Three decades ago when the Energy Storage Association tried to galvanize support it drew 35 people to the room. Last week, at its annual conference in Denver, there were near 2,000.
Sure, they came because battery prices are dropping and energy storage pairs nicely with oh-so-popular solar. But something bigger is afoot here, something the size of the power grid, as Matt Roberts, ESA executive director, conveyed in his opening remarks at the Colorado Convention Center.
Brace yourself for an “intimidating array of new disruptors” on the grid as more of the economy becomes electrified, said Roberts. Running the grid as we do now will get us into trouble. The solution he sees is 35 GW of energy storage by 2025.
Roberts begins his argument for ‘why energy storage’ with robots –– tiny disc-like robots rushing about on a factory floor. Automated and directed by bar codes, they are sorting 200,000 packages a day with little human help. They operate entirely on electricity with an energy charge pegged precisely to the volume and timing of incoming packages. So they never run short on power. Nor is any wasted.
Now scale the factory floor up to a city of the future, Denver for example, and you get a glimpse of why energy storage may be bigger than you think
Denver’s a good setting for this futuristic city because it has a microgrid today, one tied to its transit system, which links to its airport, which of course links to the rest of the world.
So instead of robots on the canvas, imagine electric vehicles and trains. Departing from the microgrid at Denver’s Pena Station, a train ferries cargo and passengers to the airport, where they fly to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, signals are sent ahead so that 177 self-driving electric vehicles – exactly the number needed — are waiting at the LA airport when the passengers arrive. An equally calibrated fleet of trucks pick up the cargo. The vehicles run on batteries pre-charged with enough energy to reach their pre-arranged destinations.
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