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ROUNDUP: NY project gets incentives, Alfen integrated EV ESS, Sunrun roll-out

By Andy Colthorpe
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Key Capture Energy’s 20MW KCE NY 1 project. Image: Key Capture Energy.

13 November 2020: Key Capture Energy's 'landmark' New York project qualifies for bulk incentives 

KCE NY 1, a large-scale battery energy storage system in New York State has become the first project to qualify for an incentive scheme run by utility NYSERDA.

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Developer Key Capture Energy emailed Energy-Storage.news this week to say that the 20MW project has passed a Quality Assurance Inspection, a requirement needed to qualify for NYSERDA’s Bulk Energy Storage Incentive Program.

According to Key Capture, this opens the path to “monetising millions” in state incentives for a project which was brought online in late 2019 and marked one of the first large-scale projects in a state that is widely considered to be on course to be one of the US’ fastest-movers in adopting energy storage in the coming years, with a target to deploy 3,000MW by 2030 and an interim goal of 2025.

Key Capture said that three other projects it has in development in New York, KCE NY 2, which is 200MW, KCE NY 6, which is 20MW and KCE NY 11, also 20MW have received NYSERDA awards.

Read a 2019 Energy-Storage.news interview with Key Capture Energy’s CTO Dan Fitzgerald on KCE NY 1’s completion, here.

10 November 2020: Alfen delivers integrated energy storage solution for EV charging

Energy solutions integrator Alfen has been contracted to deliver an integrated solution for electric vehicle (EV) charging, which includes energy storage and grid connection.

Dutch energy producer and supplier PZEM selected Alfen to supply the system for the company’s offices in Middelburg, Netherlands. The 1MW battery energy storage system will be installed during Q1 2021, storing electricity from the local network for use at 10 smart EV charge points, which have already been installed at the site.

Alfen said the battery storage used to increase flexibility and capacity for charging cars will be its plug-n-play ‘container-sized’ solution, called TheBattery.

“There is an increasing disparity in the electricity supply and demand. The need for flexibility to balance out the energy market and the grid infrastructure will increase, and price fluctuations will become more extreme,” Niels Unger, COO of customer PZEM said.

“This is an increasing risk for both supply and demand. PZEM responds to this by, among other things, choosing smart flexible solutions. A concrete example is the purchase of this mega battery of Alfen for the storage of electricity. By storing electricity, we balance out the energy supply and demand and directly help to limit significant infrastructural investments in the electricity grid.” 

10 November 2020: Sunrun rolls out energy storage offering across eight additional US states

US residential solar installation and leasing company Sunrun is now rolling out its Brightbox energy storage offering into all markets the company operates in.

Sunrun said last week that after now installing 13,000 of its Brightbox solutions across 11 states in the US, the systems will now be available in the remaining eight states in which Sunrun currently has a presence. The company said that in just the period between May and September this year, Brightbox customers were able to power their essential household loads for 7,583 hours during power outages.

“We lost power for six days during Hurricane Isaias. The battery kicked in and I was able to power through the six-day blackout while safely working from home,” customer Andy Robles, who lives in New York, said.

Sunrun bundles up third-party equipment from providers including LG Chem in the Brightbox solution. The company pointed out in a press release that not only can customers use it to ride through power outages and self-consumer their home-generated solar energy, in some markets Brightbox systems are being aggregated to form virtual power plants.

“By bringing our Brightbox system to all of our markets, we’ll ensure families and communities consume even more of the clean energy they produce, rely less on dirty fossil fuels, and have power when they need it most,” Sunrun CEO and co-founder Lynn Jurich said.

10 November 2020: 'Crowdsale' for Zimbabwe agricultural solar-plus-storage project

South Africa-based solar leasing provider Sun Exchange said it has expanded into Sub-Saharan Africa and is looking to deliver a megawatt-scale solar-plus-storage system in Marondera, Zimbabwe.

The project is being crowdfunded – or ‘crowdsold’ on the Sun Exchange website, with around 16,000 of the project’s available 180,000+ solar cells already bought by 242 buyers. The project will put 510.3kW of solar PV and 1MWh of battery storage onto cold store and packing premises owned by Nhimbe Fresh, an agricultural producer which contracts small-scale farmers to grow blueberries, peas and other fruit and vegetables.

Investors lease the project’s solar cells to Nhimbe at a fixed price per cell per month, which Sun Exchange said offers more predictable earnings than investing per kWh of generation. According to Sun Exchange, the project will give Nhimbe Fresh and its farmers access to low-cost clean energy while offering returns to leasing investors. 

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