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DOI: https://doi /10.1557/s43581-023-00069-9
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One of the keys to achieving high levels of renewable energy on the grid is the ability to store electricity and use it at a later time.
Much like refrigerators enabled food to be stored for days or weeks so it didn''t have to be consumed immediately or thrown away, energy storage lets individuals and communities access electricity when they need it most—like during outages, or when the sun isn''t shining. Storage can reduce demand for electricity from inefficient, polluting plants that are often located in low-income and marginalized communities. Storage can also help smooth out demand, avoiding price spikes for electricity customers.
The electricity grid is a complex system in which power supply and demand must be equal at any given moment. Historically, supply has been adjusted to meet changes in demand, from the daily patterns of human activity to unexpected changes such as equipment overloads, wildfires, storms, and other extreme weather events.Now, we also look to flexibility in electricity demand to help optimize use of renewables, from how we heat and cool our homes to when we charge electric vehicles. Energy storage plays an important role in this balancing act and helps to create a more flexible and reliable grid system.
For example, when there is more supply than demand, such as during the night when continuously operating power plants provide firm electricity or in the middle of the day when the sun is shining brightest, the excess electricity generation can be used to charge storage devices. When demand is greater than supply, storage facilities—even those in individuals'' homes—can discharge their stored energy to the grid.
Pumping water back behind hydroelectric dams has been used for decades as a form of storage that absorbs excess generation from the grid and generates electricity later when it is needed by releasing the water to drive a turbine. Now, lithium-ion battery storage in the form of large battery banks is becoming more commonplace in homes, communities, and at the utility-scale.
Simply put, energy storage is the ability to capture energy at one time for use at a later time. Storage devices can save energy in many forms (e.g., chemical, kinetic, or thermal) and convert them back to useful forms of energy like electricity.
Although almost all current energy storage capacity is in the form of pumped hydro and the deployment of battery systems is accelerating rapidly, a number of storage technologies are currently in use.
Pumped Hydroelectric Storage
Pumped hydroelectric storage turns the kinetic energy of falling water into electricity, and these facilities are located along the grid''s transmission lines, where they can store excess electricity and respond quickly to the grid''s needs (within 10 minutes). The systems consist of two reservoirs at different elevations, and they store energy by pumping water into the upper reservoir when supply exceeds demand. When demand exceeds supply, the water is released into the lower reservoir by running downhill through turbines to generate electricity.
Although a few new projects are in the planning stages, most of pumped hydro systems were built in the 1970s to accompany the new fleet of nuclear power plants. Because nuclear power plants are not designed to ramp up or down, their generation is constant at all times of the day. When demand for electricity is low at night, pumped hydro facilities store excess electricity for later use during peak demand. These pumped hydro plants have proven valuable for quickly adjusting to small changes in demand or supply.
Batteries store electricity through electro-chemical processes—converting electricity into chemical energy and back to electricity when needed. Types include sodium-sulfur, metal air, lithium ion, and lead-acid batteries. Lithium-ion batteries (like those in cell phones and laptops) are among the fastest-growing energy storage technologies because of their high energy density, high power, and high efficiency. Currently, utility-scale applications of lithium-ion batteries can only provide power for short durations, about 4 hours. Residential storage can last longer depending on the model, size, capacity, and demands of the home.
Batteries can be sited at the generator, along transmission lines, or in the distribution system. They also have a variety of end uses, such as in commercial buildings, residences, and electric vehicles. Advances in lithium-ion battery technologies have been made largely due to the expanding electric vehicle (EV) industry.
A number of critical materials are rare but essential for lithium-ion batteries. With these materials come international environmental justice concerns, such as with cobalt. This points to the need for fair labor standards and strong environmental standards to govern all critical material extraction processes, as well as transparency in battery manufacturing supply chains. Equally essential is continued research and development to identify substitute materials or technologies (for example, zinc-air batteries) that could move battery production away from dependency on mining for critical materials, especially in places without environmental and labor standards or where human rights violations occur.
Thermal Storage
Concentrated solar power (CSP) is a system that collects solar energy using mirrors or lenses and uses the concentrated sunlight to heat a fluid to run a turbine and generate electricity. The heat can either be used immediately to generate electricity or be stored for later use, which is called thermal storage. The hot fluid can be water, molten salts, or other molten materials and is stored at high temperature in large tanks until needed. There are different designs for collecting and concentrating solar energy. In the United States, most CSP facilities are located in the desert southwest, including one of the largest in the world, the 399-MW Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
Thermal storage also refers to systems that offset the need for electricity, rather than being used directly to generate electricity. One way is to use air conditioning to freeze water at night using off-peak electricity. During the day when demand for cooling is high, the ice is melted and cool air is passed over the air conditioning condenser coils to reduce the electricity needed to keep the building cool. Such systems are in use in a number of commercial buildings, including at the University of Arizona and for state government buildings at the North Carolina capitol campus.
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) is a system that uses excess electricity to compress air and then store it, usually in an underground cavern. To produce electricity, the compressed air is released and used to drive a turbine. In a typical CAES design, the compressed air is used to run the compressor of a gas turbine, which saves about 2/3 of the energy needed to operate the turbine. This leads to a reduction in natural gas consumption and can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 40 to 60 percent depending on the design. CAES systems have a large power rating, high storage capacity, and long lifetime. However, because CAES plants require an underground reservoir, there are limited suitable locations for them.
Only two commercial CAES plants exist in the world today, located in Germany and Alabama.
Flywheel Energy Storage Systems convert electricity into rotational kinetic energy stored in a spinning mass. The flywheel is enclosed in a cylinder and contains a large rotor inside a vacuum to reduce drag. Electricity drives a motor that accelerates the rotor to very high speeds (up to 60,000 rpm). To discharge the stored energy, the motor acts as a generator, converting the stored kinetic energy back into electricity.
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