Last week, CleanTechnica took a look the Energy Department’s vision for long duration energy storage, and we kind of brushed right past the nuclear energy angle. Here to fill in the gap is Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate & Energy program.
Is There Something Going On Between Nuclear Energy And Energy Storage?
CleanTechnica called upon Mike to provide some additional insights into the Energy Department’s “DAYS” program, which is aimed at developing next-generation energy storage that can provide electricity in the 10-to-100 hour range.
A main goal of the program is to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and into wind and solar, while ensuring grid reliability and stability.
In an exclusive email to CleanTechnica, Mike indicates that the agency’s $30 million in funding is needed because the need for long-duration energy storage hasn’t jogged private investment dollars into action yet (following are Mike’s remarks in full, unedited except breaks added for readability and explication):
The ARPA-E initiative for long-duration energy storage (DAYS) is a welcome contribution to the RD&D stimulation of new solutions for our economy. The economic signals for private sector investment in long-duration stationary storage are weak, because the “customer” in the utility sector has separated the competitive power plant market, which has a short time horizon, from the responsibilities for reliability and over-all integration of technology types.
Mike notes that pumped hydro, which is virtually the only bulk energy storage technology on the market today, has limited application:
You can see the change in the utility industry that once supported the construction (if not new innovations) of long-duration storage. As ARPA-E says, pumped storage hydro (PSH) has played a role on the grid, but has been limited by the large size that inhibits financing and the large environmental impacts that reduce the chance for permitting.
The nuclear angle comes in where Mike points out that the nuclear energy boom spurred the development of pumped hydro:
The boom-times for PSH was when the utilities were building nuclear power plants, and the storage in PSH was intended to absorb surplus production from nuclear plants at night and use that energy in the day.
Interesting, right?
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