The (possible) solutions

An alliance announced in March could result in one of the most complete blockchain-based energy trading pilots to date — by adding batteries into the mix.

Sonnen’s decision to join the NEMoGrid project in Europe is thought to be the first instance of a battery vendor taking part in a blockchain energy trading experiment.

The project will look at the economic and technical impact of electricity trading between households within a region, said Sonnen in a press release.

According to the NEMoGrid website, the project will evaluate three business models: centralized utility management, decentralized voltage and power-based tariffs, and a peer-to-peer market using the Ethereum blockchain for transaction recording.

One of NEMoGrid’s aims is to investigate the interaction between electricity tariffs and peer-to-peer trading, as well as the impact of trades on the stability of local distribution grids.

“The goal of energy supply must be to generate as much clean energy as possible right where it is being consumed,” said Jean-Baptiste Cornefert, managing director of sonnen eServices, in press materials.

“If households can sell their own power to their neighbors, this influences local electricity prices and the power grid. Ideally, people would trade in energy and at the same time stabilize the local grids, thus avoiding expensive grid interventions whenever possible.”

Battery storage is seen as being a key ingredient in helping to maintain this grid stability and pricing flexibility, soaking up excesses during periods of high energy production and returning it to the grid when demand outstrips supply.

Blockchain technology, meanwhile, will give residential participants and distribution grid operators a single, distributed ledger of all energy transactions, while reducing the cost of trading.

Germany’s energy storage sector now employs more than half the number of people as the country’s lignite industry, according to figures released last month.

An annual report by the German Energy Storage Association (Bundesverband Energiespeicher or BVES), compiled in association with Berlin-based energy sector consultancy Team Consult, found the energy storage industry employed around 11,130 workers in 2017.

This is set to rise 9 percent to around 12,140 in 2018. Meanwhile figures from Euracoal, the European Association for Coal and Lignite, show Germany’s lignite industry had around 20,740 direct and indirect workers in 2015.

The BVES data shows employment in Germany’s residential battery market has grown 131 percent since 2015. The segment is expected to employ 1,800 professionals this year.

More people are employed by industrial and utility-scale battery companies, although growth in this segment has been more modest, rising from 2,250 in 2015 to an expected 3,200 this year.

The report also showed the Germany energy storage industry made €4.6 billion ($5.6 billion) in sales in 2017.

That is expected to grow to around €5.1 billion ($6.2 billion) this year, of which around €3.3 billion ($4 billion) is to come from what the BVES terms “new storage technologies” and their applications.

These technologies cover just about everything other than pumped hydro, including batteries, power-to-gas and thermal energy storage. Their contribution to Germany’s energy storage sector revenues has increased almost 74 percent since 2015.

Over the same period, the pumped hydro sector has declined slightly in revenues, from €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in 2015 to an expected €1.8 billion ($2.2 billion) this year. Most of the growth in new technologies is attributable to rapid expansion in the battery market.

The big driver financially was battery sales to utilities and commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. These were worth €1.12 billion ($1.37 billion) in 2017 and are set to grow more than 22 percent to €1.37 billion ($1.68 billion) this year.

Spectacular falls in the cost of wind, solar and battery technology mean that clean energy is increasingly pushing coal and gas out of the world’s electricity generation mix in a “chilling” development for the future of fossil fuel power generation.

Research group Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has released its latest report on the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and it suggests that President Donald Trump’s attempts to revive the U.S. coal industry is doomed to failure. That’s because the price of battery storage has tumbled by 79% since 2010, from $1,000/kWh to $209/kWh while both wind and solar power have fallen by 18% in just a year.

BNEF says that fossil fuel power, which is responsible for the bulk of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which cause climate change, “is facing an unprecedented challenge in all three roles it performs in the energy mix – the supply of ‘bulk generation,’ the supply of ‘dispatchable generation,’ and the provision of ‘flexibility.’”

Wind and solar PV costs have continued to fall over the last year thanks to falling capital costs, higher efficiency and the spread of competitive tenders for clean power around the world, increasing their viability in bulk generation.

Dispatchable power is the ability to respond to requests from the power network to increase or decrease generation and here, it is the pairing of battery storage with wind and solar to enable these intermittent sources of generation to tackle fluctuations in demand by smoothing output or diverting power into batteries to be used at a later date.

Flexibility is the ability to respond to supply shortages and surpluses over a period of hours, and here batteries on their own are now increasingly competitive not just with open-cycle gas plants but also other options such as pumped hydro.

Elena Giannakopoulou, head of energy economics at BNEF, said: “Our team has looked closely at the impact of the 79% decrease seen in lithium-ion battery costs since 2010 on the economics of this storage technology in different parts of the electricity system. The conclusions are chilling for the fossil fuel sector.

Since 70 percent of the global demand for energy is met by burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas, it’s not surprising that we’re pumping enormous amounts of climate-warning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — an astonishing 35.8 billion tons (32.5 billion metric tons) in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency.

But even with clean energy sources such as wind and solar power increasing rapidly across the planet, we’re probably still going to be using fossil fuels as well for the foreseeable future. That’s why many are looking to carbon capture technology for power plants as a way to reduce emissions. The Petra Nova power plant near Houston, currently the world’s biggest post-combustion carbon capture facility, kept more than 1 million tons (907,000 metric tons) of carbon from going into the atmosphere in the first nine months after it went online in January 2017.

Using the Carbon We Capture

But that leads to another question. What do we do with all that carbon dioxide? Storing it underground is one option. But in an article published on March 29, 2018 in the scientific journal Joule, a group of Canadian and U.S. scientists describe an even more intriguing solution. Captured CO2 could be converted into other molecules to create fuels to store energy generated by wind turbines or solar panels, as well as to supply raw materials to make plastic and other products.

“Consider this as a form of artificial photosynthesis,” Phil De Luna, a doctoral candidate in Materials Science Engineering at the University of Toronto and one of the article’s authors, explains. “Plants take CO2 and sunlight and water and make sugars and other things they need to live. We’re taking energy and CO2 and converting it into things we can use.”

Small-scale, grid-connected energy storage solutions, or “community batteries,” can have a viable business case, supporting the ongoing growth of decentralized energy generation resources. This is one of the key findings of a feasibility study published today by DNV GL, based on work by an industry-wide consortium that includes energy storage firm Alfen and flexibility aggregator Peeeks. The study finds that, given current costs for lithium-ion battery technology and grid expansion projects, community storage can be both economically and socially viable. Furthermore, it outlines a decision-making framework to help grid operators and other stakeholders identify and optimize business models and revenue streams for community storage in any market.

Decentralized energy sources such as rooftop solar panels or individual wind turbines are an important part of the transition to a more sustainable energy future. They can help energy users reduce their bills and contribute to a more sustainable energy mix with lower greenhouse gas emissions. But such resources put extra strain on the local electricity distribution infrastructure, which must be prepared to handle any peaks in generation output.

Distribution network operators (DNOs) can expand the capacity of their network with additional underground cables, but this takes a lot of time and money. An alternative is to install batteries close to decentralized resources to store any excess energy generated and feed it into the grid when demand exceeds supply. Regulations in most countries prevent the network operator owning these distributed storage solutions. Instead an independent player owns the battery facility and sells its capacity as a service to the DNO and other stakeholders.

The report identifies the conditions and stakeholders, such as home owners, energy retailers and network operators, required to make community storage services viable. Furthermore, it shows that a multi-stakeholder approach brings benefits for all parties.