Energy storage: the birth of a new industry

The launch of Tesla’s energy storage batteries, Powerwall and Powerpack, in early May captured the imagination of the nation. The wave of hype created by the firm has now lured other technology firms out of the woodwork as they hope to cash in on the potential of storage, which is rapidly emerging as a new ‘sector’ within the energy space.

So far, Tesla has kept its cards close to its chest on whether it plans to enter the UK market, although it did recently announce plans to trial utility-scale systems in the Republic of Ireland so, geographically at least, it’s getting closer.

However, hot on its heels, British technology start-up Powervault announced in mid-June that it had raised £700,000 through investment crowdfunding and claimed it will “take on Tesla” by installing 50,000 2kWh and 4kWh home energy storage systems in the UK by 2020.

The firm’s managing director Joe Warren said: “Tesla is raising awareness of home energy storage, exciting potential customers and helping to create a market. Their entry into the market demonstrates the scale of the business opportunity, with battery costs falling and up to two million UK homes forecast to have solar panels by 2020. The Powervault system has been designed specifically to meet the needs of British homeowners and is available today.”

Another firm hoping to take advantage of Tesla’s success is Moixa Technology. Chief executive and entrepreneur Simon Daniel agrees that Tesla is helping raise awareness of energy storage. “We see Tesla as a very interesting market movement,” he tells Utility Week.

“We’ve been developing and patenting technologies for the last five or six years, but Tesla shines the spotlight on a retail aspect to the customer. Venture capitalists have known about this, technologists have known about this, but Tesla makes it much more public to consumers that it’s happening and it’s real.”

So it looks as though Tesla has paved the way for other tech firms hoping to enter the energy storage market. “There’s good battery technology coming which will drive down prices,” he adds. “It’s very good and supportive for us that they [Tesla] have entered the market.”

Industry group the Electricity Storage Network (ESN) argues that electricity storage is “essential” to the delivery of a secure, reliable and sustainable electricity network, strong enough to meet rising demand and insists the UK needs at least an additional 2GW of electricity storage by 2020.

The group’s director Anthony Price believes energy storage is “fundamental to our electricity network” and will become “even more critical in the future”. “Not only do we need to have a plan to make storage available to all in the future, but we should have a plan to use storage now,” he says.

“Storage at all scales, domestic, mid-size and utility scale are all achievable now,” the group points out. “With demonstration projects underway here in the UK.” However, ESN argues that now is the time to ensure that there are “open and efficient power markets in the UK”, so that manufacturers and developers can deploy their products.

“Energy storage makes it possible to connect more renewable generation sources where there is low grid capacity,” Warren tells Utility Week. “It can also maximise the use of renewable generation once it is installed. More generally it can improve the efficiency of networks and help to deal with fluctuations and imbalances.”

Daniel believes energy storage technology can be a “friend of network operators and utilities” because it can reduce peak and imbalance charges. “In the UK we already see a number of partners with very large scale solar projects being not given approval by the network operator because of network constraints or too much solar on a feeder which means the social housing or the developer can’t get permission without paying something, and that’s because the wires need to be upgraded and substations need to be upgraded.”

If the “right amount” of storage is installed in the home it can be an “asset” to the networks, who can “use it to balance when an electric vehicle goes on or to balance the voltage or to act as a reserve”.

“That’s the correct way to do it,” he said.

There are “already problems” in the UK, with utility networks in the north, particularly, struggling to incorporate new renewables into their networks. In the southern part of the country too, networks are constrained on capacity in urban spaces due to high demand.

“In a number of places it [the utilities system] is breaking down,” Daniel says. “Storage is seen as a solution for that because it reduces peak, it also gives more grid-edge resilience to the system.”

With Tesla remaining quiet on any UK ambitions, and the UK energy storage market there for the taking, perhaps now is the time for one of its rivals to step up to the plate?

Moixa Technology

Research and development firm Moixa has designed a smart energy storage system called Maslow, which can be used for both residential and commercial applications. It is designed for compact, wall-mounted installation behind the meter and is available as a 2-3 kWh base unit (50cm by 30cm), with the option of expanding to 4-6 kWh cabinet.

The units retail at £2,000, but the company aims to halve that price from income streams to the grid and claims the units could ultimately be “nearly free” when the grid income streams are “properly organised”. The company is nearing the completion of a government-funded project to pilot energy storage systems in 250 UK homes, the largest deployed residential storage space in the UK.

Powervault

Tech start-up Powervault recently announced it had raised £700,000 through crowdfunding to install 50,000 home energy storage systems in the UK by 2020. The firm is partnering with solar PV companies to sell the systems, which are between 2 kWh and 4 kWh with an installed price of £2,000 to £2,800.

It expects to have sold 10,000 home energy storage systems in three years and 50,000 within five years, by which time it predicts that the units will retail for less than £1000, undercutting Tesla whose units will sell for $4,000 (£2,500). Powervault claims its system can “lower energy bills by up to 15 per cent and save 0.3 tonnes of carbon a year from conventional generation”.

Absolute Renewable Energy

Absolute is a renewable energy company which says its lithium solar energy storage battery has been developed to “withstand the particularly rigorous regime of discharging and recharging over a prolonged period of time”. The two-battery pack offers storage up to 5 kWh (4 kWh usable) which is “enough for a typical household’s low to medium wattage appliances throughout an evening”. The system is also expandable, with a further four batteries able to be installed into the cabinet, giving an extra 9.6 kWh.

REDT (Renewable Energy Dynamics Technology)

The REDT Energy storage solution is based on vanadium redox flow battery technology, which REDT has been working to improve over the past 10 years. The batteries, designed for industrial and utility-scale use, offer storage of 40 kWh, 80 kWh and 240 kWh, and can be grouped together to form a megawatt-scale energy storage array.

The company is using £3.6 million funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to develop the demonstration and pre-commercialisation of a 1.68 MWh utility-scale version of its grid-scale flow battery.

Victron Energy

Victron Energy is a Dutch power solutions company which has produced a home energy storage battery called Ecomulti. The battery can be wall-mounted, and has 2.3 kWh storage capacity and a 3 kVA bidirectional inverter, to reduce dependence on power from the grid.

The battery can be connected to a solar PV array. When the array produces sufficient power to supply the loads and to start charging the battery, the Ecomulti regulates charge current to absorb nearly 100 per cent of the surplus power.  The battery will automatically reconnect itself to the grid supply when the battery is discharged.

The Save Energy Group

The Save Energy Group has produced solar storage battery systems available in a range of sizes from 5 kWh, with the number of batteries required depending on the storage capacity a household requires.

The group said: “Our Solar Storage Battery systems are the biggest breakthrough in the uk solar energy market for 20 years, allowing you to efficiently collect and store the solar energy you have generated and use it during the hours of darkness.”