Energy storage is key to supporting community-level resiliency projects and lowering electricity costs by smoothing out high demand, as well as increasing renewable integration into the grid.
Batteries store energy via electrochemical processes and then convert it back to electricity later. Lithium-ion batteries (like those found in your cell phone) have become one of the fastest growing technologies for large-scale storage solutions.
Electricity Storage
Energy storage technology can help balance electricity supply and demand on an hour-by-hour basis, by storing and releasing power to the grid when required. This allows power plants using expensive fossil fuels such as natural gas to operate more efficiently during periods of peak demand and may help customers cut their electricity costs.
Numerous battery storage systems, flywheels and super capacitors offer rapid response energy storage services (ESS), providing quick responses to changes in electricity demand. This allows for better regulation of grid voltage and frequency characteristics while decreasing outages and providing a greater level of power quality than expected.
Lithium-ion batteries may provide longer-term energy storage services than alternative technologies like liquefied air energy storage; for instance, by cooling gas until it forms liquid that powers a turbine to drive turbines. Such technology could help reduce carbon footprint of renewables while supporting a cleaner, more resilient electric grid.
Energy Storage for Renewables
Energy storage systems can play an invaluable role in helping communities integrate renewables and provide backup power for communities both rural and urban. Not only can energy storage help integrate renewables, but it can also increase grid reliability, power quality and resilience – ultimately meeting community resiliency goals more easily.
Pumped hydroelectric storage is one of the most widely-used forms of energy storage today, involving lifting water from one reservoir to a higher elevation when electricity demand spikes; when demand drops back downhill again, this water is then released downhill to power a turbine and generate power at peak times.
Engineers of electric power plants worldwide are required to balance daily fluctuations in electricity demand with available supplies in order to provide all customers with what they require – without excess or shortage. Energy storage technologies, like lithium-ion batteries (the same type used by mobile phones and electric cars), can assist them in doing this effectively.
Energy Storage for Islands and Microgrids
Integrating renewable energy and storage-alongside smart controls that enable load shifting-can help island and remote community microgrids significantly decrease fossil fuel consumption, costs and outages. Furthermore, storage can provide resilience against outages as well as meet regulatory requirements more easily.
Fluence and Siemens Smart Infrastructure collaborated to bring a marine mobile energy storage system online on Terceira island in Tonga’s Kingdom of Tonga microgrid in order to lower diesel usage and power generation costs, contributing towards reduced diesel usage and costs associated with power production.
An energy cooperation framework for island microgrid interconnection is presented. This two-layered model involves solving an analytical target cascading model to efficiently address energy trading problems while the second assigns scheduling tasks for marine mobile energy storage systems. An innovative benefit-sharing mechanism based on Nash bargaining theory is also implemented within this approach, and numerical simulations demonstrate its success.
Energy Storage for Rural Communities
Energy storage enables communities to meet electricity demand at key moments, such as during heat waves or other peak power demands. By eliminating fossil fuel peaker plants that operate during times of high electricity demand and are frequently located nearby low-income neighborhoods and communities of color – further increasing public health impacts from pollution.
Communities utilize energy storage for various grid services, including voltage regulation, peak demand shaving, load leveling at substations and power factor correction. On a residential level, community energy storage can help alleviate energy poverty and help foster a clean energy transition in rural communities that connect to a community grid but may be vulnerable to wildfires or natural disasters.
At a larger grid scale, BESS can enable more robust renewable integration while lowering consumer costs. At PNNL researchers Devyn Powell and Matthew Paiss are using fact-based research to guide local planning efforts regarding energy storage development; their focus includes land use implications, zoning implications and safety considerations.