Another three developers with more than a gigawatt-hour of wins in Hawaiian Electric’s (HECO’s) massive solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage tenders have gone public with size and location details of their proposed projects.

While utility Hawaiian Electric (HECO) stands poised to announce the finalists of its recent massive procurement of solar-plus-storage and standalone energy storage projects, developers with winning bids seem determined to steal the utility’s thunder.

The largest renewable tender in Hawaii’s history has chosen its winners, contracting a solar and storage pipeline that exceeds anything the US state has ever seen.

Plans to build five large-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) across the islands of Hawaii will come up for public input via web links and community TV channels.

In this article, experts at consultancy Apricum examine with some simple “reverse engineering” how recent low solar-plus-storage PPAs in the USA were achieved, yet another example of the competitiveness of energy storage and new market opportunities emerging via storage-plus-renewables projects.

News in brief from around the world in energy storage.

While pumped hydro plants still account for around 96% of installed capacity of stationary energy storage worldwide, there will be more than 28GW of lithium batteries deployed for stationary storage applications by the year 2028, Navigant Research has predicted.

A large tranche of utility-scale solar – and storage – projects in Hawaii has been approved by the state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC), each quoting a cost per kilowatt hour of US$0.10 or under.

While a tranche of seven solar-plus-storage projects under proposal in Hawaii would see renewable energy make its biggest competitive play against fossil fuels in the US island state so far, a project just completed will deliver energy well into the evening at just US$0.11 per kWh.

Following a report on Friday that Hawaiian Electric has contracted PPAs with 75MW of solar projects including battery storage with developer Clearway, the utility has put before regulators proposals for five other grid-scale projects.