distributed energy storage

smart grid/shutterstock

Combating global warming is going to require a huge influx of green power onto the grid, both at the large scale (e.g., giant wind farms or solar power plants) and at the fragmented, distributed scale.[read more]

grid resilience/shutterstock

Grid modernization offers tempting prosumer opportunities for commercial and residential consumers to enable at least some degree of self-sufficiency and reduce their payments.[read more]

electrical grid

Although microgrid technology is still largely experimental, the deployment of microgrid systems on the grid is expected to grow dramatically over the next five years.[read more]

distribution grid

Utilities are projected to invest $3 Billion per year by 2015 to upgrade their distribution grids to accommodate increased renewables and energy storage assets.[read more]

microgrid

If you’re new to the energy world, the term microgrid may not have crossed your mind recently, if ever. But within the industry, it’s becoming a very popular buzzword of late.[read more]

The final voyage of the Endeavour made its way to San Francisco and Silicon Valley on September 21, 2012.  It was a gloriously beautiful day, and many people turned out to bid farewell to the fifth and final space shuttle.  The shuttle program lasted thirty years, and has a remarkable record of accomplishments, such as being...[read more]

One of the great opportunities of distributed energy storage (DES) technology—and perhaps critical to its economic viability—is the ability of owners of DES systems to aggregate the electricity stored by tens or hundreds of individual DES systems and to wheel that power to customers outside the owner’s service area. The FERC’s current NOPR will deal in part with rules governing how and at what price owners of DES systems can sell stored electricity to customers in interstate transactions that are subject to FERC jurisdiction.[read more]

 Pongphan.R / Shutterstock.com

Millions of consumers have been fuming and sweating without power for the past week. Now is the time to talk about making the push to develop market-ready distributed power storage solutions..[read more]

Dusit/Shutterstock

It’s the high season for Smart Grid conferences.  The recent eMeter Leadership Conference combined practical, hands-on knowledge with intriguing insights and thought-provoking statements about directions for industry and consumer evolutions.   One of the most interesting takeaways is that solutions like meter data...[read more]

cardiae /Shutterstock

It is not clear that the automotive market alone will provide an advanced battery market of sufficient size and immediacy to attract the necessary capital and innovation. Using a potentially larger market for the deployment of similar batteries in DES systems on the grid to leverage the automotive market, however, would make for a large, combined market.[read more]

Photo by uhuru1701 via Flickr

As a recent corporate advertising campaign (by Dow Chemical) points out, there is a difference between invention and innovation. Getting the balance right between the two is a tricky thing. DOE support for new invention is important. Developing new technologies that might reduce the cost of high power advanced batteries from $750 per kilowatt hour to $100 per kilowatt hour, for example, would be helpful and potentially transformative in some storage applications (such as automotive). But it would be a serious mistake to believe that what is needed to solve the problem of bringing electricity storage to the grid is a new invention. In fact, the problem and its solutions are substantially more mundane.[read more]

Both distributed solar energy and distributed energy storage have attributes that make their deployment desirable to society as a whole in addition to the customers who benefit from them most directly. A strong argument can be made, therefore, that in setting things such as “network use charges”, utilities and utility regulators should not impose the full costs of such systems on the customers who benefit from the systems most directly, but should instead be socializing the costs of those systems (or at least a portion of the costs) among all electricity consumers.[read more]

Increased fuel efficiency of light vehicles will not solve the problem that has bedeviled our nation for decades: the long-term hemorrhage of American jobs and capital to petroleum producers. If our light vehicle fleet is 100% dependent on petroleum-based fuels, reducing use of those fuels will neither save money nor reduce vulnerability to supply disruptions in the long run. As in any market controlled by a monopoly, the monopolist has the option to raise its prices as demand declines. The consumer cannot come out ahead by conservation alone.[read more]

Energy storage advocates have a different story to tell and by many measures a more compelling one. With energy storage, a utility or electricity service provider manages the challenge (and, yes, the cost) of drawing electricity from the grid in the most efficient way possible. The electricity is then stored locally, by means of a distributed energy storage system, which the consumer draws from when and as the consumer wants. Peak electricity usage on the grid is reduced and greater energy efficiency is achieved through the utility’s management of the storage resource without involving the consumer.[read more]

This week was a great week for energy storage. Despite the bankruptcy of Beacon Power and the delisting of Ener1, which received inordinate attention from those looking for bad news stories in renewable energy, a game-changing regulatory decision in Washington and a record breaking storm on the East Coast signal a coming of age for energy storage technology. It is important that the energy storage industry tell its good news stories and break the doom-and-gloom Solyndra Syndrome that has come to dominate the media and the political chattering class.[read more]