Energy storage is sometimes called the missing link in the electricity system. Seen as an essential technology to cope with the intermittency of renewables — storing the energy generated at times of low demand, and releasing it to the grid if generation can’t happen at peak demand — it also has utility to back up coal-fired generation, which is inefficient on start-up, and as a back-up for isolated communities which are vulnerable in extreme weather.
We have experts lined up to answer your questions on the technologies available and under development for grid-level energy storage; where and how it should be deployed; and how it should fit in with the operation of the grid as a whole. Please get your questions to us by 5pm on Wednesday 21st February.
In developing countries, it could be a great opportunity for independent power plants to minimize penalties due to backing down generation due to serious problems in its planned generation.
Experts should give their views
The best solution for energy storage nowadays is the water potential energy stored behind the dams during the low load in the grid.
Fellow bloggers might enjoy a short section from a book I have written: describing an experiment which took place many years ago.
They had only intended it to be a simple disruption.
The Company decided to confirm their planning by experiment and where better than in the New England States. The terrain was well spread out, good mixtures of semi-industrial and domestic consumers of power, distances well within the limits of their interest. It was the opportunity to set the power-outage cascade in motion at a selected spot, and stop it as soon as the results confirmed the predictions.
The initiation had been simple: a massive power failure, caused by a deliberate shut down of a turbine. But just as the load had been shed, and other stations had taken up the excess required, nature intervened. A lightning strike had blown two linking switches at the edge of the circuit, throwing the entire load onto the start of the next ‘ring’. The controllers had tried manfully to contain the increase, but the overload was well over 200% and there was no chance.
The circuit breakers ‘broke’ to protect the generators, throwing loads further down the coast, and now it was cumulative and catastrophic failure everywhere. Every point connected to the East Coast main failed, lights went out, elevators stopped, traffic lights failed, motors and heaters, computers and contactors: all ceased to function at a stroke. Life in a pivotal part of the most vibrant, dynamic, forceful, industrious nation in the world simply stopped.
“Well, it worked!” had been the somewhat simplistic remark from one of the planners.
“Who else could we do that to?”
“Them?”
Aside from the technology questions, a significant issue needing resolution – and maybe not only in the UK – is how the provider of grid-storage is recompensed.
In the UK we have a so-called free-market of generators, DNOs, and electricity retailers with National Grid providing the high voltage long distance transmission. Centrally generated power is sold into a pool and treated much as a commodity.
How does a storage operator fit into this? He is not a generator, nor a retailer. Does National Grid pay him a “balancing fee” for every MWh he stores and for every MWh he releases? Does the operator have the freedom to buy electricity when it is cheap, eg overnight nuclear/wind, and sell it at a higher price at peak times?
How does a storage operator ‘buy’ electricity generated by small scale renewables like solar PV farms and small wind turbines and connected via the distribution network?
Such commercial and policy questions have to be addressed in parallel with technical considerations. I would be interested to hear what your experts think is the way forward.
Robert Palgrave is quite right – the electricity ‘market’ has been constructed on the false premise of neoliberal theory. Energy storage is missing simply because nobody has the intellectual capacity to ‘invent’ a market solution for it. That problem was spelt out here. See the paragraph – “But there’s still a problem with this:”
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/the-big-story/grid-connected-energy-storage/1014536.article
Here’s the $64bn (that’s inflation for you) question:-
Why are nearly all these grid-scale technologies storing electricity? That’s the worst option.
The ‘low-hanging fruit’ lies in before-generator accumulators. I would argue that this is only a practical option within marine renewables, because water enables the transportation of the very large pressure vessels you’d need, in the form of cylindrical caissons and/or floating steel shells.
It took two weeks to create two operational harbours 70 years ago! No problem.
http://www.ukho.gov.uk/Media/News/Pages/Mulberry-Harbour-survey.aspx
And this principle would (quickly!) build the Bristol Channel Barrage that we’d need:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suction_caisson
So don’t put generators in any marine devices! Use variable-displacement water pumps instead. Redesign off-shore wind from the ‘ground’ up. But first you’ll have to change political ideology in respect of the ownership of intellectual property rights (patents).
ps: The generator of intermittent electricity must be required to install a level of energy storage commensurate with the capacity they deploy.
Here we go again! Intellectual property is, in any aspect of technology a contradiction. Rights? Surely all the results is a series of ‘wrongs!’ As Engineers and technologists we are the best ‘judges’ of the proper way forward, yet are constantly constrained by others, less able, into second-rate solutions. Is there not surely a moment when we, literally to save our planet, are going to insist that our voices be heard, respected and followed.
The intellectual pigmeys have had unchallenged control for far too long: and look where it has driven us. Almost to the wall (of if sea-levels continue to rise, to the water!)
Mike B
What storage capacity is being looked at as a % of generating capacity? And, with the technology available near term, what is the minimum power demand required to make the installation of a storage system viable?
“What storage capacity is being looked at as a % of generating capacity?”
Maybe I’m a simpleton, but the analysis of renewable electricity operations looks very simple to me. For every MW of storage capacity installed you can cut your total installed capacity by a MW.
That’s quite a saving and the capex on energy storage facilities is NOT in addition to other generating capacity, if you take the holistic, non-market approach AND locate your storage before-generator.
We should, of course, be calculating values in MWh but the wind industry carefully avoids that, so why can’t I?!!!
I’m not sure if this is where we send the questions in.
What do you think about the necessity for local energy generation and storage? Should local non-grid-connected energy be the future? What is the type of energy storage currently in most use commercially or most popular, and which technologies do you see as most promising? Is there a particular barrier to storing energy collected by solar panels or other renewable energy technologies?
Gone “anonymous” here as I have a vested interest but would like an utterly impartial response:
An earlier commenter asks “What do you think about the necessity for local energy generation and storage?” with the fairly common caveat that this would allow non-grid-connected energy.
A siginificant debate in energy storage research circles is small, localised, non-connected vs large, grid connected storage. There is actually a third possibility that is rarely if ever discussed. This is storage based on local requirements but connected by a grid sized for purpose.
The apparent (as I have only simulated this) advantage here is that sizing for local needs will result in all storage nodes on a network charging and discharging at differing times and rates, sometimes not differing by much but, as simulation demonstrates, they do not need to. This would result in some areas being out of stored energy on occasion and the network then allows energy to be bussed to depleted areas from those in surplus. This allows integration of distributed renewables, as surplus generation is then parked in storage wherever it is available and most cost efficient to use, the network, on average, can be configured to operate at near constant load for most of the time with minimum I^2*R losses and large storage facilities will also integrate with the same network allowing large and small storage and generation to co-exist efficiently. A final benefit is that defining storage by local requirements will result in some surplus over an entire network, this then gives a longer-term store distributed across the network that can deal with (for example) a couple of days of no wind, a large power station going off-line etc. I have performed some modelling of such a system and the benefits seem fairly obvious, a surprising amount of longer term buffering accruing fairly easily and, while the melting pot of differing storage technologies inevitably shakes dowen to a few worthy survivors, allows this shakedown to occur while still keeping early-stage choices viable over their respective service lives.
Since this philosophy does not appear to be common I would like to hear the panel’s views.
@ Editor’s comment.
It is entirely predictable that “the answers” will not provide any answers, either in technology or in reforming the dysfunctional economic framework that misdirects investment.(away from disruptive innovation)
“For every MW of storage capacity installed you can cut your total installed capacity by a MW.” That analysis looks cautious, compared to the views of other advocates of energy storage:-
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/is-2015-the-year-energy-storage-gets-serious-in-the-uk
“We can spend £50 billion on rewiring the country, or we can have more energy storage.”
Over-investment in interconnectors will certainly waste billions. (providing nice little earners for the lucky owners)
“Numerous early-stage projects have emerged. Highview Power won funding for a demonstration of its liquid air storage technology. REDT is developing a vanadium redox flow battery for storing wind and wave power in Scotland. And Isentropic is building a demonstration project for its cryogenic energy storage technology.”
The Electricity Storage Network has the wrong name and they mis-name the ESA too!!
http://www.electricitystorage.co.uk/about-us
http://energystorage.org/news/esa-news/energy-storage-renewables-integration-burgeoning-market
“By providing frequency regulation as well as load shifting, the project will stabilise the grid more effectively than traditional thermal generators, providing more space on the grid for clean, but intermittent, renewable energies.” Hydro turbines fulfil that role better – batteries not included.
“Energy (electricity) storage can play a major role in balancing the grid as it solves the problem of renewable intermittency by absorbing surplus power and releasing it when needed.”
No, it does no more than mitigate the problem of renewables. The only way to SOLVE the problem is by installing before-generator energy storage. Then you generate far less “surplus”, ‘wrong-time’ electricity and intermittency is effectively eliminated in storage-integrated renewables.
This article highlights how investment has been misdirected:-
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1330732/wef-criticizes-poor-energy-planning
But even larger investment resources go to waste as a result of financial mismanagement (QE), driven by a blind faith in discredited (neoliberal) economic theory, all of which, in practice, only contributes more to the gross economic inequalities that have built up over past decades:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30943216
“There is one large untapped source of triple-A credit, and that is the European Union itself – that has practically no debt, but it has taxing power,” he said, urging the EU to spend more on financing infrastructure projects, such as energy pipelines, electricity networks and even roads.
But it will be another futile exercise, if any industry incumbent is provided with the investment and politely asked to develop EU infrastructure in any way they see fit. (incentivised by bad EU-approved market intervention subsidies)
I recall the words of J. K. Galbraith: “We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties; namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had too much.” Only a neoliberal fundamentalist would deny that that doctrine is alive and kicking our butts in this century. “The greatest market failure that the world has seen.” (Nicholas Stern) is only exacerbated by this economic framework:-
“One of the most questionable distinctions in our time is that between the public and private sectors. It has concealed the extent to which the private sector, particularly corporate management, has moved to take over or otherwise nullify public responsibility.”
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/apr/06/socialsciences.highereducation
“managers of the big corporations have taken direct control over politicians.”
@ Mike Blamey. 20 Jan.
Do you misinterpret my meaning? I think we may concur, that the law is an ass.
“Intellectual property (exclusive rights over artistic creations, inventions, etc.) – although the latter is not always as widely recognised or enforced.” (Wikipedia)
If an invention of mine were recognised, without any payment, then I should be at liberty to sell or gift the rights to anybody, including a public body; i.e. turn it into public property. I am denied that right by political ideology. I am told that – “Public bodies are not ‘allowed’ to own IPR.” This is the interpretation given to EU state aid rules, in order to limit government grants in support of R&D.
So the Dept. of BIS reluctantly owns the Wave Hub, because it’s not a commercial proposition, but it is not allowed to protect the intellectual property that could make a success of the project!! (and recoup the investment.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25310079
As always: Economic incompetence born of ideology.
What further evidence is required to prove the spectacular incompetence of the DECC?
“Rudd said it had been decided by her department not to use the capacity market to finance and support storage, since the use of storage for supply-demand balancing is at an early stage. The minister’s reply appeared to contradict words her cabinet colleague, energy and climate change secretary of state Ed Davey, who, prior to the capacity market auction, had touted the potential for storage to benefit from that process.”
http://storage.pv-tech.org/news/uk-energy-minister-defends-record-on-energy-storage
Rudd’s chief scientific adviser at DECC, John Loughhead, also said at the event that setting a national a target for energy storage, or for any specific storage technology type could be a less useful mechanism than “targets for the services storage can provide”.
Engineering science is rendered impotent by the mindless presumption that a ‘market’ mechanism will somehow magically deliver a solution! Energy storage isn’t a ‘service’.
http://storage.pv-tech.org/news/uk-capacity-auction-result-is-evidence-of-broken-market-says-storage-develo
If, by serendipitous good fortune, researchers like the Energy Futures Lab happen to find the best solutions for energy storage, will the political, civil service or corporate bean-counters take a blind bit of notice?
“Science leaders issue ‘wake-up call’ to next government.”
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31307449
Which will be ignored, just like the last call to invest more in R&D, and the one before that. . . .
Because of the brainless ideology of a few people, like David ‘two-brains’ Willetts, who say that innovation should be the preserve of the private sector:-
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/poll/2012/jan/06/our-high-tech-future
“Is it not stupid,” asked Skinner, 21 years a miner, “to be getting rid of 3,000 mining jobs in the three pits while at the same time importing more coal from Russia when there are supposed to be sanctions?” Not a bad point.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/donald-macintyres-sketch-two-brains-willetts-makes-most-of-a-fitting-eulogy-9727696.html
The establishment mantra on IPR is cross-party. The DTI spelt it out in a letter to my MP 12 years ago:-
“The government’s role is one of facilitating a climate for innovation, rather than evaluating and funding specific inventions.” – Patricia Hewitt. 29 January 2003.
I have two energy storage solutions to offer.
World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/worlds-biggest-ever-pumped-storage-hydro-scheme-for-scotland/
Off-Shore Electricity from Wind, Solar and Hydrogen Power
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/off-shore-electricity-from-wind-solar-and-hydrogen-power/
Scottish Scientist
Independent Scientific Adviser for Scotland