TechPulse 360

Grid storage is in its infancy today and is likely to stay that way, contrary to the hopes of an increasing number of venture investors.

Experts claim the demand for methods to storage energy on the electric grid will rise over the next several years, but at a slow pace. Fueling this trend is the build out of solar power plants and wind farms, which produce power at irregular intervals and therefore need to store it for future use, and the introduction of reasonably priced electric cars.

A grid storage flywheel test takes place in Massachusetts. But analysts see only 17 percent growth in grid storage over five years.

So far, few technologies are up to the task. Lithium batteries for too expensive, flywheels untested, hydrogen storage too energy intensive and molten salt thermal too developmental. Among the most promising at present are the more traditional compressed air and pumped water, despite the need for an uphill reservoir or an available underground mine.

Clearly progress will be made on these and other emerging technologies. But when it will arrive is anyone guess.

According to ABI research, the expected boom in grid storage is many years away. Today, electric grids have 128 GW of storage attached to them. That will grow to only 150 GW globally in five years, or about 17 percent over the period – clearly not enough to satisfy the desires of venture capitalists, who frequently call grid storage one of their hottest themes.

So is grid storage setting itself as one of the big disappointments of the new decade? According to ABI Research Director Larry Fisher:” Over the coming decade, as countries across the globe strive to meet their renewable energy targets, they will come to understand the need for energy-oriented storage. However, while such storage will serve to keep power costs low in the long run, each such implementation requires hundreds of millions of dollars to install and test, which will create a near-term rise in end-user electrical rates.”

Think 2020.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 12:14 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.