Major changes coming to the electric grid

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OK, this is going to be pretty huge...

 

Eos Energy Storage Awarded $2.1 Million from California Energy Commission for Ground-Breaking Battery Demonstration

 

What is this battery demonstration all about? It's about battery energy storage becoming more integrated with the electric grid. This snippet goes into greater detail on that:

 

PG&E’s Smart Grid Lab will install and test the AC energy storage system, which integrates Eos’s Aurora DC battery, ETM’s state-of-the-art power electronics, and Stem’s intelligent software, featuring real-time data analytics and controls. EPRI will provide program management and data validation services and coordinate safety, interconnection, and system integration requirements. Berkeley Lab will use real-time grid simulation to characterize performance and quantify system benefits under dynamic load and renewable integration use cases.

 

The next thing I'd like to draw attention to is what's underlined above; Eos' Aurora DC battery technology.

 

“We’ve developed an energy storage solution designed specifically to meet the requirements of California’s utilities and industrial users. At a price of $160 per kilowatt-hour, we believe our batteries will compete with gas peaking plants and copper wire to provide both peak generation and infrastructure benefits,” said Philippe Bouchard, Eos Vice President of Business Development.

 

Just the claim that their batteries will compete with copper wire seems outlandish so I need to explain what they're talking about there. The thing about electric grids is that they are built to supply peak demands. If the peak demands were to become more than the grid can transport, then additional copper lines and cables must be installed to carry that extra power. It'd be a lot to explain but let's just say that if energy storage is made accessible and used well, the power lines of the present won't need to carry bursts as large as they do today which means that bulking up the grid can be postponed and future power lines can be slimmed down if the technology is applied. Savings could be huge.

 

What's more, a price point of $160 per kWh is obscene in how low it is! Today, Lithium-Ion batteries; the kind you tend to find in laptops, cell phones and electric vehicles, tend to cost about $500 per kWh of capacity. That's quite a contrast, isn't it?

 

Energy storage at that cost could transform the way energy is supplied to our wall outlets. Of course, we won't really notice anything as consumers but utility companies do stand to profit greatly from this due to savings in infrastructure investment as well as really starting to take advantage of the near zero marginal costs (the cost to produce an extra unit of something) of renewable energy sources.

 

Given that this is after all a pilot demonstration project, it's going to be a few years before these changes start to take shape.

Edited December 16, 2014 by SunBurn