The Future of Energy Storage
In the advent of new energy sources, many companies in the United States, even in Europe and other countries across the globe are spending billions of dollars every year to finance new wind and solar power plants. According to recent studies, the prices of these renewable energy sources are rapidly declining compared to fossil fuels. Hence, the demand for wind, solar and geothermal energy rises over time. Now the next problem that the industry is trying to solve is where to store the electricity that the renewable energy generates. The question lies in the fact that the electricity should be usable when demanded by the consumers and not only by the time that it is produced.
The good news is that the International Energy Agency made a move, called out the United States, the European Union, China as well as India, and planned on how to meet these global commitments to climate change. These countries would fund a total of $380 billion within the century or equivalent to 310 gigawatts of new projects to develop energy storage technologies.
There might be positive outlook to the future of energy storage but it still needs to overcome substantial hurdles to be able to make it big into the power industry. Just like the early stages of renewable energy when companies had a hard time to finance solar plants and wind turbines, energy storage has to cover high manufacturing costs associated with storing and producing electricity.
Moreover, companies and institutes around the globe are rising up to the challenge. Various technologies are starting up, research associations are pursuing their studies and electric utilities are gradually applying all the new developments in energy storage.
According to Logan Goldie –Scot, an analyst of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, he said that, “For many companies, energy storage is a holy grail”.
In the United States, there has been plans made by companies last month that they would spend $8 million for a project that would connect Wyoming’s wind farm to Utah’s compressed-air energy storage. The energy project is still awaiting approval and once approved, it would become the largest energy storage in the world.
General Electric, an industrial giant, together with governments and startups are laying their bets on different storage technologies as well. They are thinking of a technology called power-to-gas storage which uses the excess electricity produced from solar and wind plants, split it to hydrogen and oxygen molecules through a process, combine it with carbon dioxide and create natural gas. This technology has undergone a successful pilot project with German energy researchers and Etogas, a start-up based in Stuttgart. Eventually, the power-to-gas plant of Audi that was opened last year is now producing fuel to power cars.
Year after year, firms are still looking for more opportunities to energy storage hoping that new developments would lead to the safety, efficiency and low prices of storage technology.
