduction of the German Energy Storage Subsidy is said to represent the turning point by increasing the return-on-investment of a residential PV system installed with an energy storage solution. Nevertheless with today's prices, the financial gains to be obtained by increasing self-consumption do not yet offset the increase in upfront costs associated with the addition of an energy storage solution in a residential PV system over the expected 20-year lifetime of the installation. The German storage subsidy program is however one way to make it easier on the pocket.

"Not only will the incentive reduce the upfront cost of residential storage solutions deployed in Germany by up to 30%, it will also generate volume in this immature market — and price reductions achieved by mass production will also benefit installations in other countries," said Sam Wilkinson, PV research manager and co-author of the report. "For battery-based residential PV energy storage systems, IHS predicts an average cost reduction of around 45% during the next five years, largely due to decreases in battery prices."

Large-scale storage market

The market drivers for large-scale storage systems though differ from residential systems. Wilkinson added that the deployment in these massive systems is anticipated to shift from pilot demonstration projects to commercial installations during the next year. He stated, "Annual installations for the total grid-connected market are forecast to reach nearly 6 GW in 2017."



Source: PV Magazine