From ESS News

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a $325 million funding opportunity with the goal to improve community-level energy resilience for vulnerable populations across Puerto Rico.

The new Programa de Comunidades Resilientes, funded by a second tranche of DOE’s Puerto Rico Energy Resilience Fund (PR-ERF) will provide funding for solar and battery storage installations for community healthcare facilities as well as community centers and other common areas within public housing and privately owned subsidized multi-family properties.

“Every municipality in Puerto Rico has a facility that could be eligible for an installation through the Programa de Comunidades Resilientes,” said Maria Robinson, Director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office. “This program will be a key tool in improving community-level resilience, ensuring that emergency rooms stay powered, residents of multifamily housing can refrigerate medicine and food, and vital services remain available during outages within low- and middle-income communities.”

DOE anticipates awarding between $70 million and $140 million to fund solar and battery installations for federally qualified healthcare centers, dialysis centers, and diagnostic and treatment centers.

Between $93 million and $185 million is expected to go to solar and battery installations in multi-family housing properties, subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S, Department of Agriculture. This includes community centers and common areas within public housing or privately owned multi-family housing properties available to all residents or shared building infrastructure that depends on electricity, such as elevators.

Applications to this funding opportunity are due on October 22, 2024, at 5:00 PM EST. Potential applicants may access an online Teaming Partner List to express their interest to other applicants and explore potential partnerships.

After devastating hurricanes and decades of underinvestment in the island’s electric grid, the U.S. government introduced the $1 billion funding package called PR-ERF to support residential solar and storage projects in Puerto Rico. In July this year, DOE announced its first installations of subsidized residential solar and battery storage systems through the PR-ERF’s Programa Acceso Solar.

Puerto Rico’s distributed solar capacity reached 842 MW by April this year, while residential storage has reached 1.6 GWh. Consultancy Wood Mackenzie has projected that over the next ten years more than 90% of Puerto Rico’s solar additions will be distributed solar.

Puerto Rico’s Act 17 calls for reaching an ambitious 40% renewable generation by 2025, followed by 60% by 2040 and 100% by 2050.

From pv magazine ESS News

From ESS News

Ambri has confirmed the closing of the sale of its assets in accordance with Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code to a consortium of its lenders, as it prepares to take fresh steps toward commercialization of its long-duration storage technology.

Earlier this year, Ambri’s board, management and its lenders determined that a court-supervised 363 sale process was the best course to facilitate a comprehensive recapitalization in a bid to ensure long-term growth and profitability. The company filed for bankruptcy in May, blaming a challenging fundraising environment and thwarted plans to expand into manufacturing.

Now, the liquid metal battery storage startup has emerged with additional capital contribution from the Lender Consortium, whose bid was selected following a competitive sale process. The Lender Consortium comprises a group of Ambri’s pre-bankruptcy investors, including funds managed by each of Gates Frontier, Paulson and Co. Inc., Fortistar, and other investors.

“The team at Ambri has continued to make impressive progress towards a commercial long-duration battery system, including developing our third-generation cell product,” said David Bradwell, Ambri’s cofounder who is now taking the reins as the company’s new CEO.

“I am grateful for the dedication of our team and the support of our investors as we emerge as a leaner and more capital efficient organization. We look forward to offering our unique, safe, and low-cost commercial product to our customers at scale, to meet the strong customer demand for our battery systems, and for a cleaner energy future. As we embark on this fresh start with a stronger balance sheet and new capital, we are focused on positioning Ambri to play a leading role in the long duration energy storage market for the benefit of our stakeholders,” Bradwell said.

Founded in 2010 at MIT, Ambri has been working on building industrial-scale, liquid-metal batteries for over a decade. With Reliance Industries as one of its key investors, the company had plans to set up a large-scale battery manufacturing facility in India, in addition to building  a 140,000 square foot facility in Milford, Massachusetts.

As it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company said it had seen strong demand for its technology from across the market, equaling the planned output of its factory in Milford, Massachusetts, for three years.

Ambri’s batteries feature a liquid calcium alloy anode, a molten salt electrolyte, and a cathode comprised of solid particles of antimony, enabling the use of low-cost materials and a low number of steps in the cell assembly process.

To continue reading, visit our ESS News website.

From ESS News

While most long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies are still early stage, flow batteries have already had significant commercial success due to their long cycle life, excellent recyclability, and low fire risk.

In one of the biggest developments in the field, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), the sixth-largest community-owned electric service provider in the US, has partnered with iron flow battery specialist ESS Tech, Inc. to deliver up to 200 MW/ 2 GWh of iron flow long-duration energy storage systems.

With the partnership closed in 2022, the project reached a new milestone last week with the approval of a $10 million grant from the California Energy Commission. The funding will be used for developing a 3.6 MW, eight-hour iron flow battery project, which is expected to set the foundation for future large-scale battery deployments and manufacturing at energy centers in Sacramento.

The project aims to showcase the capability and reliability of iron flow battery technology in supporting grid distribution and transmission systems as SMUD transitions to a carbon-free power portfolio by 2030.

Founded in 2011, ESS manufactures iron flow batteries using widely available materials such as iron, salt, and water. Designed for applications that require up to twelve hours of flexible energy capacity, the batteries are used in utility-scale renewable energy installations, remote solar-plus-storage microgrids, solar load-shifting and peak shaving, as well as other ancillary grid services.

To continue reading, please visit our ESS News website.