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.

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.

A US regional electricity transmission and distribution operator’s plan to install energy storage batteries could enable ‘benefit stacking’ as a way of overcoming “crippling challenges” faced by energy storage, according to one energy expert.

The US market for solar-plus-storage is predicted to grow more than twentyfold in the next three years, rapidly expanding from US$42 million in value this year to US$1 billion by 2018, according to GTM Research.