Grid-scale battery storage is quietly revolutionizing the energy system by harnessing the potential of solar and wind power, offering a solution to balance out intermittent energy sources and ensure grid stability.
Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is Quietly Revolutionizing the Energy System
Harnessing the Potential of Solar and Wind Power
The generation of electricity is a delicate balance between supply and demand. The world’s largest machine, the $2 trillion US power grid, requires precise coordination to ensure that every light switch, computer, television, stove, and charging cable will turn on 99.95 percent of the time. Making sure there are always enough generators spooled up to send electricity to every single power outlet in the country is a complex task.
The power grid is a complex network of systems that generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to end-users.
It consists of power plants, transmission lines, substations, and distribution lines.
The grid operates at high voltage levels to minimize energy losses during transmission.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, the average American uses over 12,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year.
A reliable power grid is essential for modern life, supporting industries, homes, and businesses.
The Promise of Grid-Scale Energy Storage
What if you could just hold onto electricity for a bit and save it for later? You wouldn’t have to overbuild the grid or spend so much effort keeping power generation in equilibrium with users. You could smooth over the drawbacks of intermittent power sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide, like wind and solar. You could have easy local backup power in emergencies when transmission lines are damaged.
Grid-scale energy storage refers to large-scale systems that can store excess electrical energy generated from intermittent sources like solar and wind power.
This technology enables utilities to stabilize the grid, reduce peak demand charges, and provide backup power during outages.
Advancements in battery technologies, such as lithium-ion and flow batteries, have improved efficiency and reduced costs, making grid-scale energy storage a viable solution for a more sustainable energy future.
Grid-scale energy storage is a technology that harnesses the potential of solar and wind power, and its deployment is growing exponentially. Between 2021 and 2024, grid battery capacity increased fivefold. In 2024, the US installed 12.3 gigawatts of energy storage, and new grid battery installations are on track to almost double compared to last year.
The Rise of Lithium-Ion Batteries
The most common battery storage technology, lithium-ion cells, saw huge price drops and energy density increases. “The very first project we did was in 2008 and it was on the order of $3,000 a kilowatt-hour for the price of the batteries,” said John Zahurancik, president of Fluence. “Now we’re looking at systems that are on the order of $150, $200 a kilowatt-hour for the full system install.”
China now produces 80 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, taking advantage of economies of scale to drive global prices down. The blooming of wind and solar energy created even more demand for batteries and increased the pressure to improve them.
Energy Storage: A Key Tool in Grid Stability
Energy storage is the peanut butter to the chocolate of renewable energy, making all the best traits about clean energy even better and balancing out some of its downsides. But it’s also an important ingredient in grid stability, reliability, and resilience, helping ensure a steady flow of megawatts during blackouts and extreme weather.
Energy storage refers to the ability to store energy for later use.
It plays a crucial role in modern society, enabling the efficient distribution and utilization of energy.
There are various methods of energy storage, including batteries, pumped hydro storage, and compressed air energy storage.
Advances in technology have improved the efficiency and affordability of energy storage systems, making them increasingly important for renewable energy integration and grid stability.
The most common use is frequency response. The alternating current going through power lines in the US cycles at a frequency of 60 hertz. If the grid dips below this frequency when a power-hungry user switches on, it can trip circuit breakers and cause power instability. Since batteries have nearly zero startup time, unlike thermal generators, they can quickly absorb or transmit power as needed to keep the grid humming the right tune.
Grid batteries can also step in as reserve power when a generator goes offline or when a large power user unexpectedly turns on. They can smooth out the hills and valleys of power load over the course of the day. They also let power providers save electricity when it’s cheap to produce, and sell it back on the grid at times when demand is high and power is expensive.
The Future of Grid-Scale Battery Storage
As good as they are, lithium-ion batteries have their limits. Most grid batteries are designed to store and dispatch electricity over the course of two to eight hours, but the grid also needs ways to stash power for days, weeks, and even months since power demand shifts throughout the year.
There’s a long and growing line of projects waiting to connect to the power grid. Interconnection queues for all energy systems, but particularly solar, wind, and batteries, typically last three years or more as project developers produce reliability studies and cope with mounting regulatory paperwork delays.
The Trump administration is also working to undo incentives around clean energy, particularly the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The law established robust incentives for clean energy, including tax credits for stand-alone grid energy projects. Despite these challenges, utility-scale energy storage is a tiny slice of the sprawling US power grid, and there’s enormous room to expand.
A New Era for the Power System
If we can get it right, true grid-scale battery storage won’t just be an enabler of clean energy, but a way to upgrade the power system for a new era. “Even though we’ve been accelerating and going fast, by and large, we don’t have that much of it,” said John Zahurancik. “You could easily see storage becoming 20 or 30 percent of the installed power capacity.”
