Project Name: Communities Accessing Resilient Energy Storage (CARES)

Project Manager: Tobias Hecht, PhD 

Locations: Red Lake Nation, Santa Fe, NM, and Petaluma, CA

Project Summary: Most decommissioned electric vehicle batteries languish in warehouses. The CARES project, proposed by ReJoule, a second-life battery diagnostics and reuse company, will use retired electric vehicle batteries to provide demand reduction, load shifting, and resilience to two affordable housing complexes and a Red Lake Nation workforce development campus.

ReJoule seeks to maximize the value of used batteries by repurposing retired lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries into energy storage for the grid. When electric vehicle batteries are no longer suitable for transportation, the decommissioned battery may still have 70 percent or more of its initial capacity. One of the biggest challenges in repurposing these batteries is identifying their state of health, as batteries of different capacities cannot be easily used together. To overcome this challenge, ReJoule has patented a quick way to assess the capacity of the batteries, identify batteries of similar capacities, and match them to create a pack.

ReJoule is working with a variety of leading research and industry partners on this project and is working to attain UL safety certification. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will be offering techno-economic analysis, life cycle analysis, and fire safety design assistance. The Mechanical Engineering Department of University of Kansas will be offering physics- and machine learning-based second-life battery modeling from cell to system level and real-time monitoring of energy, power, thermal, and aging conditions. The Native American-led Solar Bear company will assist with construction, workforce development, and host site collaboration. ReJoule will work with Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, which prepares youth, women, and individuals with barriers to entry in the workforce for family-sustaining careers in clean tech. Finally, ReJoule will work with Redwood Energy (one of the country’s leading designers of zero net energy affordable housing), Sigway Energy, CollectiveSun, Coffman Engineers, and Black&Veatch. 

Project Name: Second life sMARt sysTems (SMART)

Project Manager: Dr. Antoni Tong 

Locations: Atlanta, GA, San Diego, CA, Denmark, SC, Orangeburg, SC, and New Orleans, LA 

Project Summary: The retired electric vehicle (EV) lithium-ion battery stockpile is growing, and there is great debate over how they should be disposed of. The batteries are made from cobalt, lithium, and nickel, which are scarce and nonrenewable resources. Smartville Inc. works to solve this issue by giving EV batteries a second life with a high value per kilowatt hour. Smartville has secured partnerships for the installation of lithium-ion battery long-duration energy storage (LDES) systems with a total of more than 7MWh to provide grid resiliency, bill reduction, and backup-up power at senior centers, low-income multi-family affordable housing complexes, and EV charging facilities. Repurposing retired EV batteries ensures that fewer minerals are mined and less carbon is generated from new battery manufacturing. Notably, this project will include high-tech career employment training at Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs).

Smartville 360^TM energy storage system is one of the first second-life energy storage systems to integrate and control repurposed electric battery packs from different manufacturers at varying levels of states of health in one unified system. It uses the highest-quality tier-1 automotive li-ion batteries, and proprietary controls providing superior performance, safety, and longevity.

The installation will occur in partnership with HBCU’s Denmark Technical College, Claflin University, South Carolina State University, Dillard University in New Orleans, and the HBCU Community Development Action Coalition as well as George McKinney Retirement Center, JBM Energy Solutions, Southern Company and Georgia Power, Cox Automotive and Cox Mobility, Craft Electric Inc., Luna Development, Holt Brothers Construction, and Endera Motors. 

Project Name: STOred Rechargeable Energy Demonstration (STORED)  

Project Manager: Gabriel Cowles 

Locations: Oneonta, NY and County of Westchester, NY

Project Summary: Energy storage is critical to New York’s clean energy future. As renewable power sources like wind and solar provide a growing portion of New York State’s electricity, storage will allow clean energy to be available when it is most needed. New York aims to deploy 3,000MW of storage by 2030 and has convened an Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group to address battery safety issues. This project utilizes a fire-safe battery using low-cost and largely domestically available materials. Urban Electric Power aims to demonstrate the viability of its zinc manganese dioxide (ZnMnO2) batteries in large scale and long-duration energy storage systems (LDESS). This project will provide load management and power resilience to the selected sites. Between the two proposed sites, it will provide more than 600kW of power for more than 12 hours per discharge, yielding a total stored energy capacity of 7.2MWh. A successful demonstration could enable market adoption of Urban Electric Power’s LDESS by proving decreased technology risk, reducing demand on grid infrastructure through reduced peak demand load, and reducing total costs of installation and operation as compared to a Lithium-Ion system. Urban Electric Power is teaming up with the New York Power Authority, a public utility with expertise in clean energy technologies, which has an established environmental justice program and will be leading outreach to members of these communities. 

Urban Electric Power’s solvent-free rechargeable ZnMnO2 batteries utilize earth-abundant raw materials that are readily available through supply chains established by the non-rechargeable alkaline battery industry, and more than 75 percent of Urban Electric Power’s raw material vendors are based in the U.S. The batteries have been successfully piloted at several energy storage installations. 

Urban Electric Power is also teaming up with EPRI, which will provide technical and industry expertise and guidance.

Project Name: Rural Energy Viability for Integrated Vital Energy (REVIVE)

Project Manager: Michael Keyser  

Locations: Tama, IA, Blair, SC, Hamlet, NC, Ewell, MD, and Waterville, IA

Project Summary: Rural areas are often the last to benefit from innovation, have lower household incomes, and have limited resources to invest in emerging technologies. Power outages are increasingly common in these areas, leaving communities and critical infrastructure more vulnerable. To address these challenges, the National Renewables Cooperative Organization (NRCO) and its project partners are developing 5 geographically diverse sites across the Midwest, Southeast, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States utilizing vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) with nominal discharge ratings of 700kW to 3.6MW and discharge capabilities of up to 20 hours. The aim is to bring high-benefit, low-risk energy solutions to vulnerable and underserved rural areas. For co-ops that may not have experience with long-duration energy storage (LDES), this demonstration will showcase the value and the implementation path for LDES and give the co-ops experience working with the technology, spurring replication opportunities with co-ops across the country. The project will also help grow flow battery production nationally by providing data into the DOE’s Rapid Operational Validation Initiative (ROVI) for Flow Batteries program. Finally, this project will help these rural cooperatives participate in renewable energy programs.The technology provider, Invinity Energy Systems, is a global leader in the production of vanadium flow batteries (VFB). Invinity’s flow batteries have high efficiencies and long lifespans. The company has already successfully installed its VFBs elsewhere in the world, including in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK. 

NRCO is implementing this project with five of its member cooperatives (Central Electric Power Cooperative, Central Iowa Power Cooperative, Dairyland Power Cooperative, North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation, and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative), Invinity Energy Systems, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL will carry out the techno-economic analyses and data collection for the project, which will inform decision-making and provide valuable insights into the potential benefits of VRFBs. 

Project Name: Children's HospitAl Resilient Grid with Energy Storage (CHARGES)

Project Manager: Mike Gravely  

Location: Madera, CA

Project Summary: During a power outage, hospitals require reliable back-up power to continue to provide essential services. This project will install a 34.4MWh behind-the-meter, zinc bromide flow battery system for the Valley Children’s Hospital, located in the underserved community of Madera, California. This long-duration energy storage (LDES) project will be a key demonstration of critical power backup of an acute care hospital in the U.S. and will provide resiliency in a region that is increasingly at-risk for significant power outages due to fires, storm surges, floods, extreme heat, and earthquakes. This project will provide a roadmap to facilitate the replacement of diesel generators with cleaner, more cost-effective resources at the hospital facility. 

The project team is led by the State of California through the California Energy Commission, and joined by Faraday Microgrids, a nationally recognized expert in renewable energy system microgrids, and LDES provider Redflow with zinc bromine flow batteries. Faraday Microgrids has been working closely with the California Energy Commission to develop and demonstrate the capabilities of renewable energy microgrids as a source of backup power in hospitals. This groundbreaking LDES project will provide significant community benefits through continuity of critical services, community power availability, and cost savings that can be redeployed for health programs. 

Project Name: Front-of-the-meter Utilization of Zinc bromide Energy Storage (FUZES)

Project Manager: Jeffrey Plew

Locations: Morrow County, OR, Manitowoc County, WI

Project Summary: NextEra Energy Resources, LLC proposes development of several 10-hour duration battery energy storage projects that use aqueous zinc technology for an in-front-of-the-meter application at multiple existing renewable energy sites in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest.

The expected benefits of this development include increased capacity at the point of interconnection, reductions in green-house gas emissions, improved utilization of renewable energy generation facilities and lower future energy costs. If the project is successful, there is high replication potential across future NextEra Energy Resources projects.

NextEra Energy Resources plans to partner with local technical and community colleges to advance student readiness for good paying jobs and careers in the energy sector.

Project Name: Columbia Energy Storage Project  

Project Manager: Michael Bremel

Location: Columbia County, WI 

Project Summary: This project would be the first to demonstrate, at a commercial scale, a closed-loop CO2-based energy storage system and could validate the technology for wide-scale deployment in the United States. Alliant Energy expects to extract additional value from renewable energy resources, significantly reducing CO2 emissions over the next several years and positioning itself toward success in achieving net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. The project will likely be located on a brownfield site with a two-unit coal-fired power station scheduled for retirement in 2026.

This project builds on an ongoing partnership between Alliant Energy, Columbia County and the Ho-Chunk Nation by supporting their shared goals of advancing sustainable energy solutions and expanding economic opportunities. This project will also be part of the University of Wisconsin Clean Energy Community Initiative, which seeks to identify the values, needs, and priorities of underserved communities for the clean energy transition and bring together industry, policy, research, and community to co-create a sustainable path to an equitable clean energy transition.

The technology provider is Energy Dome, which successfully demonstrated a 2.5MW CO2-based energy storage system. To store excess energy, this system converts CO2 gas to a liquid, which reduces the typical storage complexity associated with geologic storage and the costs associated with cryogenic temperatures. Whenever energy is needed, the liquid CO2 is heated, vaporized, and expanded back to gas, which turns a turbine and generates electricity and the CO2. This project is led by Alliant Energy in partnership with WEC Energy Group and Madison Gas & Electric. The three utilities collectively service approximately 75 percent of Wisconsin’s electric customers. Other direct project partners include Shell Global Solutions US, Electric Power Research Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Madison College.

Project Name: Pumped thermal energy stOrage in ALaska Railbelt (POLAR)

Project Manager: Holly Millard-Burns 

Location: Healy, Alaska

Project Summary: Supplying reliable electricity to residents and businesses in Healy, Alaska presents challenges due to its remote location and extreme weather. Currently the area is served by a coal-fired power plant, one unit of which is slated for retirement. This LDES project pairs with planned wind power development in the region to demonstrate LDES firming renewable power at the grid scale while also providing enhanced grid resiliency. This site location also provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate the viability of high-temperature long-duration energy storage in a cold climate. This project will develop and deploy a Pumped Thermal Energy Storage (PTES) system to assist in local and regional grid resiliency and stability, regional carbon footprint reduction, and improved reliability of electricity in Alaska’s Railbelt region, while demonstrating LDES’s support of renewable energy. Project benefits would also flow indirectly to Indigenous Alaskans in underserved communities, such as the North Slope Borough. 

This project was created by a partnership between Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and Echogen by combining technology components from each partner to create a PTES system. In the system, a heat pump draws electricity from the power grid and converts the electricity into heat stored in inexpensive concrete blocks. This stored energy is then converted back into electricity using a heat engine. The PTES system also utilizes a low-cost ice-based low temperature reservoir.

Construction will be led by Houston Contracting Company, a prominent union contractor in Alaska, as well as a part of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, an Alaska Native Corporation. Golden Valley Electric Association has created a strategic generation plan for achieving decarbonization objectives while reducing electricity costs and maintaining the stability and security of the electrical grid in Alaska. This project also includes EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Shell.  
 

Project Name: Multiday Iron air Demonstration (MIND)

Project Manager: Steve Christensen 

Locations: Becker, MN and Pueblo, CO

Project Summary: Multiday energy storage is essential for the reliability of renewable electricity generation required to achieve our clean energy goals and provides resiliency against multiday weather events of low wind or solar resources. Xcel Energy, in partnership with Form Energy, will deploy two 10MW 100-hour long- duration energy storage (LDES) systems at retiring coal plants in Minnesota and Colorado. This project aims to accelerate the commercialization and market development of multiday storage through strategic partnership, technology, and scale. 

Form Energy, the technology provider, produces iron-air batteries, which use some of the safest, cheapest, and most abundant materials—low-cost iron, water, and air. Form Energy and participating utilities will be joined by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) to measure, assess, and validate the technical and social impacts of the project. ANL will collaborate with Xcel on workforce development to educate communities on the battery energy storage technology and develop pathways to employment for communities near the LDES sites, vocational schools, and academic institutions across America. The team is also working with labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), to shape project-generated jobs and build a career pipeline.