Energy storage enables renewables to integrate seamlessly into electric power grids for real world use, providing frequency regulation services as well as improving power quality. Energy storage can help bridge supply and demand gaps and ensure maximum power quality is reached.
Pumped hydro storage currently holds the greatest energy storage capacity worldwide, while battery technology is expanding quickly. Other forms of energy storage such as molten salt, flywheels and technical phase change materials also exist.
Battery Storage
Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) convert electrical energy to chemical form for storage purposes, before being reconverted back into electricity when necessary. Residential and commercial batteries usually use lithium ion technology while utility-scale BESSs often incorporate sodium-sulfur, metal air or lead-acid systems for optimal energy management.
Batteries help our electricity grid manage fluctuations in energy demand, and make renewable sources like solar or wind more valuable – such as when solar or wind generation only generates when sunlight or winds blow. Battery storage can “firm up” intermittent resources like these as well as providing frequency response services on subsecond timescales for frequency response and grid voltage regulation regulation services.
Battery storage projects offer an ideal solution for businesses facing high electricity costs or pressure to decarbonize, and our team can assess if a battery storage project makes financial sense for your industry.
Solar Photovoltaic Storage
Energy storage allows solar systems to capture and utilize solar power even on cloudy days, which can help lower electricity bills significantly. In states without net energy metering and when electricity usage varies significantly between cloudy days.
Energy storage can play a vital role in optimizing PV systems and increasing on-site consumption, both crucial elements to reaching energy transition goals. Furthermore, storage solutions offer resilience against power outages as well as helping integrate renewables into the grid.
Lithium ion batteries provide numerous advantages to residential and commercial customers alike, including ease of installation, long lifespans and safety. Recent advancements in battery technology allow contractors to design PV with storage systems to maximize ROI and meet specific customer requirements – they can co-locate with PV arrays, be installed as standalone units or integrated into hybrid or off-grid configurations; peak demand shaving or backup could all be possible using lithium batteries as well.
Thermal Storage
Energy storage systems use various mediums to store heat or cold, such as water tanks, sand, molten salt, rocks, masonry and even liquid air or nitrogen. Their designs vary depending on how long energy will be stored for and whether its uses will meet short or long-term requirements.
ES can be utilized on either the supply or demand side of a grid and is valued for its ability to provide services such as static reserve, electricity frequency and voltage regulation, fast response (ramping), static reserve reduction, end user peak pricing charges reduction by shifting consumption during high peak times to lower peak times, etc. RESs may also help decrease end-user peak pricing charges by shifting consumption away from these times and onto lower peak times instead.
Efficient thermal storage requires using phase change materials with a wide temperature range at which they can store and release energy, such as inorganic and organic latent materials such as salts and waxes. Storage may either involve increasing or decreasing medium temperature through sensible or latent heat mechanisms respectively.
Chemical Storage
Energy storage transforms difficult-to-store forms of energy like electricity into more convenient and economical storable forms, like batteries. Alessandro Volta first introduced batteries as energy storage back in 1800 using piles of nickel disks and zinc plates; today’s lithium ion technology batteries can provide power for up to four hours at once.
Pumped hydro and thermal energy storage have also been around for some time. Packed hydro was first employed in Europe as early as 1890 and since has become widely implemented. Thermal Energy Storage (TES), originally intended for food preservation in ice boxes, later helped heat and cool buildings.
Energy storage technology can be utilized with solar and wind power plants to quickly respond to supply requests from electric grid operators, and to help lower integration costs by providing services like static reserve, electricity frequency regulation and fast restart.