Even if in theory local storage us cheaper, most people won't want to invest in replacing their system every 10 years when it wears out.
I think we will see mostly utility scale storage. Most people will have an electric car that they can plug into, but that will only be done to keep the fridge cold when the utility goes out.
That's why I think we'll see a lot of small-scale distributed storage, rather than giant industrial storage plants that match our current concept of the power grid. If you're running, say, a big box store, buying your own local storage for the store can make economic sense if it can pay for itself by buying dynamically priced energy. And then it doesn't need to be huge, because it's not trying to power a city, it's just trying to power your warehouse/store. A block of batteries, or a thermal system, or a water tower starts looking pretty attractive financially.
I think it will be a mix of both. Local storage at home is great for some grid independance during blackouts and usually you save some money when you have you own solar roof.
But local storage usually will be more expensive per storage capacity vs. larger storage facilities. This means, a large amount of storage will be there, because it is cheaper. Also the power company can control it better than home systems.
And of course there the electric cars which could partially contribute to the grid storage.
I wonder if we'll end up with individual home storage, eg Tesla Powerwall or similar. Then you fill it up when there's grid, you use it when there isn't, and you just have to manage the charge level.
Have you read the storage figures in the article ? Storage won't do it, not with are current consumption, which will likely increase when electric cars become mainstream (which is a terrible idea btw).
Also, storage is never counted as part of renewable costs in articles promoting renewable.
It will likely have to be a combination of many different types of storage, plus decentralization/distributed storage (electric cars, home & office battery backup), plus smart grids and appliances (time-shiftable smart electric water heaters/HVACs/car chargers), renewable biofuels for peaking, etc., riding on top of a base load of hydro and geothermal. (My vote's for nuclear, but it's wildly unpopular).
They are counting on lithium-ion batteries becoming dramatically cheaper at scale due to increasing demand for electric cars.
Storage is cheap and getting cheaper even faster than solar or wind.
By the time we need storage (after enough renewable generation is built to charge it from) storage will be very cheap. It will not be made of lithium batteries.
Storage beyond a week or two will not be needed, most places. But storage for between four hours' peak usage and there needs to be cheaper than batteries. That is where schemes like this will compete.
A pure storage play using does not need to be viable. Utilities will integrate generating capacity and storage to deliver on service level agreements.
But synthetic hydrogen and ammonia shipped around will be a huge market, not least because they are massively useful for other than for banking energy.
I would like to think the best way for Storage isn't a a giant battery somewhere ( although we could certainly do that with Hydro Dam ), may be something like a Tesla Powerwall that could work 20-30 years minimum, minimal to zero fire risk. All the homes could then install their own and take advantage of the cheap electricity price at night or in other hours. It would ultimately serve as the biggest buffer to any surge in energy usage.
You only build storage after you have renewable generating capacity to charge it from. By the time it is needed, its cost will have fallen to a trivial amount.
Utility scale battery storage is already here which solves that issue. The price of renewables + storage is cheaper (there have been PPAs in the 8-12 cent range).
Also electric cars are not the demand generators that people think. I live in the New England region and our NE ISO has studied this and put out their forecast for the region already. Heat pumps are a much bigger issue.
And considering this, a big question is will the market move away from centralized power systems. Will it be more viable to have a local/household level power generation and storage or will scale continue to give cost savings. This will likely have the biggest effect on storage/generation methods used. Possibly hybrid with distributed for suburb/rural and consolidated for urban/commercial? Or locally generated with grid peak power? Interesting times.
Consumers would be better served to direct that investment toward utility scale storage, with advantages including economy of scale.
This assumes quality utility management, which may be doubtful. But if we as a society cannot get our collective act together to run modern electrical utilities, distributed storage is a poor band-aid.
It's worth noting that a feature of life on unreliable third world utility grids is that people with money spend a lot on redundant generation and storage.
There are different types of storage with different trade-offs. In my opinion we'll eventually see lower-efficiency but low cost-per-kWh storage like CO2->hydrocarbon storage used for longer-term seasonal or disaster-preparedness storage, while higher-efficiency higher cost-per-kWh or limited-capacity means like battery and pumped hydro will be primarily used for short term day/night storage.
The cost of inefficiency is a function of energy stored, not storage capacity per se, so effectively its cost scales as (storage capacity) * (# of times charged/discharged). Therefore low efficiency isn't particularly expensive for long-term storage.
So maybe we'll see gas turbines continue to provide power that ultimately is sourced from wind and solar via hydrocarbon conversion, but that's perfectly OK since it would be carbon neutral.
The upshot is this is all a reason to be sanguine about solar and wind.
If anything I think my estimate is too conservative. Electrical storage must be adequate to meet demand in the worst case. The minute somebody's grandmother freezes to death because of brownouts due to wintry, overcast skies in December, and there will be riots in the state legislature.
Presumably as we use more renewable energy, we'll need more temporary storage. Buffering out day/night cycles from solar generation, for instance, would be a daily occurrence not a rare event. $9/kwh might be reasonable in an emergency, but even 18 cents/kwh seems pretty high for daily use.
I don't think storage is really the ideal long term solution either, storage is more short term and is more like a buffer I think. The ideal is having large interconnected grids with a great diversity of sources. We essentially have the technology right now, its just a matter of building the infrastructure which nobody is really willing to foot the bill for even though its needed for everyone.
You neglect the multiplicity of storage alternatives, all of which work, at different price points. The most cost-effective will be the ones used. Idiotic ones (e.g. Energy Vault's) won't be.
Of course very little storage is built yet, because it would be beyond stupid to build storage that there is not renewable capacity, yet, to charge up. Money is overwhelmingly better spent on generation capacity, first. Storage cost is falling faster than solar. When we build it, it will be very cheap.
I think we will see mostly utility scale storage. Most people will have an electric car that they can plug into, but that will only be done to keep the fridge cold when the utility goes out.
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