As the cost of sustainable energy sources has declined, the
deployment of these sources of energy has grown rapidly. Once on the
fringes of the energy industry, solar PV and wind are now mainstream
technologies. The International Renewable Energy Agency predicts another
90 GW of solar power to come online in the next few years, which could
drive down solar costs by an additional 60%.
However, despite rapidly expanding adoption
and support for
renewables there remains one major barrier to a greater role across grid
operations – the ability to store that energy for use on demand.
Although rapid gains have been made in the maturity of storage
technology, it is still in the early stages and utilities are
cultivating a growing interest. More than half of U.S. respondents to
Black & Veatch’s Strategic Directions: Electric Industry Report (56%) view the use of energy storage to increase solar PV as “very important” or “important”.
Today, large vertically integrated electricity service providers are
exploring how to embrace storage along with utility-scale and
traditional rooftop PV applications. More than a quarter of respondents
(27%) are either running or developing an energy storage pilot
programme, almost half (45%) have it on their technology roadmap, and
28% are not planning for energy storage at this time.
While still expensive, energy storage is declining in cost rapidly.
Lithium-ion is the current dominant technology and is seeing cost
declines similar to what the industry experienced with solar PV over the
past decade.
Lithium-ion batteries used on the power grid are the same as those in electric vehicles.
As the electric vehicle market has grown, the scale-up of battery
manufacturing capacity to support that market has support cost declines
and innovation in the use of battery energy storage on the power grid.
According to global research organisation, GTM Research, energy
storage adoption in the U.S. has experienced dramatic growth since 2012
and is expected to reach 2.5 GW by 2022, 11 times the size of the market
in 2016, which totalled 231MW. Furthermore, the energy storage market
in the U.S. is expected to grow ninefold from 2016 to $3.1 billion in
2022. Revenues from energy storage in 2017 are expected to grow by 43%
over 2016, with a cumulative market revenue between 2017 and 2022 to
reach $10.4 billion.
Battery producers like Tesla, Samsung SDI, Panasonic, BYD, LG Chem
and more are ramping up capacity to address rising demand from electric
vehicle production, as well as residential, commercial and increasingly,
utility-scale storage applications.
Changing the electricity landscape
Distributed energy resources, such as microgrids, are driving change
within the electric industry worldwide as both energy consumers and
electric service providers are diversifying how power is generated and
delivered. Spurred on by the public embrace of clean energy, falling
prices and regulatory subsidies; solar photovoltaics, battery energy
storage and microgrids are being deployed in more places across the
electric system.
This movement is requiring utilities across the globe to transform
their traditional centralised networks into flexible, distributed and
integrated power networks that are evolving from demonstration and pilot
phases to solid, longer-term investments that play an important part in
evolving new business models.
As many of these efforts move forward, organisations are working
through project complexities to achieve the most economical design and
implementation for its distributed energy and microgrid customers, while
at the same time seeking to maximise benefit from existing grid
investments.
This is beginning to happen in San Diego, California, at the Marine
Corps Air Station Miramar, where the military base is in the process of
establishing its own energy network that provides it with the assurance
and reliability needed to keep its operations in motion should regional
blackouts occur or if the local power grid is compromised. Along with
that, the base will also be in a better position to reduce demand
charges and manage its electric load more efficiently while also
contributing power to the grid.
Black & Veatch and Schneider Electric have designed and are now
building an advanced microgrid that takes advantage of existing solar PV
and landfill methane gas that already provides a combined 4.8MW of
power; the addition of diesel and natural gas generators is expected to
produce another 7MW of power.
By incorporating synchronised flow batteries in the future, in
conjunction with an integrated energy controls system, the base will not
only be able to manage its own power but will also be able to
distribute it more efficiently across its own grid, providing
significant opportunities to save money and streamline energy use.
Source: ESI-Africa
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