The value of energy storage increases with growing shares of renewable energy on the grid, but the availability and cost of storage will determine how successful decarbonisation with renewables can be.
Capacity payments that solar-plus-storage developers could earn from winning in Portugal’s big 700MW solar tender are an interesting first step, but will likely only be a supplementary income to add to what could be earned from ancillary services.
A new project is underway in the US to tear down a significant barrier for “realising the full benefits” of energy storage: the complexity and lack of clarity over interconnection rules across the country.
While lithium-ion batteries continue to take the dominant share of new installations by some distance, there are a variety of other technologies looking to complement, combine or even compete. Panellists at the Energy Storage Digital Series looked at the questions of which energy storage technologies are the likeliest contenders for that future.
Barriers have been removed allowing for battery storage projects five times the size as the current limit in Britain, in a move hailed as a “significant, positive and well-timed” step.
Taking the UK’s transmission system and the circumstances which led to a dramatic blackout as a direct example, Javier Cavada and Gary Preece of liquid air energy storage (LAES) systems company Highview Power look at how such events could be avoided, cost-effectively and with lesser environmental consequences.
US utility firm PacifiCorp has launched its largest request for proposals for energy projects yet, seeking bids for more than 1.8GW of new solar and 600MW of battery energy storage.
