Regulatory changes at the national level coupled with policy programmes in leading states will drive residential and commercial energy storage to new heights, according to various sources at this week’s Energy Storage International in California.

In part 2 of a technical paper first published in PV Tech Power Vol.13, Alex Eller of Navigant Research continues his look at how one of the most significant expenses for electric utilities, maintaining and upgrading transmission and distribution (T&D) networks, could be undercut using non-wires alternatives – including energy storage.

Innovations in new distributed energy technologies are challenging conventional thinking around the most effective ways to serve electricity customers and utilise grid infrastructure. Alex Eller of Navigant Research looks at how one of the most significant expenses for electric utilities, maintaining and upgrading transmission and distribution (T&D) networks could be undercut using non-wires alternatives – including energy storage.

A planned energy storage system backed with a diesel generator could remove the need to build an expensive undersea cable to serve the island of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts in the US.

Australian energy provider MPower has been selected to deliver a grid-scale battery energy storage system in New South Wales that could save the local grid operator AU$1 million (US$0.78 million) a year in network upgrades.

One of the ‘value of energy storage’ questions that was being asked a lot two or three years ago was around the use of batteries and decentralised system architecture instead of traditional “poles and wires” grid networks. However, advancements in this area have been slow to materialise and Navigant Research’s recent ‘Energy Storage for Transmission and Distribution Deferral’ report sought to fill the knowledge gap. Andy Colthorpe took the opportunity to ask lead author Alex Eller three quick questions around the topic.

Energy storage will increasingly be deployed to save money on electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) infrastructure, with nearly half of the global market to be found in the Asia-Pacific region by 2026, Navigant Research has said.

One of New Zealand’s main gas and electric distribution companies has turned to distributed energy storage systems as a cost-effective alternative to long-distance wires and related infrastructure.

The growing commercial viability of energy storage has led regulators in the US state of New Mexico to add the technology to the suite of resources available to utilities in their forward-planning.

Utility and network needs are rapidly changing and some are adopting both batteries and ultracapacitors to meet these needs. David Lentsch of Maxwell Technologies looks at some of the various approaches.