Battery energy storage
FUTURE OF RENEWABLES
What is battery storage?
Battery storage technologies are fundamental to enabling renewable energy to replace fossil fuels as the world’s source of energy. Battery storage systems will play an increasingly pivotal role between green energy supplies and responding to electricity demands.
Battery energy storage systems are devices that smooth out the supply of energy from renewables, like solar and wind, by storing energy at peak production times and releasing it when customers need power most.
Lithium-ion batteries, which are used in mobile phones and electric cars, are currently the dominant storage technology for large scale plants to help electricity grids ensure a reliable supply of renewable energy.
Energy storage has now become one of the most exciting and dynamic new growth areas within the global energy sector. The UK in particular has emerged as one of the top three global markets for storage deployment over the next few years.
KEEPING COSTS DOWN
How does battery energy storage work?
Battery energy storage systems are considerably more advanced than the batteries you keep in your kitchen drawer or insert in your children’s toys. A battery storage system can be charged by electricity generated from renewable energy, like wind and solar power.
Intelligent battery software uses algorithms to coordinate energy production and computerised control systems are used to decide when to keep the energy to provide reserves or release it to the grid. Energy is released from the battery storage system during times of peak demand, keeping costs down and electricity flowing.
ITERATIVE TECHNOLOGY
Why Lithium-Ion?
Clean-energy visionaries have long argued that the world needs a better battery capable of selling sceptical consumers on electric cars and running the grid on renewable power. And yet the battery of the future—at least for the coming decade—will almost certainly be the battery of the past.
The humble lithium-ion battery has built up such a commanding lead in the market that competing technologies may struggle to catch up. That lead will only widen as a wave of planned new lithium-ion factories comes online in the next five years.
The batteries pouring from new factories in China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere will further drive down prices, which have already plunged 85 percent since 2010. And the billions spent on factories will create a powerful incentive for the industry to keep tweaking lithium-ion technology, improving it bit by bit, rather than adopting something else.