How do electric grids that were state-of-the-art in the 19th Century remain stable and resilient through 21st Century climate disasters and other problems? They don’t, says Catherine Von Burg, CEO and co-founder of distributed battery energy storage company SimpliPhi Power – but giving people the power to be independent can be a solution fit for the future.
The residents of Parlier, a small city in Fresno County, California, are being offered a 20% reduction on their energy bills and reduce the amount of power they buy from utility Pacific Gas & Electric by 90%, by getting solar-plus-storage and energy efficiency equipment installed.
The drive towards longer duration energy storage will likely be multifaceted, with different technologies finding their place both in front of and behind the meter.
The challenges of explosion prevention – with flammable gases needing to be vented “very rapidly” – in the event of a battery fire have been highlighted at this week’s Energy Storage Summit USA.
The energy storage industry should be well prepared to deal with failure in lithium-ion battery systems so that thermal runaway in a single battery cell never becomes a fire or explosion.
Europe’s cumulative electrochemical energy storage installation capacity has gone past the 5GWh mark and this year is likely to see installations almost double from 2020’s figures.
The devastating power crisis in Texas last month proved the value of the energy storage market, particularly distributed models, according to a panel of renewables investors this week.
The business case for a range of long-duration storage technologies needs to be addressed to help the US reach its decarbonisation targets, according to the Department of Energy’s director of energy storage research Dr Imre Gyuk.
Almost 70% of home solar PV in Germany comes with battery energy storage attached and the country’s residential storage market represented around 2.3GWh of installed capacity by the end of 2020.
