Competitive markets are wonderful crucibles of innovation. With decades of accumulated manufacturing experience for use in portable electronics, lithium-ion battery prices have steadily dropped. As a result, larger battery products for electric cars and buses have emerged, making them more affordable and paving the way for grid applications.
The early versions of energy storage systems were relatively small. With declining battery prices, their size and volumes have grown, opening up new markets. A few now store enough energy to manage the variable nature of wind and solar energy over the course of a day. Even larger systems are in planning and development, but progress is still gated by battery costs.
Looking a few years ahead, our scientists at Utopus Insights studied the characteristics of hybrid power plants that combine wind and/or solar power with battery storage.1 While the industry has focused almost exclusively on pairing solar with batteries, we found, to our surprise, that wind pairing offers unique benefits.
With solar pairing, there are many days when it is not possible to meet a target power commitment during peak hours. In most of the cases we studied, wind pairing yields many fewer missed days.
In hindsight, these results make sense. Peak hours typically start when the sun is setting, yet the wind may continue to blow. Thus, solar requires more “lift and shift” because a larger proportion of the energy supplied during peak hours must be provided by discharging storage.
Significantly, we found that for a given battery capacity, combining wind and solar further improves the ability to meet peak demand. Reliability is improved because the two energy sources complement each other temporally.
Just as choosing a judicious mix of stocks and bonds may reduce the volatility of our financial investments, diversifying renewable energy sources and pairing them with the right amount of battery storage is a good way to make sure we have enough energy during peak hours.
The optimal mix of wind and sun depends, of course, on the local climate and timing of peaks.
As a wholly owned energy analytics subsidiary of Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, the generation forecasting and storage optimization that we are developing will be crucial in enabling such hybrid plants to achieve their maximum value. Hybrid plants can reliably supply electricity during the hours of peak demand, eliminating the need for expensive gas-fired peaker plants. This would be the beginning of the end of fossil-fired electricity production.
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