The combined global annual capacity additions for utility-scale and distributed energy storage is expected to exceed 50 GW by 2026, according to new figures published by Navigant Research.

While it is unsurprising that the global energy storage sector is set to see strong growth over the next decade, the sheer scale of that growth expected by 2026 is phenomenal. According to two new reports published by Navigant Research, the annual capacity additions expected for both the utility-scale energy storage sector and the distributed energy storage sector will together exceed 50 gigawatts (GW) in 2026. Specifically, the global annual utility-scale energy storage power capacity additions will grow from 1,159 MW in 2017 to 30,473 MW by 2026. Meanwhile, the global annual capacity additions for the distributed energy storage systems (DESS) sector will grow from 684 MW in 2017 to 19,700 MW by 2026.

“Worldwide, the energy storage industry continues to gain momentum, with an increasing number of new projects being announced and commissioned,” said Alex Eller, research analyst with Navigant Research. “While most activity remains highly concentrated in select markets, newly announced projects indicate that significant geographic diversification is taking place.”

Navigant Research predicts that 5 countries in 2017 are expected to account for 51% of all new energy storage capacity additions across both sectors — the United States, China, India, the UK, and Australia. (Note: Navigant did not provide this information in their publically available information, but the charts below seem to bear this out.) This is down from 58% in 2017.

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One of the best things about smart energy storage technology is the opportunity it creates for those in the HVAC, electrical contracting, and solar energy markets to provide added value to their customers and thus benefit from an additional revenue stream. The energy storage market is already becoming enormous with Navigant Research predicting it will reach $15.6 billion in revenue by 2024.

HVAC contractors can offer smart energy storage to their customers to help them save money on electricity costs and monitor their energy usage. Electrical contractors can use it to help their customers achieve the benefits of home automation. Solar contractors can implement it as part of a solar plus storage solution to help customer reduce their carbon footprint and electric bills at the same time.

In addition, communities in the U.S. are beginning to integrate renewables, energy storage, and the internet of things to create micro economies where they buy, sell, and trade energy amongst themselves. They can also send the energy they don’t use to their local utilities in exchange for renewable energy credits.

However, it’s best not to look at smart energy storage technology as though it’s a perfect solution. The reality is that along with the rewards it provides, it also brings enhanced risks, primarily surrounding cyber security. Though utilities are more adversely affected by cyber security breaches than consumers, energy customers still need to take their own safety into consideration as well when selecting smart energy storage products.

Addressing the cyber security concerns of IoT-enabled smart energy storage

The rapid decrease in cost of information, communications, and battery storage technologies is enabling more flexible and efficient generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption of energy, notably through smart energy storage solutions. This all leads to a more widespread connection of distributed energy resources, which can increase the number of vulnerabilities in smart devices and electric systems, according to MIT.

Many of these vulnerabilities are known to us according to Stephen Soble, CEO of global cyber security firm Assured Services, but can’t be adequately protected due to myriad factors such as aging technology, unprotected device access credentials, and industry cultures that don’t emphasize cyber security.

Also, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) indicates that modernizing the grid to protect against developing threats could cost more than $1 trillion through 2040. In addition, the simple fact of the matter is that no electrical system can be completely invulnerable 100 percent of time.

The point is that cyber security is a significant challenge for contractors that are trying to bridge the gap between their existing services and offering IoT-enabled smart energy technology to their customers.

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There goes Texas again. European researchers are talking up the advantages of compressed air energy storage, and a Houston startup called Apex-CAES has already jumped the gun with big plans for a new compressed air system near the city of Palestine, Texas. If all goes well with the first system Apex has plans for more, and Texas can kiss its fleet of aging coal power plants good-bye.

The rise of compressed air energy storage (CAES) also complicates the picture for natural gas power plants and large scale lithium-ion battery storage, so let’s take a look and see what’s going on with that.

The key factor making CAES economical in Texas is the state’s booming wind industry. Apex explains that it will take advantage of low cost (as in, practically freesometimes) off-peak power from wind turbines spinning at night.

Cheap wind power, and the state’s unified wholesale electricity market, provide Apex with the price differential that will turn a profit.

Low cost natural gas also factors in, since the system requires compressed air to be heated during peak demand periods and other times (more on that in a minute). According to Apex, though, CAES is more economical than conventional gas power plants, and uses far less gas.

Here’s the breakdown on emissions from Apex:

CAES energy production results in 40% fewer emissions per MWh than a combined cycle gas turbine, and its ancillary service production yields 98% fewer emissions per MWh.

Apex also points out that the system does not transfer energy from fuel to steam, so it requires “a fraction” of the water used in conventional power plants.

That should make natural gas stakeholders nervous. Right now cheap natural gas is the driving force pushing coal out of the power generation market, but low cost wind and solar are beginning to compete with gas in some areas, and the U.S. Department of Energy is working toward a grid modernization strategy that includes a growing share of renewables.

Compressed air storage could give renewables the edge they need to start claiming bigger chunks of the power market and accelerate the transition out of fossil fuels.

That could make lithium-ion battery stakeholders nervous, too. According to Apex, the cost advantages of CAES over large scale Li-ion arrays are significant:

Cost of storage for CAES is $18/kWh, versus $435/kWh for a lithium-ion battery.

CAES operating life of more than 30 years is three times that of a lithium-ion battery, resulting in dramatically lower annualized costs.

One additional advantage is that CAES is essentially an underground operation. Apex anticipates that surface “disturbance” can be kept as low as 10 acres for a 317 megawatt CAES system.

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The United States had its largest ever quarter for energy storage deployment this year, deploying 234 megawatt-hours worth of energy storage across the first quarter of the year, representing a more than fiftyfold growth as compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

GTM Research published its latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor in conjunction with the Energy Storage Association (ESA) this week. The report includes two primary figures — 71 megawatts (MW) of new energy storage deployed in the first quarter, a 276% growth over the first quarter of 2016, but a 50% decrease on the fourth quarter of 2016, continuing a long-running trend that sees the first quarter of a new year slowing somewhat on the overactive previous fourth quarter. The second figure is the record-breaking 233.7 MWh of energy storage deployed in the first quarter, a 2% increase over the immediately-preceding fourth quarter, but a mammoth 944% increase over the first quarter of 2016.

“Much of this growth can be attributed to a shift from short-duration projects to medium- and long-duration projects in the utility-scale market, along with a surge of deployments geared to offset the Aliso Canyon natural gas leak,” said Ravi Manghani, GTM Research’s director of energy storage. “Although, the industry shouldn’t get too comfortable, as with fulfilment of Aliso Canyon deployments, there aren’t that many 10+ megawatt-hour projects in the 2017 pipeline, indicating that the first quarter may be the largest quarter this year.”

Overall, front-of-meter energy storage deployment accounted for 91% of all deployments in the quarter. Behind-the-meter deployments declined 27% year-over-year, in terms of MWh, and GTM and the ESA pin this slowdown on a pause in California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program. California ranked first in terms of non-residential and utility-scale energy storage deployment, but ranked third in terms of residential deployment, while Hawaii ranked second across the board.

Looking forward, GTM Research predicts that the US energy storage market will grow to approximately 2.6 gigawatts (GW) in 2022. Behind-the-meter energy storage will account for 53% of the annual storage market by 2022, up from 20% of the 2016 market, while California will unsurprisingly remain “the undisputed emperor of the US energy storage market over the next five years.” Filling second place will be battled out between Arizona, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas, each likely to represent a significant portion of deployments through 2022.

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8minutenergy, the leading independent solar PV developer in the United States, has announced this week that it is expanding into the energy storage market, and it comes with a 1 gigawatt project pipeline already in place.

Announced on Tuesday, 8minutenergy revealed that it would be expanding into the US energy storage market, focusing on standalone storage, as well as solar PV and storage systems. The company also announced that it makes the transition from solar to solar and energy storage company with an impressive 1 gigawatt (GW) project pipeline already in place.

8minutenergy will focus on key solar markets such as California — where the company already has assets worth 700 megawatts (MW) — and growing markets such as Texas and the Southeast.

“Utilities and corporations nationwide are looking for reliable, cost-competitive clean energy solutions. Solar PV and energy storage are poised to meet this demand while delivering strong returns,” said Steve McKenery, 8minutenergy’s Vice President of Storage Solutions. “Not only can storage improve project economics, but it can also make renewable power dispatchable — that’s a clear win for the future of clean energy.”

“Having worked closely with the largest utilities in America for the past few decades allows us to uniquely understand our customers’ needs and system requirements,” added 8minutenergy’s Vice President of Storage Integration, Carl Stills. “We are working on storage solutions that are already cost-competitive across the board, improve energy yield, and maximize renewable incentives. Now with fully dispatchable renewable energy, we can complement any existing utility portfolio.”

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A team of researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory is on to a new zinc-based alternative to lithium-ion batteries. The new research aims at enabling the Navy to expands its energy storage options. The new zinc battery could also makes its way into the EV market, providing manufacturers with a lighter, less expensive alternative to today’s crop of lithium-ion batteries.

Head researcher Debra Rolison, who has been at NRL since 1980, graciously spent some time on the phone last week with CleanTechnica along with her colleague Jeffrey Long to provide some unique insights into the breakthrough.

The Navy’s problem with lithium-ion batteries is that they are not considered safe for some applications on ships as well as other facilities due to fire risks.

Don’t get the wrong idea about EV battery safety, though. Modern lithium-ion battery packs are designed with control systems that prevent overheating and provide for a longer lifespan.

Rolison underscored that you’re only going to get safety failure in a poorly designed control system — hoverboards being one notorious example. That kind of problem has practically zero chance of occurring in today’s intensely regulated auto market.

The safety issue does present an obstacle to designing lighter, less expensive energy storage systems, as Rolison explained:

“Lithium-ion thermal management has to be designed in. With other safeguards, these energy management systems add weight, volume, and cost.”

Rolison also noted that thermal management systems add complexity to the manufacturing end of things.

Throw in the additional supply chain complications and you can see why researchers have been pursuing an energy storage system that can safely ditch thermal management systems.

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Tesla has a new idea it calls aggregation and it is the next step in its plan to bring renewable energy to the utility grid. The first phase of that plan is the installation of Tesla Powerpack grid scale storage units at substations throughout the area served by a utility. The second phase is linking thousands of individual Powerwall residential battery systems to provide extra storage capacity.

In partnership with Green Mountain Power, Tesla is now offering GMP customers a Powerwall battery for the bargain price of $15 a month for 10 years, or a one time charge of $1500. The normal price of a the 10 kWh Powerwall with built-in inverter is $5,500, plus installation. Up to 2,000 batteries will be provided and they will be linked together via the internet so the utility company can use some of the power stored in them to balance the utility grid and provide extra power when needed while meeting all the needs of the homeowner.

The plan is similar to what is known as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems that allow the batteries in electric cars to feed power back to the grid when they are plugged in but not charging. Electric car batteries can also be used to provide power to the home if wired properly.

Electricity is a curious thing. Despite the fact that it is the energy source of choice for industry, there is not one person alive who can tell you what it is. We can describe what it does, we know how to make it, we can send it long distances, but it remains one of those things, like gravity and light, that defy a complete physical explanation. What we do know is that is ephemeral. Once created, it must be used immediately or it is wasted.

Unless we can find a way to store it, that is. Thanks to its expertise in making batteries for electric cars, Tesla is at the forefront of battery storage systems. It is building the largest and most modern battery cell manufacturing facility in the world just outside of Reno, Nevada. Between the time when the company started building cars and now, it has quietly shifted from being an automaker that also makes batteries to a battery company that also makes cars.

Utility companies operate two kinds of generating plants. One is online constantly and takes care of so-called baseload needs. The other is called a peaker plant, a facility that is brought online when the demand for electricity increases temporarily. Peaker plants are typically used during the hours of 4 pm and 8 pm when demand is highest.

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Based on the lithium-ion battery technology that Mercedes-Benz has used to power 80,000 hybrid and fully electric vehicles since 2012, Mercedes Benz residential storage batteries are now ready for sale to customers in the UK. Up to 8 battery modules, each with a capacity of 2.5 kWh, can be combined to create an energy storage system with a capacity of 20 kWh. Industrial applications have even greater scalability.

Using an energy storage system from Mercedes-Benz Energy, households with their own solar energy systems can store surplus power with virtually no losses. By combining renewable energy sources with a battery storage unit, households can explore the potential of their own “private energy revolution,” as Mercedes-Benz put it.

Prices for residential systems depend on the components of a customized package selected by the customer. A typical system consists of solar panels, a battery inverter, an energy management system, and the Mercedes-Benz energy storage unit itself, plus the cost of installation.

“A network of qualified partners and distributors makes planning and installation easy. At present, Mercedes-Benz Energy is working in the UK with distributors such as Alternergy, Innasol and Wind & Sun, as well as with partners who offer a complete system installation, such as Solar Frontier,” Mercedes notes. “The latter’s network of qualified installers can advise customers on-site, make offers on all components and manage all planning and installation. Stationary battery storage systems are generally installed together with solar panels.”

But do people really want Mercedes-Benz batteries in their garage? Apparently.

“There is tremendous interest in our energy storage units in the UK. We’re very pleased to be able to offer Mercedes-Benz Energy Storage Home to customers here,” said Marc Thomas, Managing Director of Mercedes-Benz Energy.

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The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has published a landmark report extensively detailing component and system-level cost breakdowns for residential PV solar systems equipped with energy storage.

The decreasing cost of solar systems has been well documented over the last several years, with increased innovation and decreasing manufacturing costs combining to make solar PV a competitive and economic choice for residents and utilities across the United States, and in fact the world. As such, the costs attributed to the development of residential and utility-scale solar projects has been well defined for some time — even though that figure keeps decreasing.

However, in the same way that technological innovation and manufacturing has helped to lower the costs of solar PV projects, the same catalysts have acted on energy storage technology. As a result, the attractiveness and economic viability of energy storage systems has increased dramatically over the last year or two, to the point where energy storage options are more and more frequently being considered to run in tandem with solar systems.

Researchers from the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have therefore published what is currently the most detailed component- and system-level cost breakdowns for residential solar PV equipped with energy storage. The report, Installed Cost Benchmarks and Deployment Barriers for Residential Solar Photovoltaics with Energy Storage: Q1 2016, also serves to quantify the previously unknown or uncertain soft costs for combined solar PV and energy storage.

“There is rapidly growing interest in pairing distributed PV with storage, but there’s a lack of publicly available cost data and analysis,” said Kristen Ardani, lead author of the report and a solar technology markets and policy analyst at NREL. “By expanding NREL’s well-established component- and system-level cost modeling methodology for solar PV technologies to PV-plus-storage systems, this report is the first in a series of benchmark reports that will document progress in cost reductions for the emerging PV-plus-storage market over time.”

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Scientists from all across the European Union are working on what could be the next large-scale energy storage option to combine with variable renewable energy technologies to increase their efficiency — air.

According to researchers from SINTEF, Norway’s largest independent research organisation, storing compressed air in sealed tunnels and mines as an alternative to the more cheaper, though regionally restrictive method of pumped hydropower energy storage. Compressed air storage is in no way a “new” concept, but scientists from all over Europe, working under the auspices of the RICAS 2020 research project, are investigating the possibility of storing large amounts of compressed air in disused caverns and tunnels as large-scale storage sites.

The existing premise is already in use in some areas of the world, and essentially uses surplus electric power to compress air, which is stored underground, only to be released through a gas turbine that generates electricity when needed. Such energy storage plants help meet peak electricity demand.

“The more of the heat of compression that the air has retained when it is released from the store, the more work it can perform as it passes through the gas turbine,” said Giovanni Perillo, project manager for SINTEF’s contribution to RICAS 2020. “And we think that we will be able to conserve more of that heat than current storage technology can, thus increasing the net efficiency of the storage facilities.”

Currently, one of the problems with this technology — as experienced at two of the largest compressed air stores in the world, in Germany and the US — is the loss of potential energy through the compression stage, as there is no means to store the heat produced. This contributes to the fact that existing sites lose around 45 to 55% of the produced energy during the compression process. Participants in the RICAS 2020 project have developed a means to minimize heat energy losses in future underground storage caverns — essentially adding an additional station in the final solution:

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