Dive Brief:
- Renewable energy company Apex Clean Energy has entered into a joint venture with leading Korean liquefied petroleum gas company SK Gas and Korean green energy developer SK D&D that will own energy storage projects in the U.S.
- The venture — called SA Grid Solutions — has kicked off operations with ownership of the Great Kiskadee utility-scale battery project, which is under construction in Texas. The lithium-ion battery project is expected to come online in midsummer 2024, and was “a prime candidate for the first project of this joint venture,” Cat Strumlauf, a spokesperson for Apex, said in an email.
- The venture has the potential for “hundreds more megawatts of energy storage to come,” Ken Young, CEO of Apex Clean Energy, said in a statement, adding that the collaboration “will enable Apex to swiftly accelerate the deployment of our development-stage storage portfolio, comprising more than 13 GW across the United States.”
Dive Insight:
Under the new joint venture — funded 60% by SK and 40% by Apex — the latter will oversee the construction and operations of the Great Kiskadee project, as well as future energy storage projects it will own.
By combining the relative strengths of both companies, Apex Clean Energy expects to be able to develop and deploy more energy storage projects than either company could alone, Strumlauf said.
The Great Kiskadee storage project in Hidalgo, Texas, is a 100 MW/200 MWh facility that is expected to come online this year and deliver capacity to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid. The project is estimated to lead to around 50 construction jobs, and more than $12.6 million in tax revenue over its lifetime, according to Apex.
The joint venture is likely to look at a future project of similar size and duration, the company reported.
In May, Apex Clean Energy announced the Great Kiskadee project, as well as another energy storage project in Texas — both of which will be equipped with energy storage platform Powin’s battery management system, and will provide energy arbitrage and ancillary grid services to the ERCOT market. The second project is the 100 MW/200 MWh Angelo storage project, co-located with a 195-MW solar plant.
The energy storage industry has seen massive growth in the U.S. in recent years, breaking records by installing 7,322 MW of storage on the grid during the third quarter of 2023, according to the American Clean Power Association and Wood Mackenzie’s U.S. Energy Storage Monitor report. In fact, that figure could have been higher, were it not for sweeping delays to projects caused by a variety of factors, including commissioning, testing and constructing issues, as well as interconnection queue backlogs.
Clean energy and battery storage go hand in hand and as renewables — which have an inherent level of intermittency — have increased in penetration, the case for dispatchable generation assets has strengthened, Strumlauf said.
“The Inflation Reduction Act, by virtue of enhancing energy storage project returns, has made more energy storage projects even more economically viable,” Strumlauf added.
