Are you ready for the Energy Storage Grand Challenge?
It was announced in January by U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette and is a comprehensive program to accelerate the development of next-generation energy storage technologies that would position the U.S. as a global leader.
The goal of the program is to “create and sustain global leadership in energy storage utilization and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain that is independent of foreign sources of critical materials, by 2030,” according to the department.
An example of what is envisioned by the program can be found in the Nevada desert, where the Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners’ $1 billion Gemini Solar project – a 690 megawatt solar-plus-battery project, just got approval from regulators. It will capture and store solar energy during the day from solar panels on 7,100 acres for use throughout Nevada in the early evenings. Gemini is believed to be one of the largest projects of its kind globally.
Battery storage up until 2020 was considered the future of energy. But in the last months of 2019 alone, eight major US battery storage projects advanced or signed contracts to sell energy from their facilities to major utilities signalling that the future of battery storage might be closer than originally expected.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, utility-scale battery energy storage capacity in the U.S. could more than double by 2022.
Lior Handelsman, founder of SolarEdge Technologies, a Israel-based energy storage and solar company, recently told Inframation that interest in commercial storage has increased tenfold in just a year.
“This growth is being driven by increasing electricity prices and grid instability,” he said. “Commercial business owners who are looking to improve their bottom lines are doing so by generating and storing their own energy.”
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