One of the biggest challenges facing utilities as they find more climate-friendly ways to produce electricity and integrate greenhouse gas-free solar and wind energy into the electric power grid is finding a way to keep the stream of electricity flowing when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining.
One of the answers to that is likely to be energy storage, which means using batteries or other technology such asflywheels to capture renewable energy and allow it to flow into the power grid as needed.
A wind turbine. Credit: University of DelawareSpeaking at the Bloomberg Future of Energy Summit in New York City on Wednesday, a panel of experts said renewables are driving the development of energy storage systems worldwide, but before they are able to catch on, they’ll have to overcome a public perception problem.
“The perception is that this stuff isn’t real,” said Jeff Gates, managing director of Duke Energy Commercial Transmission. “A whole generation of utilities people have grown up with the notion that it’s not reliable, too expensive and it’s 20 years away.”
But real projects are being built, he said.
The total capacity of storage projects expected to come online by the end of the decade isn’t huge, but the numbers are mounting.
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Bloomberg New Energy Finance is forecasting about 2,660 megawatts of electricity storage capacity to be online in the U.S., and 9,825 megawatts of storage online globally by 2020.
About 75 megawatts of power storage were proposed in the U.S. last year, said Bloomberg new energy analyst Logan Goldie-Scot.
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