While the relationship between renewable energy and energy storage is a close one, combining storage with natural gas is also an important stepping stone measure in the transition to 100% renewables, Energy-Storage.news has heard.
Batteries and other storage used to integrate solar and wind onto electricity grids, smoothing out periods of intermittency or shifting loads to their optimal time of use, are obviously a key focus of the industry and of media attention. Solar-plus-storage is gaining traction, with the likes of commercial and industrial ‘intelligent’ energy storage systems and services provider Stem Inc launching dedicated solar-plus-storage lines to coincide with last week’s Solar Power International/Energy Storage International in California.
However, as Janice Lin of the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) told Energy-Storage.news at the show, it isn’t always just when renewables and batteries are paired directly together that decarbonisation becomes a more achievable goal.
“The world is waking up to [energy storage’s] potential as a game changer in the power sector, transportation sector and what’s coming now is also as a game changer in the gas sector,” Lin said.
“It’s huge. Everyone always talks about storage as being linked to renewables and it is a great asset for renewables but it can do great things. [California investor-owned utility] Southern California Edison said the integration of storage into their gas peakers is the most cost-effective application they’ve implemented to date.”
Renewables as baseload will ‘flip the old model on its head’
The theme was taken up in a recent interview with John Jung, CEO of energy storage software and systems integration specialist Greensmith Energy. Greensmith was acquired by Wartsila over a year ago, a parent company with a background in both wind and gas-fired turbines. In August, Energy-Storage.news reported that Greensmith’s most recently completed project saw battery energy storage system (BESS) technology including the company’s GEMS software and control platform, installed at a natural gas plant in Hungary, Europe.
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