Green hydrogen has begun to score more attention as a large-scale, long-duration storage medium for wind and solar energy, leading to the much-anticipated “hydrogen economy” of the future. However, it is still in the early phases of commercial development. In the meantime, other types of energy storage are already on the market. A new report indicates that under favorable policies, energy storage could see rapid growth in the U.S. while helping to accelerate wind and solar development, too.

First, the good news about energy storage
As one example of strong interest in the interplay between energy storage and renewable energy, trade publications that used to focus exclusively on fossil energy have been pivoting toward the energy storage topic. Last month the news organization Oilprice.com, for example, covered a new white paper by the Energy Storage Association titled. The report indicates that improved policies would support 100 gigawatts in new storage for the U.S. as early as 2030.

That jump in storage capacity represents an important factor in the pace of decarbonization in the U.S. and globally. As one of its key points, the ESA paper argues that energy storage makes wind and solar more competitive, and therefore more attractive to investors. A more aggressive timeline for energy storage development would consequently give wind and solar development a push, too.

The figure of 100 gigawatts could actually turn out to be an underestimate, considering that the white paper does take green hydrogen into account. That’s fair enough, considering that the hydrogen society concept faces cost and technological barriers before it can become fully mainstreamed.

Instead, the white paper primarily factors in existing battery storage technology along with pumped hydropower, which currently accounts for the overwhelming majority of large-scale energy storage capacity in the US.

Some good news about green hydrogen
The 100-gigawatt goal represents a more ambitious outlook than an earlier projection, in which ESA anticipated only 35 gigawatts by 2025.

In terms of technology, though, 100 gigawatts may turn out to be a fairly conservative estimate.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected the latest proposal from New York’s grid operator to allow renewable energy and batteries to compete against fossil fuels in its wholesale capacity market. That may give the state’s regulators and policymakers more reason to consider alternatives to federally regulated energy markets.

In a Friday order, FERC’s Republican majority denied grid operator NYISO’s proposal to restructure what it terms its “buyer-side market power mitigation rules” to allow wind, solar, batteries and other carbon-free resources to compete against fossil-fueled power plants in its Installed Capacity Market.

NYISO’s latest proposal came after FERC’s February decision to deny its first plan to alter those buyer-side mitigation (BSM) rules in ways that would free those state-supported clean resources from being forced to use administratively determined minimum bids that are likely to be too high to allow them to clear the market.

NYISO said the new rules are needed to reform its capacity market structure to align with New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The CLCPA demands that New York get 70 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030 and reach 100 percent zero-carbon emissions by 2040.

To reach those goals, the state is mandating 6 gigawatts of distributed solar by 2025 and 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035, as well as 3 gigawatts of energy storage by 2030. Most of that is needed in New York City and its surrounding downstate population centers — the same regions where NYISO’s existing BSM rules could effectively bar them from participating in its capacity market.

That’s a problem for New York’s clean energy goals for two reasons. First, it will deprive renewable and storage projects of the ability to earn capacity revenue and undermine their cost-effectiveness and ability to raise financing. Second, it could prevent downstate New York from accessing the relatively lower-cost capacity those resources could provide, forcing it to rely on existing fossil-fueled generators and increasing capacity costs passed on to utilities and their customers.

It’s also unclear why BSM rules, created to prevent companies that both own generators and buy capacity from entering uneconomically low bids from those generators to artificially drive down their own capacity costs, should apply to new zero-carbon resources.

Energy storage resource participation in wholesale as well as retail markets will help New York State realize the goals of its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goals, Dewey said.

“NYISO is blazing the trail for dual-use of storage in wholesale and retail service,” Jason Burwen, vice president of policy for the Energy Storage Association (ESA) said in an email. “We commend NYISO on implementing Order 841 to facilitate regular participation of energy storage in its markets.”

NYISO believes that the revenue opportunities from participating in the wholesale electricity market will attract energy storage developers to the state. “We’re aware there’s a lot of developer money sitting on the sidelines waiting for markets to open up,” Dewey said.

NYISO’s efforts to open up the wholesale market to energy storage could offer an example for RTOs and ISOs in other regions to follow, according to Dewey. “I think we’re ahead of the curve, so I’m sure there are a lot of eyes on us to see how well it works.”

Wholesale markets need to adapt to achieve states’ clean energy policy goals, William Acker, executive director of the New York Battery and Energy Storage Technology Consortium said in an email. Acker described New York’s climate and clean energy goals of achieving 70% renewable energy and 3 GW of energy storage by 2030, and a carbon-free grid by 2040 as “nation-leading.”

“Since storage sits at the intersection of state policy and wholesale market operations, its ability to reduce costs of service and lower emissions depends on how conflicts over clean energy policy are resolved,” Burwen said.

Energy storage resources include batteries, compressed air storage, flywheels, and pumped storage and can help grid operators meet demand, handle the variability of intermittent resources like solar and wind, and possibly delay the need for transmission upgrades, according to NYISO’s announcement.

Lucid Motors Inc., the electric-vehicle startup that has yet to build a production car, is following Tesla Inc.’s footsteps into the energy-storage business.

The Newark, California-based company is developing home batteries — similar to Tesla’s Powerwall — and utility-scale devices, Chief Executive Officer Peter Rawlinson said in an interview. They will have the same battery-cell modules the company is installing in its debut EV.

“There is a multiplier effect: They are cost-effective to make,” so they can be used in stationary storage systems, Rawlinson said.

His comments came ahead of the unveiling Wednesday of the production version of Lucid’s Air electric sedan, which the company says has an EPA estimated range of 517 miles and claims is the fastest-charging EV ever. The Air also will have two-way, vehicle-to-grid charging that allows owners to power their homes in the event of a blackout.

The energy-storage systems are an extension of the same technology but may require lower-performance cells than the cars, Rawlinson said. Lucid has an agreement with LG Chem Ltd. for the cells in its battery packs. The company aims to have a prototype of a commercial system installed at its headquarters by the start of next year that will store power generated from solar panels on the facility’s roof and provide electricity during peak hours.

Lucid is also in preliminary talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about an industrial-scale energy-storage system, Rawlinson said. The goal is that Saudi Arabia could store solar-generated power in Lucid’s batteries, helping the country to shift from dependence on oil and diversify its economy. The fund — which invested more than $1 billion in Lucid in 2018, giving it a much-needed injection of cash and credibility — declined to comment when asked about any energy-storage discussions.

Gravity has been the center of wonderment for physicists, mathematicians and thinkers of all kinds for centuries.

In the early 1600s, astronomer Galileo dropped balls from the Tower of Pisa and declared that gravitational acceleration is the same for all objects. Decades later, Isaac Newton expanded on those thoughts and devised his theory of gravity, that all particles attract all other particles with a force directly proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

Philosopher Thomas Carlyle calculated, “It is a mathematical fact that the casting of a pebble from my hand alters the center of gravity of the universe.” Cosmologist Stephen Hawking declared, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

And physicist Paul Dirac observed: “Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.”

Last week, a British energy startup company placed its own stamp on the history of gravity by beginning construction of an energy storage system powered by—gravity.

As the company says on its web site: “Our patented technology is based on a simple principle: raising and lowering a heavy weight to store and release energy.”

The company, Gravitricity, will manipulate massive weights in a tall shaft to store and deploy energy as needed. The shafts will rise nearly one mile high and the weights will range between 500 to 5,000 tons. Huge winches will raise and lower the weights, and the shafts will be pressurized to boost energy output.

According to Gravitricity officials, peak power generation can reach between 1 and 20 megawatts, with continuous output of up to eight hours. Maximum wattage power can be achieved in less than a second, officials say, making the system ideal as a back-up power solution.

The electricity grid is undergoing its first evolution since the invention of the power transmission system, and energy storage devices, particularly mechanical energy storage devices, will play a solid role in this evolution.

Decarbonization, renewable energies, and energy storage devices are all factors involved in the current evolution of the electricity grid. In the last decades the integration of renewable energies, pushed by the necessity to decarbonize the electricity sector, led energy storage devices to become increasingly important to stabilize the electricity grid.

The increased adoption of variable renewable energy led the electricity grid operator to adopt energy storage systems to smoothen the variability of renewable sources.

Li-ion batteries, currently dominating the storage sectors in all of its aspects. From portable electronics to MW scale storage systems, Li-ion batteries will struggle in the future to address the MW scale power and daily storage duration, when Mechanical Energy Storage systems will enter the market.

In the brand-new report “Potential Stationary Energy Storage Technologies to Monitor”, IDTechEx has investigated these emerging technologies. With a simple working mechanism, Mechanical Energy Storage systems are addressing the bigger spectrum of the energy storage devices: large power output, and long storage time.

This new class of storage systems include older and newer technologies. It includes elderly technologies like compressed air energy storage, already installed in the 1980s, and some of the younger gravitational energy storage, like in the case of Highview Energy, and Energy Vault recently backed with millions of dollars.

These interesting devices are now entering the electricity market with demonstration projects, to prove the technical concept. The constant integration of variable energy sources will require additional storage devices to stabilize the electricity grid, where the Mechanical Energy Storage device could play a fundamental role.

Supercapacitors have the potential to pave the way for electric vehicles that charge in minutes rather than hours, overcoming one of the barriers to widespread adoption and being good for drivers and the environment. In a step towards such a reality, scientists at Texas A&M University have demonstrated a plant-based supercapacitor with excellent energy storage potential.

With an ability to charge almost in an instant and discharge huge amounts of power as its needed, supercapacitors are an energy storage technology with massive potential. And we have seen a number of interesting advances made in building the devices out of sustainable materials, including upcycled plastic bottles, hemp and and even discarded cigarette butts.

The team at Texas A&M University looked to make use of a natural polymer that gives plants and trees their rigidity called lignin. This is produced in huge amounts as a waste product by the paper manufacturing industry, and we have actually seen some interesting breakthroughs in efforts to recycle the polymer into other products, such as stronger concrete and biopastes for 3D printing.

The authors of the new study, however, hope to use it to supercharge the performance of a material used in supercapacitor electrodes called manganese dioxide. Nanoparticles of this compound offer a number of benefits over other solutions, but the electrochemical performance is where they tend to fall down.

“Manganese dioxide is cheaper, available in abundance and is safer compared to other transition metal oxides, like ruthenium or zinc oxide, that are popularly used for making electrodes,” says study author Hong Liang. “But a major drawback of manganese dioxide is that it suffers from lower electrical conductivity.”

Previous research had indicated that lignin combined with metal oxides could boost the electrical performance of supercapacitor electrodes, but the team wanted to investigate how it could enhance the function of manganese oxide specifically. So they designed a supercapacitor in which these two components formed the key building blocks.

Despite slight slowing in commercial and industrial installations due to COVID-19, the U.S. energy storage industry saw record-breaking deployments during the second quarter of 2020, and rapid expansion is expected to continue in the months to come.

The industry deployed 168 MW of storage during the second quarter, a 72% increase over the first quarter of 2020 and a 117% increase year-over-year. The industry’s quarterly record, set in Q4 2019, is 186.4 MW, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Monitor released Sept. 3 by the U.S Energy Storage Association and Wood Mackenzie.

Although the numbers are not yet final, the industry already expects to post more records before the year is done, according to Dan Finn-Foley, head of energy storage at Wood Mackenzie.

“We already know that Q3 will be a big quarter,” he said. “Based on what we’re seeing now, it would be surprising if Q3 is not a big increase over Q2.”

Energy storage is still a small enough market that a single large installation can give a significant boost to the larger industry, Finn-Foley said, and several large systems are expected to come online toward the end of 2020.

A single large utility-scale deployment in California accounted for more than two-thirds of the total front-of-meter deployment during the second quarter of this year, but Finn-Foley said the bulk of this past quarter’s activity came from residential markets.

“Desire for resilience in California is growing,” Finn-Foley said, “and in Hawaii, pretty much everyone is getting storage to go with solar.”

Those two states, Finn-Foley said, accounted for 80% of residential deployments. Government incentives continue to drive demand for residential installations, he added.

Utility-scale installations are more geographically dispersed, and in the coming months and years, this segment is expected to drive the greatest growth for energy storage, Finn-Foley said.

Engineers from the University of Newcastle have come up with a surprisingly simple new energy storage system, built around blocks that store thermal energy like melted chocolate chips in a muffin. The team says they’re efficient, scalable, safe, inexpensive, and can be used in existing coal-fired power plants.

Renewable energy is a key component of any plan to reduce our impact on the planet, but storage remains a major hurdle to making these systems viable. Recent solutions include Tesla’s huge lithium-ion batteries, or storing energy in unconventional forms like molten salt or silicon, heavy rail cars on steep inclines, and huge blocks suspended in mineshafts or stacked in towers.

And now the list has a new entry – Miscibility Gaps Alloy (MGA) blocks. Measuring just 30 x 20 x 16 cm (11.8 x 7.9 x 6.3 in), these bricks are made of materials with high thermal conductivity, so they can easily be heated up to store energy and cooled to release it again as needed.

To do this effectively, the blocks are made of two main components. There’s a solid matrix that holds it all together in the brick shape, and embedded throughout that are particles that melt. The team describes the design as similar to a chocolate chip muffin.

“Imagine the matrix is the cake component, which holds everything in shape when heated and rapidly distributes that heat,” says Mark Copus, an engineer on the project. “The other particles, represented by the choc chips, melt and store thermal energy through the solid to liquid change phase.”

The idea is that these MGA blocks could be heated up using excess energy from renewable sources during peak output times, and store it for when demand spikes. Or they could be stacked up inside other power plants, to help recycle waste heat back into the system.

From the University of Oxford’s Battery Intelligence Lab

The University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science is world-leading and covers the entire spectrum of engineering disciplines, from traditional engineering like turbines or heat flow to cutting-edge topics like machine learning. Our research group at the Department is the Battery Intelligence Lab, and as you can infer from the name, we research batteries and specifically lithium-ion batteries. We understand how they work, their efficiencies in terms of thermal behaviour, degradation and all these other things. That’s important because these details are really hidden and the investors and developers building and operating these batteries don’t necessarily have that level of insight into how high-level decisions will impact individual cells.

Creating a digital twin: How and why

My role within Energy Superhub Oxford is to create a digital twin of the grid battery. This is basically a model of the physical asset which can simulate every individual component inside the battery and how they work together. A lot of physical assets are black boxes. When you buy an asset the manufacturer provides a data sheet on how you should use it and what you should expect from it.

For instance, a battery will tell you how often it can be charged or discharged at certain power levels, and what efficiencies and behaviour you can expect. It’s a very high-level overview when what you actually have is a field full of containers of tens of thousands of cells.

The digital twin allows you to understand how everything works together, and more importantly to test different scenarios. If you have an asset which is worth tens of millions of pounds, you don’t want to do something in the real world unless you’re certain it will work, because it’s quite expensive if you make a mistake!