Energy storage decouples when power is produced from when it’s needed, making renewables like solar and wind more practical. It also enhances grid reliability and provides critical backup power during outages.
Storage systems include battery modules that store chemical energy and power conversion devices to produce electricity. They are designed for the environment they will be installed in and are subject to strict safety standards.
Cost-Effectiveness
Energy storage improves grid reliability, enhances community resilience, and lowers costs for customers. Residential, commercial, and bulk storage systems are eligible for a variety of incentives to reduce installation cost and provide power savings.
Energy storage makes renewable energy dispatchable, allowing solar and wind to serve electricity needs around the clock, rather than just during daytime peak usage hours. This helps our electricity system evolve to low and no-carbon resources while avoiding the need for new pollution-emitting peak power plants.
Energy storage can also be used to help businesses and residents save money on their electricity bill by lowering demand charges (fees based on highest electric use during a billing period), shifting load from high on-peak to lower off-peak prices, and participating in demand response programs. Similarly, it can provide backup power during disruptions, so people don’t lose food or medicines and can continue their work.
Reliability
Energy storage provides a vital safety component to our power system. By rapidly balancing electricity supply and demand, it can reduce the need to start and stop conventional generation like coal and natural gas plants.
Energy storage can also improve the reliability of intermittent resources such as wind and solar by smoothing their contribution to our grid. For example, a passing cloud could drastically change a solar plant’s output, but storage can help to minimize the impact of these fluctuations.
Battery energy storage facilities comply with the nation’s most stringent fire standards from design to construction, ensuring safety throughout project operations. Local fire departments and first responders work closely with BESS developers on training, hazard mitigation, response plans, and risk management. The result is safe, reliable energy storage that keeps families and businesses safe and affordable.
Flexibility
Energy storage allows us to integrate more wind and solar onto the grid by smoothing out their variable generation. This can help lower operational costs, avoid price spikes for electricity customers and reduce dependence on fossil fuel-based generation sources.
Energy Storage systems range in size from small batteries used to power handheld devices to pumped hydroelectric storage systems at the grid-scale. Costs have fallen over the past decade for technologies like lithium-ion batteries.
Battery energy storage can provide a variety of services to the grid including frequency regulation and spinning reserve, as well as rapid response capabilities that can replace the output of conventional power plants in seconds. It also improves power quality, supports high-fidelity facilities and accelerates industrial innovation. Learn more about the full suite of technology agnostic dispatchable battery solutions that NYSERDA offers.
Safety
Energy storage systems convert electricity from the grid or from solar or wind power into chemical energy and then back again on demand. They use the same process as batteries in consumer electronics, but at a much larger scale.
Grid-scale batteries are highly regulated and monitored to ensure safety. They must comply with the national fire code NFPA 855, which was developed by experts in battery safety and the power industry. Local fire codes require that facility owners submit documentation, including system certification and fire safety test results, to their authority having jurisdiction before operation.
Because batteries have aqueous electrolytes that can produce flammable gases in the event of failure, many manufacturers recommend allowing fires in individual battery enclosures to burn themselves out rather than trying to extinguish them. This strategy avoids the risk of stranded energy and reignition and reduces the chance of explosions.
Job Creation
When it comes to job creation, the energy storage industry is leading the way. This dynamic sector creates high-paying jobs, supports the revitalization of communities across the country, and is central to our new era of American energy dominance.
It provides a cost-effective way to boost the reliability of the power grid by storing electricity at off-peak times and discharging it when demand is highest. This helps to prevent grid disruptions that require expensive backup generation and reduces the curtailment of renewable energy sources.
The technology is evolving rapidly with pumped hydro (which pumps water uphill at off-peak times and releases it to run turbines), compressed air, flywheels, thermal storage, and hydrogen as emerging solutions. The field is ripe with opportunities for those who want to apply their technical, scientific and engineering skills to this exciting sector.