Battery energy storage systems have always been in news. Given that inefficiencies in the power sector are always attributed to the fact that power can’t be stored at scale (so you need to over-build in every part of the value chain), grid scale storage solutions have been the holy grail for quite some time! As recent data suggests, this is not too far in the future. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has predicted cost of storage systems to fall to 1/10th of the 2010 levels by 2025 (see below). The learning curve of storage lies at 20%, which means that cost reduces by 20% for every doubling of storage capacity.
In addition to this story of energy storage becoming more mainstream, generally speaking, there are a few examples where BESS have solved here-and-now challenges for the grid. I want to highlight three such cases which highlight the coming of age of BESS. Two of them are for solving real, grid-scale challenges and one for grid planning.
Case 1: South Australia
This definitely is the most public of the cases so I might as well not talk about it! Legend has it that South Australia was suffering through a major grid instability back in December, 2016. Elon offered to solve the problem (through a series of tweets, mind you!) by installing a 100 MW/129 MWh battery pack in 100 days and ended up achieving it in 60 days!
Not only did this battery pack help solve a real problem for the customers in South Australia, it ended up doing it in record time. What’s more impressive is that another, larger, BESS system (100 MW/400 MWh) is already being deployed next to this system. BESS as a grid-scale solution has really arrived.
Case 2: Aliso Canyon (Southern California)
Although not talked about as broadly as South Australia, Aliso Canyon set the benchmark for speed of execution just earlier this year. For background, Aliso Canyon is a massive natural gas storage site in Southern California that experienced a catastrophic gas leak back in October, 2015, which impacted fuel supply for the gas plants in the area. This led to a declaration of state of emergency in California, with blackouts, and the Government hastily sanctioned procurement of 100 MW of BESS in Southern California.
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