As we welcome the end of another exciting, if sometimes challenging year, here are the most-read news stories on Energy-Storage.news for 2024.
One of the obvious takeaways of this list is that some very big lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery storage projects are being built and brought online. That trend is set to continue into 2025 with many more gigawatt-hour scale projects in development or construction, and not just in the more mature markets.
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It’s interesting too, that the two biggest battery storage projects on this list, Gemini in Nevada and Edwards & Sanborn in California, are both solar-plus-storage hybrid resources.
In the lithium-ion space, our reporting and subsequent deep dives into the higher energy density solutions offered by CATL and a wealth of other manufacturers and system integrators drew a lot of attention. Again, we expect this to continue, although there are financial, logistical and technical limits to how far the envelope can be pushed on energy density, at least in the immediate future.
We have also seen enormous growth in interest from our readers in non-lithium energy storage solutions, with sodium-ion (Na-ion) particularly starting to make waves.
Yet the bankruptcy of flow battery maker Redflow and the cancelling of the world’s biggest pumped hydro project in Queensland, Australia, show that it can be challenging to channel private investment and political will for high Capex technologies.
Perhaps distributed energy technologies like vehicle-to-grid (V2G) are a hint of where some of the interest in battery technology lies.
At the other end of the scale, our most-read story of 2024 tells the tale of what happened when interconnectors tripped, and large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) helped save the UK grid from blackouts.
With a minor nod of cultural reference to the classic comedy rock music movie ‘This is Spinal Tap’, this list goes to 11.
11. ‘US’ largest’ solar-plus-storage project, Gemini, comes online in Nevada
19 July 2024
Project owners Quinbrook and Primergy brought their 1.4GWh Gemini solar-plus-storage project in Nevada online, claimed to be the largest such project in the US.
Gemini, in Nevada’s Clark County, pairs 690MWac/966MWdc of solar PV with a 380MW/1,400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), developed and built by investor Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners and independent power producer (IPP) Primergy Solar.
10. LFP price falls ‘make first life batteries more attractive’ than second life ones, firm says
11 January 2024
The increasing cost-competitiveness of LFP battery cells has made first life batteries more attractive than second life ones, Finland-based BESS solutions firm Cactos told Energy-Storage.news after a €26 million (US$28.5 million) fundraise.
When the firm raised €2.5 million back in November 2022, it presented itself as primarily repurposing used batteries from Tesla electric vehicles (EVs) into stationary BESS, otherwise known as second life energy storage. However, founder and CEO Oskari Jaakkola told Energy-Storage.news that falls in the prices of new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries since then have changed this.
9. CATL unveils ‘five-year zero degradation’ BESS with 6.25MWh per container
15 April 2024
Lithium-ion battery manufacturer CATL launched its latest grid-scale BESS product, with 6.25MWh storage capacity per 20-foot container and the company claiming it will experience zero degradation over the first five years of operation.
The China-headquartered company announced the ‘Tener’ battery energy storage system (BESS) solution with several claims of industry-leading technical specifications. The foremost among them is that the lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries inside will not suffer any degradation over the first five years.
31 October 2024
India’s Reliance Industries completed the takeover of sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery company Faradion, while Amazon said it will trial a novel flow battery technology in this double-hit of non-lithium battery technology news.
UK startup Faradion had developed IP around several aspects of Na-ion technology, and Reliance Industries – one of India’s major multinational conglomerates – acquired a majority stake in the company at the end of 2021 for around US$135 million before moving its shareholding to 100% at the end of October.
Online retail giant Amazon agreed to trial a novel flow battery technology made by a Swiss startup called Unbound Potential. In other flow batteries, a membrane is used to separate the electrolytes, whereas ion exchange in the Swiss startup’s battery is controlled by non-miscible electrolytes. The company claims this makes the battery more durable and reduces the cost and complexity of manufacture.
7. Flow battery maker Redflow out of business with administrators unable to find buyer
21 October 2024
Australian zinc-bromide flow battery manufacturer Redflow has ceased operations with administrators unable to find a buyer.
Administrators from Deloitte had been appointed in late August at the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) listed technology company after Redflow failed to raise enough equity to fund a strategic plan.
The flow battery company, which holds the IP for its zinc-bromide energy storage technology, ceased trading on 18 October. The administrators had been assessing the company’s financial viability, while seeking potential buyers or recapitalisation that could take place while Redflow kept doing business.
6. California solar-plus-storage project with world’s largest BESS fully online
24 January 2024
The Edwards & Sanborn solar-plus-storage project in California went fully online with 875MWdc of solar PV and 3,287MWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) capacity, the world’s largest.
The 4,600-acre project in Kern County is made up of 1.9 million PV modules from First Solar and BESS units from LG Chem, Samsung and BYD totaling 3,287MWh of energy storage capacity.
That made it bigger than the current largest BESS in the world, Vistra’s 750MW/3,000MWh facility at Moss Landing, also in California, which also came online in two phases.
5. Queensland government pulls plug on world’s largest pumped hydro project
6 November 2024
The newly elected Queensland government has pulled the plug on what would have been the world’s largest pumped hydro energy storage project (PHES) with a capacity of 120GWh.
The 5GW Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro Project, which would have offered long-duration energy storage (LDES) over a 24-hour discharge duration, has been officially shelved by the new Queensland government in one of its first moves since taking office.
According to a report released by the government the AU$36 billion (US$24 billion) project would have led to unnecessary additional costs for Queensland residents.
4. China: Largest pumped hydro energy storage plant in the world fully operational
13 August 2024
The 12th and final turbine unit of a pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) plant in Hebei, China, went into full operation, making it the largest operational system in the world.
The 3.6GW Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station is located on the Luanhe River in Chengde City, Hebei Province, and is the largest PHES plant by installed capacity, state-owned outlet China Energy News said. The last units have completed trial operations and gone into full operation to generate electricity.
The Fengning plant is larger than what is widely reported to be the largest existing PHES plant in the world, the Bath County plant in Virginia, US, which has a power rating of 3,003MW.
3. BYD launches sodium-ion grid-scale BESS product
27 November 2024
Chinese EV giant BYD has launched what an executive claimed is the ‘world’s first high-performance’ sodium-ion BESS product, using its proprietary form factor Long Blade Battery cell.
Posting on business networking site LinkedIn, BYD Energy Storage’s UK and Ireland head Kai Wang announced the launch of the company’s ‘MC Cube-SIB ESS’ product.
It uses the company’s Long Blade Battery, has a ‘CTS super integrated design’, and is the world’s first high-performance sodium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS). Wang claimed it has ultra-high energy density, exceptional safety standards, and flexible module design.
The BESS has an energy storage capacity of 2.3MWh and a nominal voltage of 1200V, with a voltage range from 800V-1400V.
9 April 2024
The US state of Maryland will require utilities to allow electric vehicles (EVs) with bidirectional chargers to connect to the distribution grid after new legislation was passed.
The state legislature, the Maryland General Assembly, passed HB 1256, aka the Distributed Renewable Integration and Vehicle Electrification (DRIVE) Act, on 2 April. It was sponsored by Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo.
In addition to its “first-of-a-kind” treatment of bidirectional vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, the act also enables the creation of distributed energy resource (DER) virtual power plants that pool the capabilities of home solar PV, batteries, smart thermostats, and other equipment.
1. UK loses 1.4GW of power in interconnector trip, battery storage keeps lights on
10 October 2024
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) from several firms helped the energy system recover after the NSL interconnector, which connects the UK and Norway, suddenly stopped exporting power to the UK.
At 8:47am local time, 8 October, Norwegian power exports via the North Sea plummeted from 1.4GW to zero, with frequency on the network falling as low as 49.59Hz in two seconds—well below the National Energy System Operator (NESO) operational limits of 49.8 – 50.2Hz. However, the system recovered within two minutes thanks to fast-acting frequency services, particularly BESS operations.
Roger Hollies, CTO at Arenko Group, posted on LinkedIn that 1.5GW of batteries across NESO’s network were able to inject power into the grid during the disruption, including 12 batteries on Arenko’s Nimbus platform.
Meanwhile, Kraken, an offshoot of Octopus Energy, also saw BESS assets optimised through its platform jump in to help rebalance the grid during the failure of the Norwegian interconnector.
