Another look at the benefits of thermal and battery storage for commercial buildings

September 28, 2015

While demand for intermittent renewable resources represent opportunities for the energy storage technologies to overlap, the growth of battery and thermal energy storage is being driven by separate industries.

Investments in thermal energy storage are primarily being propelled by commercial and industrial facilities in need of technology to enhance heating and cooling applications, according to Technavio's latest Global Thermal Energy Storage Market report. The study predicted that these commercial investments would help the global thermal energy storage market experience an 18.7 percent compound annual growth rate between 2014 and 2019.

Alternatively, demand for battery storage, chiefly lithium-ion batteries, has been driven by residential and automotive applications, along with the need for more ways to supplement wind and solar power, noted Yahoo Finance. Even in instances where shared opportunities for application exist, such as the use of energy storage in commercial buildings, the many nuances separating thermal strategies like ice storage and lithium-ion batteries reveal that each technology offers its own means of improving building operations.

Thermal energy storage excels at reducing operational costs
A recent Buildings.com article offered a detailed summary of the advantages that thermal energy storage technologies offer to over 8,000 installations worldwide. By using solutions like CALMAC's IceBank® energy storage tanks, the cooling load of these facilities is shifted from costly peak hours during the day to nighttime, when electricity rates are at their lowest. The company's on-site energy storage tanks accomplish this goal by melting ice to cool the building and supplement the facility's chiller system.

Thermal energy storage is key to reducing costs both because mitigating electricity costs results in big savings and due to the low cost of thermal compared to other types of storage. In fact, thermal energy storage can cost up to 80 percent less than batteries for the same kW/kWh output. This potential for significant annual savings, along with the long service life of solutions like CALMAC's IceBank®, makes thermal energy storage the right fit for addressing high utility costs in new commercial facilities or for energy efficiency upgrades and retrofits.

Battery solutions solid for data center reliability and emergency scenarios
Much of the development of battery storage has been heavily influenced by the auto industry over the past few years as companies pour funds into lab tests and innovations. After all, producing batteries capable of helping electric cars match the performance of combustion-based vehicles is a tall order. While the technology is less suitable for shifting a daily cooling load, there are still plenty of opportunities to integrate batteries into building operations.

Buildings.com emphasized that batteries are suitable for delivering set amounts of power quickly in case of emergency. This capability is essential, for example, in data center disaster recovery situations where energy availability is critical to the customer. There are even some suitable roles for battery energy storage on the operations side, serving as backup power for elevators and escalators. As a resiliency measure, batteries can also serve fire and safety communication systems and eliminating the company's need for fossil fuel-powered generators.