Energy storage: Charging up the grid with batteries

October 5, 2015 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

The emerging energy storage industry is charging up across the country, yet a new report reveals that acceptance by utilities and regulators is the number one barrier to mass residential and commercial implementation.

Credit: DAJ

With technological innovations driving costs down, energy storage is an increasingly viable way for utilities to reduce intermittency on the grid.

The analysis from nonprofit NCSEA (North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association), which recognizes storage's ability to improve the efficiency of the grid and to smooth intermittent generation by renewable resources, focuses on North Carolina (home to a $4.8 million clean energy industry) and recommends the state begin preparing its legal and regulatory framework to allow both utilities and consumers to begin installing batteries.

Batteries have the capability of providing services to the generation, transmission, and distribution sectors of the electric grid. Two of the most discussed services batteries can provide is the ability to integrate intermittent renewable energy generation to the grid and the ability to provide such ancillary services that support the grid as regulation, voltage support, and reserve capacity. Batteries also have the potential to allow end users -- from small residential consumers to large industrial consumers -- to reduce electric costs, peak demand, and demand charges.

The report comes on the heels of the announcement that North Carolina became the fourth state in the nation to reach one gigawatt of installed solar capacity. North Carolina boasts one of the most robust solar markets in the nation and, under the state's Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard, reliance on renewable energy will increase in coming years. Solar, the fastest-growing renewable energy resource in North Carolina, is an intermittent resource, but when paired with batteries its generation profile can be smoothed.

North Carolina is a prime location for the storage industry, which is expected to reach $20 billion in revenues by 2020, and has taken some important steps to advance storage in the state, but key opportunities remain, according to the analysis.

To grow the industry in North Carolina, the report suggests steps to improve the state's current regulatory and policy landscape, based on an in-depth analysis that applies methods of addressing nationally-observed barriers to North Carolina's landscape. Because collaboration will be a formative driver of the success of storage in North Carolina, the report recommends convening a working group of interested stakeholders that will develop an action plan for the state. Other recommendations include regulatory actions that can spur a market for storage to provide ancillary services, and creating new rate tariffs to enable use of batteries among residential customers.

While battery storage will not solve every issue facing the electric grid, it is a tool that will increasingly be used in advancing North Carolina's clean energy economy, as costs continue to decline and technology advances.

"North Carolina has a rich history of taking the lead on clean energy advancements," said Peter Ledford, report author and regulatory counsel for NCSEA. "We were the first state to have utility-scale batteries when they were first installed in the 1980s; we were the first state in the Southeast to have one gigawatt of solar; and we will be the first state in the Southeast to have a utility-scale wind farm."

For more:
- see the report

http://www.smartgridnews.com/story/energy-storage-charging-grid-batteries/2015-10-05