Tag: solar

20
Jun

Intersolar Summit Spain 2019 – Solar Growth in Spain brings New Opportunities for Energy Storage

At the Intersolar Summit Spain 2019 in Barcelona this week on the 18th of June the Solar community got together and discussed the national plan for energy and environment. This plan includes the target of Spain having 74% renewable electricity supply in 2030 which will include new PV installation of 28GW from 2020 to 2030. This means an installation of 2800MW of Solar in average each year from 2020 to 2030. Compared with the installation in 2018 of roughly 260MW this will be a huge increase for the next 10 years in Spain.

Most Common Business Model – PPA

Together with increased PV installation the opportunities for energy storage will rise. In Spain are great opportunities for Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) according to Bruce Douglas, Deputy CEO and COO at SolarPower Europe. Within a PPA most commonly a price for the electricity purchase is fixed over a certain duration. But as presented within the Intersolar Summit there are many different possibilities for PPAs as presented by Nicolas Gourvitch (Founder of Green Giraffe).

Opportunities for Energy Storage – Merchant and Energy Shifting

Merchant

For example, together with PPAs, energy storage can bring benefit to Solar energy providers by storing energy in case the electricity price at EEX (European Energy Exchange AG) is lower than the contracted PPA price. This energy can be traded at the EEX in case the current price index is above the contracted PPA price. This is just one example for an application of a battery system combined with PV.

Energy Shifting

According to Raúl Morales (CEO at Soltec) there will be an overproduction of Solar energy during the midday, which results in an electricity price of zero or even negative values. This scenario will get more and more important with the raise of Solar power and brings huge potential for energy shifting with storage solutions like batteries. This statement was backed up by the Spanish TSO Red Eléctrica (presented by Paula Junco, Tecnico de la Dirección de Operacioines) for the winter months. There is a big potential for energy shifting although in the summer months the solar power will match the electricity demand in the near future.

7
Jun

Cellution at Intersolar Summit Spain 2019 in Barcelona at June 18th

Cellution will be at the Intersolar Summit Spain 2019 in Barcelona!

Spains solar market is reignited and this leads to big opportunities for the combination with battery storage.

From 2017 to 2018 Spain nearly doubled its yearly new installed solar capacity from 135MW to 262MW. This increase is driven by lower production costs and cancellation of fees and charges such as the sun tax. If you participate at the Intersolar Summit in Barcelona on 18.06.2019 then I would be glad to meet you there!

Find more information about the Intersolar Summit Spain here.

20
Mar

O&M in Energy Storage

Operation and Maintenance is a critical factor in energy storage systems as availability is key to a successful business model and often required by contractual circumstances with customers or grid operators. Not only is non-availability lowering the revenue of a plant, it can as well causing liquidated damages or even harm business relationships on a ling term.

An battery energy storage system is complex and consists of many parts which in total requires a interdisciplinary team to cover all upcoming problems during O&M. From my time at Vattenfall in the maintenance of conventional power plants I experienced that the maintenance is limited nowadays to reactive maintenance. When a part has a failure, the asset manager reacts and mostly replace the part. In case of battery systems this methodology will not succeed on a long term as availability is a crucial factor. Here we will experience the advantages of predictive maintenance with machine learning and big data analysis to lear more about battery operational behavior and failure prediction.

Read an interesting article from energy-storage.news here

8
Jan

Solar needs storage to compete in National Grid’s UK Capacity Market redesign

National Grid has outlined how renewables could participate in the UK’s Capacity Market, unveiling technology-specific de-rating factors that range from 1–15%.

However National Grid’s Daniel Burke warned that there remains a long way to go before renewables can participate in CM auctions, not least because of the need for policy reform.

Any introduction of renewable energy into the CM would require regulatory overhaul from BEIS and market regulator Ofgem, matters which, Burke said, mean it is “quite feasible” to “take some time”.

Read the full article here