ORIGINAL REPORTING: Shared Customer Storage May Make Big Batteries Obsolete

Greater than the sum: How aggregation is making storage into a software business; Grouping customer-sited batteries can deliver the same benefits as grid-scale storage, DNV-GL says

Herman K. Trabish, June 13, 2016 (Utility Dive)

Editor’s note: Battery storage continues to grow expand and wrestle with cost and technology growing pains.

The installed capacity of U.S. battery storage continues to rise rapidly. The 65 MW deployed in 2014 turned into 221 MW put online in 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Storage Monitor from the Energy Storage Association and GTM Research. The projected annual deployment is over 2 GW by 2021, producing a market worth $2.9 billion. Once-prohibitive costs are coming down but, more importantly, the software that allows utilities and grid operators to aggregate and control numerous storage sources on the grid is getting cheaper and better and it will lead to a new era of storage adoption, according to DNV GL Americas Energy Storage Leader Davion M. Hill.

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In front of the meter, utility-scale storage continues to lead the sector, reaching almost 10 MW in Q1 2016. But the behind-the-meter (BTM) storage sector is forecast to go from 15% of the 2015 market to 49% of the market in 2021. Enabled by the newest software platforms, aggregations of distributed energy resources (DER), including BTM storage, will increasingly be able to provide megawatt scale power over long durations with unprecedented flexibility. With software platforms allowing more and more efficient aggregation capabilities, there will be no need for a disruptive battery technology. Today’s off-the-shelf technologies can become virtual batteries that have greater energy and power and duration greater than theoretical disruptive technologies. New software platforms are permitting the stacking of applications that were previously thought to be mutually exclusive and may become an operating system for the grid… click here for more

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