Vista de Seilhamer insiste sobre LUMA y reconstrucción noticel.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from noticel.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Scientific American
Blackouts due to wildfires and wild weather are prompting action
Advertisement
The energy storage industry is shattering records for battery deployments, underscoring its growing role in decarbonizing the economy.
In the last three months of 2020, nearly 2.2 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy storage systems were put into operation, according to the energy data firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s an increase of 182% from the previous record-setting quarter.
The blockbuster fourth quarter capped a year that saw a total of 3.5 GWh installed more than the 3.1 GWh that went into operation in the previous six years combined. That torrid growth has industry boosters and researchers feeling very bullish about the prospects for energy storage.
Published: 4 Mar 2021, 13:50
By:
Andy Colthorpe
AES Alamitos 100MW / 400MWh project in California; the first instance of four-hour duration battery storage commissioned as a direct replacement for natural gas peaking capacity. Image: AES Corporation.
The US’ installations of advanced energy storage almost entirely lithium-ion battery systems went beyond the 1GW mark in 2020, while in capacity terms the figure was close to 3.5GWh.
Research firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables’ quarterly US Energy Storage Monitor report which forecasts, then records and analyses energy storage deployments. The latest edition, gathers together stats for Q4 2020 while collating the full-year data for the whole of last year.
By:
Andy Colthorpe
Texas’ grid and the idiosyncrasies of its electricity planning system regime made global headlines in February following a harsh winter storm and subsequent blackouts that affected millions of people and businesses for almost an entire week.
The tragic events, which left an estimated 30 people dead, were followed quickly by initial, predictable, depressing knee-jerk reactionary blaming of renewable energy by politicians and media outlets alike. In reality wind and solar both performed above grid planners expectations in the state while thermal generation sources not only underperformed, but still despite a wave of propaganda comprise the vast majority of the generation mix in the Lone Star State.
North America for Leclanché.
Kelly Speakes-Backman, former CEO of the Energy Storage Association who was recently named to a top post at the U.S. Dept. of Energy, told the audience at
POWER’sDistributed Energy Conference last year that additions of battery storage doubled in 2020, and probably would have tripled if not for construction slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lower battery costs have supported growth. The EIA said the cost of utility-scale battery storage in the U.S. fell almost 70% between 2015 and 2018. The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projects that increased battery production, and market competition, will continue to drive costs down. NREL recently said it sees mid-range costs for lithium-ion batteries falling another 45% by 2030.