Published: 24 May 2021, 11:22
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Image: 8minute Solar Energy.
Standalone battery energy storage can potentially offer better value to the US electricity system than pairing batteries directly with solar or wind generation, but the pros and cons of each approach vary greatly from project to project.
This is largely because siting the resources separately means the optimum location where batteries in particular offer most value to the electricity network can be chosen, according to a new study from Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Battery storage is useful for mitigating the volatility that increased renewable energy penetration brings to electricity networks, but it does not necessarily need to be interconnected to the grid at the same point in order to do so. Batteries can also mitigate other problems that the grid experiences, such as transmission congestion, where demand for electricity is growing greater than the network infrastructure that