The next U.S. energy game changer? Look to batteries and your rooftop
Electric energy has potential to alter power landscape
HOUSTON, TEXAS — The rapid development of rooftop solar and battery storage technology could be as transformative to the economy and modern life as the U.S. oil and gas boom, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said.
“It’s pretty dramatic,” Moniz said Wednesday at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston.
“They are growing very, very fast.”
The Exxon study
Researchers for Exxon Mobil Corp. who studied the effect of new technology in 2008 identified batteries that could store energy such as those used in electric vehicles as the most disruptive potential energy breakthrough, according to Private Empire, a 2012 book by Steve Coll. “If there was one emerging energy technology that seemed to have the practical potential to disrupt the oil industry’s assumptions about the transportation economy, this was it,” Coll wrote. But Exxon ultimately concluded battery use in electric vehicles hadn’t advanced to the point of being transformative, he wrote.
What’s next
Solar companies from SolarCity Corp. to SunPower Corp. are expanding into backup energy storage. Also, Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk said he plans to build a “gigafactory” for lithium-ion batteries that could further disrupt the electric utility business as the ex- pense for energy storage is driven down. Electric vehicle costs have declined by a factor of two in the past five years, and they will need to come down by “another factor of two or three” to be affordable for an average consumer, Moniz said. Tesla, is seeking to cut the cost of lithium-ion batteries by 30 per cent. How they work
Batteries allow customers with solar panels to store energy during the day and then tap the excess overnight when the sun goes down. The widespread use of electric vehicles could reshape the development of cities. The same battery storage technology could be applied to transform the U.S. energy system.
Do this at home
Homeowners might use battery storage, combined with solar power, to further reduce their dependence on utilities and sell electricity back to the grid, a new business model known as distributed generation. Battery costs are expected to decline as manufacturers stat to ramp up production.