Charge up your neighbours
Battery storage could result in us selling power to people down the street,
June 7 2017 was a watershed date for the UK. It was the day the National Grid reported that renewable sources provided 50.7% of the UK’s energy needs, the first time renewables had provided more than half of our power.
If this trajectory continues, what does it mean for the wider energy infrastructure? With so much power potentially available, how can we store it until we need it?
The day that renewables delivered half of our energy needs was particularly sunny and windy – something that we can’t always rely upon. As we race to develop more electric vehicles, alongside low-cost renewableenergy sources, the question is if we have the energy-storage infrastructure to collect and deliver this resource when we need it.
The US Energy Department is already funding 75 projects that aim to develop new energy-storage systems. Closer to home, the UK government has established the Faraday Challenge, part of a four-year investment in developing new battery technologies for electric cars. “By any scale, the Faraday Challenge is a game-changing investment in the UK and will make people around the globe take notice of what the UK is doing in terms of battery development for the automotive sector,” said Dr Ruth McKernan, chief executive of Innovate UK at the launch of the initiative.
The effects of new battery technology are likely to ripple beyond the
automotive industry. After interviewing a number of key members in the energy sector, Energy UK’s Pathways for the GB
Electricity Sector to 2030 report found that: “Many agreed with the sense that the energy sector is about to go through the same sort of technology-led revolution that has been witnessed in telecommunications and banking in recent years.
“Electricity storage is widely regarded to be the single most important technological breakthrough likely to happen over the period to 2030 and a complete ‘game changer’ in the way that the power system operates,” the report continued.
What’s in store?
Currently, the UK’s electricity network is dependent on large power stations. Battery storage presents the opportunity for a more decentralised approach, and will need a network to be developed that can easily switch between energy sources to deliver unbroken power to users. Keeping the lights on isn’t simply a matter of building massive battery storage facilities, although these are beginning to appear on UK shores. The hope is that with the falling cost of generating our own power, we can take more control of energy generation and storage. With new low-cost PV (photovoltaic) installation kits coming onto the market, there’s scope for us to not only be energy consumers, but also energy generators. It’s been possible for over a decade to install your own PV system, but today the cost of installation has fallen to its lowest point, with new battery tech spawning domestic systems such as the Tesla Powerwall and the Solarwatt MyReserve 500.
“Everyone will have a couple of batteries,” said Pol Spronck, international sales manager for Solarwatt. “People with surplus electricity will share with neighbours and the community, so if you go on
holiday you can swap with other people. Blockchain technology will make it possible and manageable to exchange electricity in a small-grid setup.”
The wider energy market will focus on the centralised generation of power and how this will be stored. E.ON has completed the installation and grid connection of its 10MW battery at the Blackburn Meadows biomass plant near Sheffield – a new energy-storage project that will help keep supplies stable and support the range of power-generation sources feeding into the UK’s National Grid.
“Using battery storage is a significant development for managing the National Grid,” said Leon Walker, commercial development manager at the National Grid. “It’s an ultra-fast way of keeping electricity supply and demand balanced. Over four years, we estimate that this service will save the system operator around £200 million.”
There are many different forms of energy storage that could be considered, including pumped hydro, compressed air energy and liquid air energy storage. But experts say we needn’t worry about inventing new ways to store power – we just need to work out how to distribute it. “There’s no need for new energy storage technologies, as many options already exist,” said Fernando Morales, lead business analyst at Highview Power. “What’s missing are mechanisms to monetise the value that storage generates. Deploying storage at the scale needed to store the quantities of energy needed requires significant investment and investors require revenue certainty.”
Dr Alastair Martin, founder of Flexitricity, agreed that focusing on storage technologies isn’t enough: “Battery manufacturers have done an amazing job at slashing costs and improving battery lifetimes. We now need progress in economic long-duration storage, but that is as much of a task for policy and regulation as it is for technologists.”
Better batteries
Advanced battery technology is progressing, driven by the burgeoning electric and hybrid vehicle sector. The future looks to be one where renewable energy production – the US’s stance on fossil fuel notwithstanding – becomes the norm, with efficient domestic micro-generation, and all homes coming equipped with their own battery storage.
As renewable energy generation grows, the capacity in the marketplace is also expanding. Once dynamic pricing becomes commonplace, and renewables with their battery partners can deliver more than the energy requirements of the country, lower overall energy prices should follow. Spikes in energy prices when there is no wind or the sun isn’t shining are evened out, as battery storage can be switched on at will.
Moves to reinstate a focus on fossil-fuel energy, as the Trump administration seem to be doing, appear naive in the extreme. “Most countries around the world have renewables programmes of some form, and so the general direction is very much in towards clean power, although that is not to say that every country is going fully down that route,” said Frank Gordon, policy manager at REA.
“When you look at some of the US’s major competitor economies, however – such as China, the EU and India – they all have major renewable energy ambitions. The US is out of line in relation to their major peers.”
So who is driving the development of renewable energy and battery storage? The answer is consumers. The signs suggest homeowners are already pushing these shifts in the industry. A recent report by Eaton talks about a number of tipping points in the energy business. “Tipping point 3 is when rooftop PV systems become cheaper than buying energy from the grid via a retailer,” the report read. “Much of Europe has crossed this economic tipping point, and additions will in future be driven by consumer adoption, local regulatory frameworks and availability of rooftops.”
“We’ve now entered a completely new era, where the way in which energy is generated, distributed and consumed is changing forever,” said Stephen Irish, founder of Hyperdrive Innovation. “There are some significant challenges, given the ageing distribution network, but also huge opportunities for making big steps forward.”
What has become clear over the past few years is that calculating how we generate and store energy needs a multifaceted approach. As renewables continue their rise to become the dominant forms of energy generation, everyone can play their part, from large battery farms to new batteries installed in our homes and garages.
“On the demand side, we predict significant growth in electric vehicles (EVs), and also behind the meter battery storage,” said Patrick Caiger-Smith, CEO of Cambridge-based home-energy firm GEO. “For example, a recent survey we conducted of 150 industry people showed that 72% are planning to buy an EV as their next car. Looking at home batteries, 29% are considering buying one which, given the early stage of the market, is a strong leading measure.”
The feed-in tariff for PV has now fallen from 43.3p to a low of 4p per kilowatt hour. The upshot is that it’s now cheaper to use the electricity you generate at home than sell it back to the National Grid. Those batteries strapped to the side of your house could easily pay for themselves.