Enabling Energy Storage in a Renewable Generation World

摘要

Electricity has the maddening quality that it can't be stored without changing its form. The electric power system must use precisely the same amount of energy that is generated each instant or critical delivery parameters will fall out of tolerance. Throughout much of the history of the grid, we have directly controlled valves or fuel sources, making tiny manual or automatic adjustments to maintain operation very close to set-point across the grid. The introduction of intermittent generation sources (wind, solar) limits our ability to directly control energy inputs to the system. This is the penalty for harvesting energy from sources beyond our discrete control. When the concentration of these sources in the power system was low, their intermittency could be compensated by operation of other sources. As penetration of intermittent sources increases, the technical challenges grow, making room for an additional enabling technology: energy storage.