New CEO to take LS Energy Solutions to the next level

ESA member LS Energy Solutions, the energy storage pioneer, announces the appointment of Steve Fludder, as new President and CEO. Fludder is an accomplished power and energy veteran, who most recently served as CEO of NEC Energy Solutions and earlier held the post of Chief Marketing and Sales Officer of Samsung Engineering. Steve started his career at GE and spent 27 years with the company including five years as a Vice President and Corporate Officer. He led GE’s company-wide environmental business initiative, which grew to $18 billion under his leadership.

In addition to appointing Steve Fludder as a new CEO, LS Energy Solutions is also appointing ESA board member Roger Lin as the new VP of Marketing and Strategy. Roger has over 15 years of battery technology experience, and is a recognized expert and key contributor to the energy storage industry. Prior to joining LS Energy, Roger led global marketing, strategy, and product at NEC Energy Solutions, and has held key roles at A123 Systems, a lithium-ion battery startup. Together, Fludder and Lin will be taking the company to the next level in the exponentially growing energy storage market.

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Executives Tout Storage as Key for Distributed Generation

“The market has definitely improved,” said Woody Rubin, president of AES Distributed Energy, noting a recovery in distributed energy projects is starting to take shape after the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Rubin said there have been some supply chain issues, along with labor shortages due to lockdown measures, but those are being resolved.

Rubin echoed comments from Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association, who provided a keynote address to wrap up the event’s first day on Monday. She talked about “the value of storage for consumers,” including how storage provides for “stacking the full value of multiple services” for electricity customers. “It’s important for reliability and resiliency,” she said, noting it improves power quality and provides many ancillary services.

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Upcoming Energy Storage Industry Events

ESA would like to draw your attention to these upcoming industry events:
– October 26-28: CES StorageIQ Webinars
– November 9-10: GTM Energy Storage Summit
– November 19-20: Reuters Energy Transition North America

Click through for more information on any of these events.

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Utility-scale battery storage costs decreased nearly 70% between 2015 and 2018

The average energy capacity cost of utility-scale battery storage in the United States has rapidly decreased from $2,152 per kilowatthour (kWh) in 2015 to $625/kWh in 2018. Battery storage systems store electricity produced by generators or pulled directly from the electric power grid and redistribute the power later as needed. At the end of 2018, the United States had 869 megawatts (MW) of installed battery power capacity (the maximum amount of power a battery can provide at a given moment) and 1,236 megawatthours (MWh) of battery energy capacity (the total amount of energy that can be stored by a battery).

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Funding the Next Generation of Efficient, Electric, Grid-Interactive Communities

U.S. homes and commercial buildings consume roughly two-fifths of the country’s overall energy and three-fourths of all electricity. The Department of Energy’s $65 million funding for “connected communities” projects that was announced last week is focused on all three parts of this equation. It builds on scores of projects across the country combining high efficiency, electrification and distributed energy resources such as rooftop or community solar, battery and thermal energy storage, and electric vehicle charging.  

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Long Duration Meets Refrigeration: Managing Demand with Thermal Energy Storage

This food supply sector, also referred to as the “cold chain,” is designated as critical infrastructure and is of vital importance—particularly during the type of public health emergency the world has faced over the past several months, and will continue to face until the pandemic is under control. Commercial and industrial (C&I) refrigerated facilities have the highest electricity demand per square foot of any industrial load. C&I refrigeration sites also consume more energy from the grid than any other usage category other than lighting. Significantly, energy often accounts for up to 70% of the total electric bill for C&I cold storage companies.

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Southern California water district to optimize four solar installations by adding battery storage

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is preparing to build four new battery energy storage systems that will boost the district’s energy resilience and cut operational costs by optimizing solar power and reducing peak load at its facilities. The agency’s board of directors Tuesday voted to authorize $2.2 million to design the battery systems at water treatment plants in Granada Hills, La Verne and Riverside’s Temecula Valley as well as a pump station in Lake Forest.

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AES begins work on 560MWh ‘largest battery system in Latin America’ for solar and wind in Chile

AES Gener has held a virtual groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on a 112MW / 560MWh battery energy storage system project in Chile, Latin America. Multinational electric power generation and distribution company AES Corporation’s local subsidiary said the system, which can store power from nearby solar and wind facilities for up to five hours, is the biggest battery storage system in Latin America to date as well as being Chile’s first solar-plus-storage project.

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UTILITIES: NextEra announces record renewables, world's largest battery

The world’s largest renewable energy developer says it has more projects in the works than it has connected to the grid — including plans for the biggest-ever stand-alone battery storage system. Renewable energy giant NextEra Energy Inc.’s competitive wholesale power unit has inked deals for more than 15,000 megawatts of wind, solar and storage projects, the utility giant announced yesterday.

“Our backlog is now larger than [NextEra] Energy Resources’ entire existing renewables portfolio, which took us 20 years to complete,” Rebecca Kujawa, NextEra’s chief financial officer, said during the company’s third-quarter earnings conference call with financial analysts.

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FERC landmark DER rule leaves open questions on grid operator implementation

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 2222, issued last month, gives Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO) and Independent System Operators (ISO) a lot of implementation flexibility, industry leaders pointed out during an Oct. 21 Energy Storage Association webinar. A key question is whether grid operators and utilities implement the rule ‘according to the spirit of the order,’ trying to open up participation to DERs as much as possible, or just do the bare minimum, said Ted Ko, vice president of policy and regulatory affairs at Stem during the webinar.

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