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On Sunday a cable failure took the largest power plant on the island of Kaua’i in Hawaii offline, which led to cascading failures in other oil-fired and hydro power plants, leading to a 2+ hour blackout for the island’s 66,000 residents. Despite work on the Port Allen oil-fired power plant continuing and still waiting on parts to repair the Kapaia oil-fired power plant which started it all, the Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) did not have to implement further rolling blackouts on Tuesday. This was in part due to the contributions of solar and storage.
One of Oklahoma’s biggest electric cooperatives is juicing up its power capacity using cutting-edge technology. On Tuesday, Western Farmers Electric Cooperative announced it executed a power purchase agreement with NextEra Energy Resources that includes 200 megawatts of battery-stored energy and will take the capacity of its generating fleet to more than 3 gigawatts.
A proposed 400 megawatt pumped hydro storage project near Martinsdale, Montana is a big step closer to reality. Its promoter, Absaroka Energy, announced this week it had secured $1 billion in financing from Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners in Denmark. The closed loop Gordon Butte Pumped Storage Hydro project has already received all the necessary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and could begin construction as early as next year.
GE Renewable Energy has secured two contracts in the US to supply technology to upgrade hydro plants with a combined capacity of 1249MW. FirstLight has chosen GE Renewable Energy to design, supply, install and commission a new spherical valve at the 4x292MW Northfield Mountain pumped hydro storage station. PG&E has selected the company to replace a runner and shaft of the first of three 27MW units at the Caribou One project.
Battery storage companies have raised a combined $1.4 billion in venture capital funding during the first six months of 2019, up from $543 million during the same time period last year, according to a new report by Mercom Capital Group. The uptick in VC funding for battery storage companies comes amid an increased focus on the technology, which enables the integration of more renewable energy and has the potential to replace gas-peaker fleets around the country.
Utility companies seeking to reduce CO2 emissions are increasingly relying on battery energy storage systems to meet peak-power demand as they retire their gas-fired plants. “Providing peaking capacity could be a significant U.S. market for energy storage,” according to a June report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Rapidly falling battery costs make the transition attractive.
NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with Yet-Ming Chiang, professor of materials science and engineering at MIT, about why new battery technology is key to cutting carbon emissions and slowing climate change.
Nine pumped-storage hydropower concepts today were named winners of the latest stage in the FAST Commissioning for Pumped-Storage Hydropower prize competition. The FAST Prize—which stands for “Furthering Advancements to Shorten Time”—is part of the American-Made Challenges series, designed to accelerate the commissioning times of pumped-storage hydro projects from 10 years to five, while reducing both cost and risk.
Operating reserves are vitally needed by electric utilities if they are to ensure that energy is available when needed in response to a number of system events that might drive additional need. Recent developments in new technologies such as storage, load management, advanced predictive capability, and the demonstration of new inverter capabilities have the potential to contribute to spinning and other reserve requirements. The changing energy landscape is driving the need to reconsider the industry’s traditional approach to reserves including the increased use of variable energy resources.
In announcing a resource plan Monday, Portland General Electric, the state’s largest electric utility, said investments in energy efficiency, demand management, customer-generated energy, new renewables and energy storage could fill a capacity gap expected to open up in the coming decade — and keep it on a path to hit a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target unveiled last year.
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