Energy Storage Report Ed 1,2011
NRG Expert’s new Energy Storage Reports looks at the global developments for battery and energy storage. Energy storage has started to garner interest as a means to integrate more intermittent renewable capacity into the grid. Storage has more uses such as meeting peak demand and delaying investment in generation capacity as a whole, which makes it attractive for utilities. Although while most interest in storage has focused on grid-scale applications, there is also a large market for smaller, scale distributed storage. This includes storage at the consumer-side which could meet demand when the upstream part of the grid is offline. To illustrate the point, in 2010 grid-scale storage projects only accounted for just under a third of all storage deals. Batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are too expensive and the infrastructure is not in place for large-scale charging of vehicles. The development of smart grids would make these vehicles more attractive. The development of the storage sector is largely reliant on rising oil prices, in the case of electric vehicles, and gas prices, in the case of grid storage and distributed capacity. Both of which are likely in the mid-term.
