Energy Storage Myths: #1 Arbitrage

The term disruptor is thrown around a lot these days in a world rapidly facing digitisation and the fight to stay relevant is becoming ever more competitive in energy storage. While technological breakthroughs are always exciting, to paraphrase an old saying, there’s a lot that can go wrong between filling a cup with liquid and putting it to your lips. In the race to commercialise technologies and business models for a mass market still in its infancy, the real disruptors in energy storage aren’t just in the lab, they are making a real difference in houses, commercial buildings and on and off the grid.

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The Duke Smart Home Program is looking forward to a year focused on developing and carrying out a variety of energy storage projects.

The organization—which includes the Home Depot Smart Home, a live-in research laboratory operated by the Pratt School of Engineering—strives to utilize methods of energy storage and solar energy production in a collaborative setting. This year, the Smart Home is working to create an electric bike and a solar bench, explained junior Harvey Shi, vice president of the Smart Home.

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The American energy storage sector kicked off 2016 with a marked increase in corporate investments, according to GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association’s latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor. First-quarter investments of $79 million marked an increase of more than double compared to the same period last year. Of that money, $20 million came as project financing.

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Energy Storage News – SunPower Corp. and Consolidated Edison Inc. plan to offer rooftop solar panels bundled with batteries to more than 300 New York residential customers, creating a system that will be able to store energy to feed the grid.

The so-called virtual power plant will have about 1.8 MW of generating capacity and 4 MWh of battery storage, the companies said in a statement Monday, the largest residential distributed-energy storage program in the U.S.

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As battery costs fall, storage deployments rise. That trend led to a record year for energy storage deployment in 2015, and the trend will continue into the future, according to BNEF’s New Energy Outlook.

“Batteries will get a boost as costs drop and developers see the chance for lucrative new revenue streams,” said Julia Attwood, storage analyst at BNEF.

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We all know that the solar industry, particularly in the UK has lost a significant number of jobs in the last nine months. We also know that energy storage is the hottest of hot topics at present, and a sector predicted to see substantial growth. However, as I’ve written before, the number of jobs available in the storage sector doesn’t come close to the number of solar jobs lost. Demand outstrips supply. What is more, many of the jobs lost to solar do not lend themselves to transfer to the storage sector, for an obvious example think roofer.

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The Energy Storage Association recently announced it approves of the work the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is doing to support energy storage. FERC is conducting a review related to market barriers for energy storage. ESA says FERC is using a careful approach to helping energy storage expand in the marketplace.

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Energy Storage News: What exactly is wrong with renewables, and why aren’t we all-green already? Subsidy abuse and insufficient economic viability in the face of cheap oil are two of the most common criticisms thrown at the renewable industry.

These, however, are nothing compared to the biggest challenge that the green energy industry has encountered: the impossibility to store power produced—at least not in an affordable and reliable enough way.

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Utility companies or others planning to install renewable energy systems such as solar and wind farms have to decide whether to include large-scale energy storage systems that can capture power when it’s available and release it on demand. This decision may be critical to the future growth of renewable energy.

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