Storage key to solving renewable energy's biggest challenge

November 19, 2014

Greater interest in renewable energy has lead to multiple government incentives for building wind turbines and solar panels. Unfortunately, the nation's power infrastructure still lacks a means to harvest renewable energy when there is no immediate load to consume the energy. This challenge has led more companies to consider the benefits of investing in and using energy storage. That's why Logan Goldie-Scot, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst, called energy storage the industry's new "holy grail," according to an article in The New York Times. Looking at the advantages of energy storage provides insight into the future of renewable energy.

Dealing with energy in excess
The current gulf between the amount of energy current infrastructure can collect from renewable sources and the amount of available energy storage is quite large. That's why Goldie-Scot expects the worldwide storage capacity to grow by 10 gigawatts in the next five years as companies rush to invest in storage solutions. Peak load times coincide with the time of the day when electricity is most expensive, and energy storage is designed to offset this by making it easier to collect less expensive off-peak power and use that energy to offset the next day's peak load demands.

Several organizations have chosen to mitigate their power demands with energy storage technology. For example, in Wyoming, the LightSail Energy power company is devising plans to connect a local major wind farm to a compressed-air energy storage facility in Utah. Likewise, a school district in Florida has heavily invested in thermal energy storage in the form of ice tank technology. Sarasota County has already implemented the energy storage solution in over 85 percent of its schools and reduced energy costs by $2 million, according to CBS News 10.

The need for better technology
Energy storage is still in its infant stages, in terms of technological development. Energy companies must address the shortcomings of storage before the solution can be expected to hit the mainstream. Likewise, the industry can benefit from making better use of its underutilized resources. Bringing down costs is one major goal for the energy storage industry, as The New York Times notes that storage solutions can cost up to 10 times more than fossil-fuel applications. Expanded use of thermal energy storage could help address this problem. Solutions like ice tank storage cost just a quarter of the price it would take to roll out a set of new lithium ion batteries.