Explosive Storage Growth Ahead
Jim Rogers Foresees Revolution
WASHINGTON - By 2020 there will be 11.3 gigawatts
of electric storage installed globally, according to
Jim Rogers, the former CEO of Duke Energy.
It will be a part of the profound change coming to
the electric utility sector, Rogers told the meeting
of the Energy Storage Association in Washington on
Thursday.
"Our challenge is to accelerate it and make money
accelerating it," Rogers said.
Rogers added that in the United States, 3.2
gigawatts of storage will be deployed by 2020. About
60 percent of it will be based in California, where
there is a strong push for renewables deployment.
While the growth in storage in the next few years
will be dramatic, it will accelerate even faster in
the future, Rogers said. The 11.3 gigawatts of
storage installed by 2020 will represent just 1
percent of the renewables installed globally at that
time. Thus, there will be plenty of room for growth.
Rogers concludes that the annual investment in
energy storage will be about $5.1 billion.
Meanwhile, nuclear and coal-based generation in the
United States are threatened. "We are fast moving
towards gas all of the time. That it's a mistake,"
Rogers stated.
Rogers told the audience of energy storage companies
and their backers to go to state regulators and
state legislators and try to change the rules of
utility regulation.
Rogers suggested that it is important to get the
rules changed so that business models of utilities
can evolve and the right incentive put in place to
encourage investment. It will be a long process
ultimately taking five to seven legislative sessions
to get the new rules in place.
Rogers also said that energy storage will play an
important role addressing poverty in the lives of
1.2 billion people in the world who receive no
electricity today. Companies interested in fast
developing new storage technology can go to the
undeveloped world and test new offerings that they
can then bring back to serve the developed world.
Utilities must recognize that they must embrace
change and that includes new energy storage
technologies. "If you don't control your change,
someone else will do it for you," Rogers said.
The association said 640 people are attending the
meeting, a record high mark.
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