Challenges to Energy Storage
Energy storage plays a vital role in today’s energy system, especially to those countries that aim to cultivate a low-carbon electricity system and seek to help contribute improvement to the environment as a whole. The fact is that it serves several purposes in the power system, starting from the smallest unit in the society – the household, up into the national level. Energy storage holds an important task in power leveling as it drives balance of demand and supply in the power system. It also provides grid-management, initiates energy efficiency, increases energy output and change low duty cycles into important energy cycles.
The importance of energy storage become more imminent with the increasing adoption of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy. While renewable energy is intermittent, it needs solar storage to back it up and maximize its potential. With this energy storage boosts along with the widespread acceptance of renewables.
Although energy storage offers myriad of benefits to the electric grid, it faces various challenges that hinder its development and further deployment. One major challenge to energy storage is proving that it really works. Yes, there might already be some highlights of several successes in the field of energy storage, but proving its efficacy is still one big thing it needs to give attention to. Aside from that, here are other obstacles that hinder the development of energy storage.
Technological Challenges
There are different kinds of energy storage. Also, energy storage technologies are diverse from chemical to non-chemical storage categories. Under these categories are subcategories including zinc, lithium, iron and sodium for chemical energy storage; and compressed air, pumped hydro and flywheels for non-chemical energy storage.
Because these kinds of energy storage vary from each other, they also have different uses in the society. Increasing the capacities of existing energy storage technologies as well as propelling their efficiencies would be a challenge. Not only that. Developing new technologies for different applications would not also be easy to carry out. One has to take into account the energy storage category the technology belongs, what are its applications and what type of market it should be deployed.
Buyer Challenges
The diversity of energy storage technologies can also affect significantly the target market. Nevertheless, confusion among buyers is another challenge for energy storage. Yes, energy storage can be very useful in various conditions and operations. But instead of maximizing the potential of energy storage technologies, people might be misled to the kind of energy storage they acquire. This plethora to buyers should be addressed with appropriate education to make sure that the buyers are knowledgeable enough to make sound purchasing decisions.
Economic Challenges
Whether for generation purposes, transmission, distribution or customer use, the economic cases for energy storage vary. With this, the value for energy storage is strongly influenced by different economic uncertainties such as the storage compensation schemes, presence of new and upcoming business simulations and the ownership of these energy storage technologies. Because energy storage is not a stand-along technology, it should effectively complement other technologies to provide flexible grid integration.
Although there are various challenges to energy storage, the good news is that, vendors in the industry are working hand in hand to solve these issues and come up with better energy storage technologies today and beyond.
