With the announcement of California’s energy storage procurement target of 1,325 MW by 2020, and other states working hard to follow in their footsteps, developers are now focused on moving storage technologies from demonstration to commercialization. However, from increasing efficiencies and the reducing costs of existing technologies, to securing investment for commercial deployment, there are still a number of roadblocks that must be overcome to commercialize storage technologies. This guide explores the current status of energy storage commercialization and provides insight into the role of banks and venture capital in bringing technologies to market. It also explores the positive impact that California’s storage mandate could have on market growth, as well as the key lessons that can be learned from other renewable technologies to achieve commercialization.
NewEnergyNews: TODAY’S STUDY: ENERGY STORAGE COMES TO MARKET
Is energy storage the new holy grail of a clean energy future? Energy storage can take the form of large batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro facilities, compressed-air energy storage, and many others. However, the exciting “new kid on the block” is battery storage, largely because of its relatively small size, modularity and rapidly declining costs.
Is an Energy Storage Tsunami About to Hit California? : Greentech Media
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Is energy storage the new holy grail of a clean energy future? Energy storage can take the form of large batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro facilities, compressed-air energy storage, and many others. However, the exciting “new kid on the block” is battery storage, largely because of its relatively small size, modularity and rapidly declining costs.
Is an Energy Storage Tsunami About to Hit California? : Greentech Media
The NPR Planet Money group just did a show on the history of lighting, drawing the relationship between artificial lighting costs in terms of hours/manhour worked vs economic progress. It ranged from something like a days wages for 8 minutes to something like a day's wages for 20,000 hours, with concurrent economic development. I'm headed for a place next week, a boarding school, with no electricity other than a gas generator to drive the corn milling machine for their tortillas and, now, solar to drive one of their well pumps. Sun goes down? No lights other than candles and flashlights.
The point is when the sun goes down there's not studying, no work, no progress. This is one community where cheap battery storage for lighting would likely make a hell of a difference if history provides the lesson.
A day's wages for 8 minutes of light.. We've come a long way..
We're not there yet with the batteries. Tesla is more or less the cutting edge commercially, and these things are still rather expensive.
“There are materials we are working on at Argonne which can double the current energy density available for batteries,” says Daniel Abraham, a material scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, outside Chicago in the US. “We dream up or imagine the types of materials we would like to work with, then we attempt to synthesize the materials in the laboratory.” Currently the batteries getting all the buzz are lithium-air, or more properly lithium-oxygen, as well as lithium-sulphur batteries. Li-oxygen batteries, if they can be made to work, under all conditions, will be an order of magnitude improvement over the current Li-ion batteries. “It’s a very hot field at this time” says Abraham. Indeed Volkswagen has recently hinted that it is investigating lithium-air batteries. The precise chemical/ material combination that they are using has not been revealed as development work continues. The company’s engineers will not even say if the technology has been tested in a car, or if it is still at the ‘lab bench’ stage. But although the technology has revolutionary potential, the technical challenges of making a Li-air battery work consistently, reliably, and safely – and crucially for extended durations – are large. So far the electrodes have proven unstable. Labs around the world are working on the problem though, trying to overcome the drawbacks. The hope is that greater emphasis on these “beyond lithium-ion” technologies, will ensure faster progress in their development, and in the long-run faster cars that travel farther.
BBC - Future - The electric car’s biggest threat may be its battery
The first mass-market consumer fuel-cell vehicle will soon be available in California: the Hyundai Tucson Fuel Cell SUV. It’s taken decades to get to this point, so many enthusiasts are hoping that this will be a tipping point for the technology. It’s an exciting development, and by all accounts thus far, it’s a great car with a decent range of 250 to 300 miles.
Fuel Cell Vehicles: Hype or Hope? : Greentech Media
Battery storage can combine the speed and granularity of power electronics with the dispatch of both real and reactive power. This gives many battery solutions significant advantages over traditional grid infrastructure and newer power electronics-based solutions, especially when used for the mitigation of the negative effects of high-penetration solar and intermittent generation sources. However, high prices are expected to continue to limit its wide-scale deployment to remote grids, leaving opportunities for other secondary and substation-based power electronics solutions in continental grids.
How Will Battery Storage Help Utilities Integrate Distributed Solar? : Greentech Media
Grid-scale energy storage is moving from its pilot program phase to its early commercialization phase. And the slow road to commercialization at U.S. utilities comes in the form of requests for quotation and solicitations like the one issued by the Imperial Irrigation District and the many other energy storage RFQs we've been tracking. The IID just announced the shortlisted vendors on its 40-megawatt energy storage RFQ.
Grid-Scale Energy Storage RFQs: Lessons From the Imperial Irrigation District : Greentech Media
New York state is, after California (and possibly Hawaii), the country’s biggest market for next-generation batteries and grid-scale energy storage. The action includes Long Island Power Authority’s request for up to 150 megawatts of energy storage, a soon-to-be-unveiled storage incentive program from Consolidated Edison, and emerging opportunities in microgrids, behind-the-meter storage, renewable energy integration and other grid edge applications.
Testing Ground for New Energy Storage in New York : Greentech Media
Working in the solar industry, I’ve noticed that the number of people calling who are interested in installing solar-electric (photovoltaic) systems increases substantially after a natural disaster. It’s very understandable considering that after Hurricane Sandy, for example, 8.1 million homes lost power in 17 different states as far west as Michigan, and for some towns in New Jersey and New York the power stayed out for up to two weeks. Unfortunately, the truth is that the most common and most affordable option for going solar, a grid-tie system, has one big fat Achilles heel: your grid-tied solar panel system will not work when the grid is down.
A Power Backup Solution For The Achilles Heel Of Grid-Tie Solar | CleanTechnica
Lithium ion batteries based on this Silly Putty material are said to last three times as long as the industry standard smartphone battery, according to UCR Today, a campus publication.
Silly Putty Material in Smartphone Batteries - Business Insider
Since the material is 1 million times thinner than a sheet of paper, it could easily be used to make smartphones much sleeker than they are today. It's flexible nature also makes it an attractive option for wearable computing devices. Reports have also suggested that it could even deliver internet 100 times faster on your smartphone. Samsung has already locked in 38 patents pertaining to the use of graphene in the United States, with 17 other applications pending, according to Bloomberg. Apple has at least two pending patent applications involving graphene.
Graphene For Smartphones - Business Insider
At a small solar power plant near Modesto, in California’s Central Valley, a startup called Enervault recently unveiled battery technology that could increase the amount of renewable energy utilities can use. The technology is based on inexpensive materials that researchers had largely given up on because batteries made from them didn’t last long enough to be practical. But the company says it has figured out how to make the batteries last for decades.
Novel Battery Could Improve Economics of Wind and Solar | MIT Technology Review