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Intelligent insights & conversations with global power industry professionals
The Grid Professionals Group covers electric current from its transmission step down to each customer''s home.
Rose Morrison is a freelance writer with a passion for sustainable building and innovative construction technologies. She comes from a family of contractors who have helped instill her love of...
The U.S. power grid is evolving. Ensuring the nation has sufficient juice to run daily operations requires considering multiple factors, all of which concern keeping the lights on. Existing systems face new threats, from more powerful storms fueled by climate change to rising international tensions creating an increased threat of attacks. Energy storage is essential for providing people with lifesaving heat and keeping transportation running.
However, energy storage also creates issues that humans must solve. The current fossil fuel-based systems have multiple vulnerabilities and contribute to rising global temperatures, which impacts daily life and contributes to international tensions. Switching to renewable energy isn''t free of environmental consequences and presents new questions about the ideal grid configuration for maximum security and power reliability.
What issues currently exist, and what solutions are in the works to address them? Here''s why energy storage is crucial for a resilient power grid.
Understanding existing energy storage systems is crucial for devising the best possible solutions to current problems. Where does power come from, and how do large organizations ensure sufficient supply? For example, hospitals, with their myriad temperature-sensitive substances, must guarantee blood stores and medications stay cool during an outage. How does the current grid distribute stores to protect the most vulnerable and best meet consumer needs?
These stations meet consumer demand by adjusting how much water they release at one time. However, sudden surges — such as the increasing heat waves caused by climate change — can nevertheless create strain.
While today''s grid primarily relies on fossil fuels, PHS systems can handle energy input from myriad sources, including renewables like solar. This mixed capability is crucial for sufficient storage and grid reliance. Although batteries can do a lot, they can''t replace the immense capacity these facilities offer. Combining their power protects current needs while aiding the transition to green energy.
Keeping the lights on isn''t a mere matter of protecting against the dark. Many of today''s technologies that society relies upon require an uninterrupted power supply to function as intended. A single defrosted freezer is a headache but pales in comparison to countless grocery stores losing power — and precious food supplies. Medical centers and delicate computer operations rely on consistent temperatures, which are difficult to maintain without juice.
Disruptions to the grid may arise from increasing storms or deliberate attacks in an attempt to destabilize national security. Either way, the resulting problems create a humanitarian and economic nightmare, driving fresh tensions. Taking proactive measures to diversify the grid now can prevent future disasters.
While it''s far more difficult to coordinate attacks against multiple smaller grids than one large one, the transition poses energy storage challenges. Can such hubs store sufficient power to meet the needs of numerous consumers, many of whom may not have solar panels installed or other alternative means of producing power independently? What alternative means of providing power exist if local stores run dry?
Fortunately, solutions are already in the works. Many of them address the dual challenges of energy storage and improved grid security simultaneously, including integrating renewable technology to slow climate change.
Grid stabilization and frequency regulation grow in importance as the shift to green energy continues. While individual collectives consisting of homes and businesses with panels and centralized battery storage insulate neighborhoods from larger outages, it leaves them vulnerable to supply shortages.
What happens if cloudy skies cut panel production, leaving some residents in the dark? Tying such microgrids to larger ones provides necessary stability, as areas with surpluses can send power to those with shortages.
Problems arose as solar became a leader in renewable technology, but they gave birth to solutions. For example, early home solar systems connected to the grid risked sending electricity backward over damaged wires, creating further problems. The only options were suffering the same outages as everyone else or going off-grid.
Early hybrid systems offer an innovative solution to keeping individual homeowners connected during outages. They switch to battery energy storage, breaking their connection but keeping the home lights burning.
Once upon a time, energy only flowed one way, from the power station to individual consumers. Now, the shift to renewable energy promises to increase grid resiliency by diversifying the source, but doing so creates new infrastructure challenges.
Fortunately, technology is rising to the task. Combining current energy storage methods with the microgrid and improved battery solutions will reduce vulnerabilities in the system and keep the lights on as needed.
Renewable energy is inherently unreliable and that directly challenges the stability and reliability of the grid. Over building the transmission network just to accommodate renewable energy is not financially sound. Energy costs for the average citizen rocket upwards, making the average citizen poorer. The planet''s climate is unaffected by the needless expenditures.
The link between the planet''s climate and the atmospheric CO2 levels is indeterminate. The climate is too complex and attempting to identify cause-and-effect is well beyond our abilities. Energy policy should be based on providing reasonably clean and affordable energy. Market forces always push towards better efficiencies and that inherently reduces CO2. There is no sound reason to panic and line the pockets of special interest groups and politicians.
The claim that renewables and energy storage transcend the squabble (climate change) is not true. They are the source for massive increases in the cost of energy and are absolutely being pushed as a "solution" to the mythical climate emergency.
Nice job. No doubt, everyone wants to embrace renewables, but issues, like diversity of sources and storage, present unique challenges. Technology has been moving to provide energy companies with more capabilities and more options. Ideally, all the pieces together in a graceful way.
Rose: very interesting your comments about the batteries role in a power system.
The main point tha I would like to raise is about the issues you have mentioned about reliability. I agree with Michael that renewables are unreliable sources, For this reason, there are several systems that try to put together renewables and batteries, in order to enhance reliability. But the question is: does that work ? at whar level we can increase reliability targets with such configurations ? In order to properly answer that, it is necessary to go deeply into the controllers of the IBR´s (Inversor Based Resources ). A lot of studies and theories have been set up, but the major part of them have to do with microgrids or isolated islanded systems.
In regular power systems, the values of short circuit currents are much higher and the controllers cannot suppor those values. You can even say that this is only true for GFL ( gris following0 controllers. But actually, is also valid for the GFM ( grid forming ) controllers used by batteries in these cases. But of course you can solve this problem by oversizing the elements of the controllers, but that increases even more the costs.
And then, you can say: if is OK, it is expensive, but solves reliability issues. But this is not also true. It does not solve several situations of voltage stability, and even frequency stability where higher short circuit currents occur.
In other words, we cannot be far from our " planning trilemma" : to minimize environmental burdens, maximizing reliability, all minimum Costs .
Excellent article. These are the varied "Grid Services" that Battery and other IBR can provide to ensure a reliable and resilient electric grid. Under a request from the DOE, the North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) has begun working on model contract language for DER participation in energy markets
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