Energy storage facilities are the foundation

Why is energy storage important?

As the report details, energy storage is a key component in making renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, financially and logistically viable at the scales needed to decarbonize our power grid and combat climate change.

What is the future of energy storage?

“The Future of Energy Storage,” a new multidisciplinary report from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), urges government investment in sophisticated analytical tools for planning, operation, and regulation of electricity systems in order to deploy and use storage efficiently.

Where will energy storage be deployed?

energy storage technologies. Modeling for this study suggests that energy storage will be deployed predomi-nantly at the transmission level, with important additional applications within rban distribu-tion networks. Overall economic growth and, notably, the rapid adoption of air conditioning will be the chief drivers

Could stationary energy storage be the future?

Our research shows considerable near-term potential for stationary energy storage. One reason for this is that costs are falling and could be $200 per kilowatt-hour in 2020, half today’s price, and $160 per kilowatt-hour or less in 2025.

Why is energy storage important in a decarbonized energy system?

In deeply decarbonized energy systems utilizing high penetrations of variable renewable energy (VRE), energy storage is needed to keep the lights on and the electricity flowing when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing — when generation from these VRE resources is low or demand is high.

Is it profitable to provide energy-storage solutions to commercial customers?

The model shows that it is already profitable to provide energy-storage solutions to a subset of commercial customers in each of the four most important applications—demand-charge management, grid-scale renewable power, small-scale solar-plus storage, and frequency regulation.