Our modern lives depend on energy. We demand energy and electricity, and grids have to supply that energy and electricity. When everything works perfectly, supply and demand match up, and grids are able to deliver just enough power to meet the needs of households and businesses.
But what happens when supply exceeds demand? How do we prepare for situations when demand outstrips supply? Both scenarios are nightmares for grid operators and consumers alike; the former could see blown transformers, while the latter could experience blackouts and power outages.
Thankfully, there’s a single solution to both of these problems: energy storage. Energy storage systems help grid operators balance supply and demand. As we’ll see, they’re especially important for renewable energy production.
Let’s dive into one of the most important energy topics that nobody’s talking about.
How Does Energy Storage Work?
At the most basic level, energy storage works by taking the energy produced by a power plant and setting it aside (or storing it) so that the energy can be used at a later time.
This can occur at many different scales. You’re probably familiar with energy storage on a small scale: the AA batteries in your TV remote are a form of energy storage.
This same concept can scale up dramatically, to the point where large-scale energy storage systems are capable of helping power grids transmit reliable electricity to customers around the clock without interruption.
It’s this second category — grid-scale energy storage — that we’ll focus on today.
Why Is Energy Storage Important?
Energy storage is important because it helps grid operators meet their number-one requirement: ensuring consistent and reliable access to electricity.
This isn’t always a simple or easy task. Power plants can have malfunctions, extreme weather can take down suppliers, hackers can disrupt power production, or grids might experience sudden spikes in demand that outstrip the available supply.
In addition to all of these possibilities, the rise of clean energy has made energy storage systems (ESS) more important than ever. Wind and solar energy are considered intermittent sources of energy, which means their power production rises and falls, depending on the weather, climate, or season.
On especially windy or sunny days, wind and solar energy can produce more electricity than the grid is capable of handling. In situations like this, it’s vital that utilities are capable of diverting that excess energy into energy storage systems (ESS).
Conversely, on windless or cloudy days, wind and solar energy can produce little or no electricity to the grid. To help meet demand in these situations, it’s important for grid operators to be able to call on electricity storage.
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What Are Some Energy Storage Technologies?
The industry of energy storage solutions is growing rapidly, so we won’t be able to list every energy storage solution on the market today. That said, here’s a list of some of the energy storage systems (ESS) currently available at utility scale.
Battery Storage
Battery storage is one of the most promising varieties of energy storage systems. Battery storage systems work in much the same way as a AA battery might, by storing electrical energy in electrochemical cells.
To operate a battery storage energy system, batteries are connected in battery systems, which can store this electric power at a large enough utility scale (think megawatts, not kilowatts) to help balance supply and demand.
There are a variety of battery technologies on the market today, but lithium-ion batteries are one of the most commonly used battery technologies. One of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage projects was the Tehachapi Energy Storage Project in California, commissioned in 2014 as a way to demonstrate the viability of battery technology to work as a form of large-scale, long-duration storage.
Lithium-ion power systems may be one of the most common forms of battery storage, but there’s a long list of promising battery technologies. Flow batteries, nickel-cadmium batteries, and lead-acid batteries are just a handful of battery technologies that could also prove critical to helping us reach our grid storage goals and meet our future energy needs.
Thermal Energy Storage
Thermal energy storage operates by storing excess heat from energy sources or power generation and then using that heat at a later date to generate power for the electricity grid.
There are a large variety of thermal energy storage technologies that use everything from solar energy and geothermal energy to waste energy from industrial processes. There are a large variety of storage methods as well, and many different options for producing electricity from this stored heat.
In general, thermal energy storage tends to need specific local conditions — like accessible geothermal energy or plentiful direct sunlight — to be cost-effective at a utility scale.
Pumped Storage
Pumped storage power plants are one of the most common forms of grid-scale energy storage. Pumped storage works by using electricity to operate a pump to either compress air or move water to a higher elevation.
This helps use up an excess of power production, which can then be tapped for later use. In the case of compressed air, that air can be released and used to spin a turbine, which can generate electricity.
When pumped storage moves water to a higher elevation, the pumped storage power plant can use the stored potential energy by releasing it and having it run downhill through a hydroelectric turbine.
Electric Vehicle Storage
One of the newer and more interesting forms of energy storage is a lot more mobile than we might typically think our energy systems to be. Electric vehicles contain large batteries that they use to move around, but these batteries can also be used for their storage capacity.
Because many electric vehicles are plugged into the wall when at home, they can be effectively connected to the power grid when not in use. This means that, with their owner’s permission and some sophisticated planning on the part of the grid operator, they can be used to store excess electricity during times of peak supply, and can even send power back into the grid during times of peak demand.
Is Energy Storage Important for the Future?
The truth is that we need energy storage more today than we did yesterday, and we’ll need it more tomorrow than we do today. Energy storage systems are becoming more important by the year, in large part due to the clean energy transition. Let’s dig into that a bit more.
As mentioned previously, the intermittency of clean energy sources like wind and solar power can pose a large problem to the stability of our power grids. This is a big problem for the future of sustainable energy, because as wind and solar’s share of our national power mix continues to grow, so too does the strain on our power grids.
Energy storage can effectively solve this intermittency problem. While there’s still a lot of work to be done, companies are developing energy storage systems to be more cost-effective and commercially scalable.
Fossil fuels have contributed to climate change and local pollution, but they have a very important characteristic going for them: Fossil fuels are reliable. Generally speaking, when a fossil fuel power plant is constructed, power grids can depend on that plant for consistent electricity. That consistency makes it relatively easy to match supply with demand.
As we use fewer fossil fuels and more renewable energy sources, the task of matching supply with demand will become increasingly vital, especially as the use of sustainable energy resources (with their intermittency problems) increases.
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How Much Energy Storage Do We Need?
It’s clear by now that we need energy storage to help keep our grids running smoothly. It’s also clear that using more intermittent renewables means we must have reliable energy storage. So how much energy storage do we actually need?
That’s a complicated question, in large part because the amount of storage we need is going to depend on how much wind and solar power we construct.
Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have been trying to answer this question for years, and they predict our national energy storage capacity could grow five-fold by 2050.
Another group of researchers released a study that says that having 12 hours of energy storage would be enough to support an energy mix made up of 80% solar and wind. While 12 hours might not sound like a lot, that comes out to 5.4 terawatt-hours — nearly 2 trillion dollars worth of power.
To put those numbers in perspective, in 2020 the United States had 1,650 megawatts of battery storage. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that our grid will add 10,000 megawatts by 2023, but that’s still a long way off of what we’d need to support a grid made up of mostly wind and solar power.
In the end, our energy storage needs are going to depend on how quickly we transition away from fossil fuels and more towards clean energy like wind and solar power.
Energy Storage Keeps Our Lights On
Energy storage is one of the unsung heroes of our power grids. Not only are energy storage technologies a vital part of keeping our power grids stable, but they’re also a crucial component of our collective transition to clean energy.
The next time you go to change the batteries out of your remote, you’ll know that you’re holding in your hand a version of the technology that’s going to help transform our energy world in the 21st century.
If you’re interested in learning more about a variety of energy-related topics, read more on the Tara Energy blog.
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