The electric power grid is facing a number of challenges from the technological change across the power system and increasing severity and frequency of natural and man-made threats. As the generation mix rapidly evolves throughout the country, technologies that provide additional operational support to the grid will become more valuable. Part of that process will require the industry and the government to build and validate business cases based on a firm regulatory framework that meet requirements such as flexibility, reliability, resilience, sustainability, and grid stability. This effort requires a holistic approach to identify technical and regulatory solutions that is coordinated with the industry and the government. One technology that is crucial to the next evolution of the nation’s electrical grid is advanced energy storage.
But what is energy storage really? For many people, the term “energy storage” is likely to invoke a vision of an electrical battery — and it makes sense since the majority of the utility energy storage systems deployed on the grid in recent years are batteries. However, the technology with the largest installed capacity on the grid in the United States is pumped hydro. What about other types of storage such as thermal or chemical? These technologies store energy as well. In fact, a pile of coal at a power plant or a pipeline with natural gas is energy storage. Also, technologies that do not store energy themselves but provide similar functions may work best in some scenarios. To fully assess how to support the development of energy storage, we need to evaluate all of the diverse technologies that provide the benefits of energy storage from the perspective of the functions and values that a system can provide to the grid.
One of the essential benefits of energy storage is the flexibility it adds to the power system. The electric grid is a very complicated machine and electricity is a very unique product that requires just-in-time delivery. Electricity supply must match demand at any given moment of time. In the past, that was accomplished by forecasting loads and scheduling and dispatching generation to meet demand. Today, with increasing penetration of variable renewable generation, you need forecasts for both demand and generation. While our forecasting abilities are improving, this does not overcome the issue that traditional wind and solar generation are not dispatchable resources. When you cannot fully control both sides of the system, you need additional flexibility and that is where energy storage comes in.
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