Grid storage is becoming a massively bigger business due to the rapid adoption of wind and solar power with their disruption and inability to keep up with demand. Most grid storage is currently pumped storage, but few new ones are in the pipeline, such as Therefore, there is a rapid increase in rapid installations of lithium-ion batteries, such as e.g. B. the 2 GWh/0.5 GW plant in South Africa, which is currently being tendered. The new Zhar Research Report, “Long-Term Energy Storage LDES Markets 2023-2043: Grid microgrid delayed electricity by 6 hours to seasonal‘ took this analysis to a whole different next level.
With the current sales spree of lithium-ion batteries for grids, it’s inevitable that batteryless grid storage will become a much bigger business. However, new batteries, not lithium-ion, will occupy an important secondary place. The main reason for all this will be the rapidly increasing demand for long-term energy storage LDES for six hours until the seasonal delay. Primarily, this will be driven by the increasing share of solar energy in most grids for cost reasons and their chronic interruptions to seasonal disturbances will therefore have a greater impact on grid operations. Wind power can be weak for months.
To the rescue, pumped hydro power can delay most electricity and do so longer. Unfortunately, permitting and installation takes forever, and there are few acceptable steep sites. It’s trying to reinvent it underwater, in mines and – with heavier water – on hills, not mountains. For example, underground, a pair of connected 100-hectare reservoirs at 20 meters depth with a 600-meter elevation difference can store 24 GWh and then supply 1 GW of electricity for 24 hours, which is the big new demand when the grids hit 60% or more sun or wind/solar.
The industry is not waiting for that. Enter compressed or liquid air storage for power-to-power. They serve neatly for the increasingly needed storage of over six hours of delay for sun dead at night and even weeks of still, dreary days. They complement each other. Call it Long Duration Energy Storage LDES, the required full power release duration is similar or shorter than the required delay, but less ambiguous in the calculation – just MWh over MW. The longer the delay, the greater the amount of discharge. Therefore, more and more storage is required. The world needs TWh amounts of it, so a huge new industry is emerging that lithium-ion batteries can never fulfill. Nails in the coffin for grids include self-leakage, fading (loss of capacity over lifetime), toxicity, flammability, poor (expensive) scalability to the increasingly massive sizes needed, lifetime one-fifth of emerging competition, and levelized cost of storage LCOS ten times higher.
Compressed air storage CAES can serve GWh levels well where large underground caverns exist or are feasible. Watch Hydrstor. Liquid air LAES is well suited to sites where space is at a premium and where underground earthworks and associated delays are undesirable. LAES is also attractive for large microgrids such as 200MW desalination plants, even off-grid, but its LCOS may be too high for mainstream grid LDES. Watch Highview Power. Low risk and proven, both options start with regular compression and cooling technology, but Zhar Research anticipates refinement later. For the significant emerging demand for new active (powered) cooling technologies see Zhar Research Report, “Active Cooling: Big New Materials, System Markets 2023-2043“. Meanwhile, the challenges of wind and solar are being addressed from both the demand and supply sides, and far better technologies are being deployed. Investors need to reorient themselves in a potentially disruptive short phase of change.
Crimp the need for short-term storage
A barely mentioned seismic shift in grid storage can happen fairly quickly, perhaps around 2030. It’s a collapse in sales of short-term storage only – with a lag of up to six hours. This is because we are trimming demand, and long-term storage can also meet remaining short-term storage needs. Let’s explain.
Many new approaches will alleviate the need for short-term storage, which is currently being served by a flood of lithium-ion battery orders. These include smart grids, vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-house and increased generation from zero-emissions renewable energy with almost no disruption such as emerging tidal currents and wave power, and geothermal energy reinvented for wider application. Indeed, current Fervo trials in Nevada could use geothermal energy for short-term storage by bending rock. Separate from geothermal, Quidnet Energy proposes rock bending as a reinvented pumped hydropower. Solar energy will be so cheap that the grids will overload it to generate sufficient electricity even at dawn and dusk, and release the resulting excess electricity at lunchtime.
A technology for short- and long-term storage
Emerging LDES can often adopt short-term storage as well, at levels of storage LCOS costs well below those of today’s batteries. As we said, solar energy gains generation costs in most parts of the world, but it dribbles a fifth of the energy in the winter, where most of us live. To the rescue come gravity lift blocks, which can store forever without self-discharging or fading, and like CAES and LAES, offer storage from at least an hour to 100 days – virtually the entire market, with little or no need for separate shorts. runtime memory. Anything can last 50 years with repairs, but gravity storage has yet to prove itself at scale and may fail at LCOS or reliability.
Also a place for batteries
There are exceptions to deal with for new batteries. A country like Norway with a lot of hydroelectric power or island states with considerable wave and tidal power can ideally only store electricity for a maximum of a few days and therefore sometimes use batteries. New battery chemistries are added. Form Energy has raised $650 million, and Noon Energy has raised $35 million this year for conventional iron- and carbon-oxidation batteries that promise affordable grid storage of 100 hours, maybe more. Conventional sodium-ion batteries are already finding their way into electric vehicles and solar houses. They could become candidates to replace grid-tied lithium-ion batteries for grids that don’t need long-term storage. Sodium ion offers lower initial cost and lifetime and better temperature range than lithium ion, but questions remain. The RFB redox flow battery shares some technological similarities with fuel cells and electrochemical cooling currently in research, potentially capitalizing on cost savings and experience as proponents address their high LCOS. Batteries capable of providing days of storage for space-constrained buildings and microgrids are becoming another formidable market.
Diploma
dr Peter HarropCEO of Zhar Research summarizes
“Very large markets are emerging for grid LDES. A twenty-year view is essential. Predictions are included in the Zhar Research report: “Long-Term Energy Storage LDES Markets 2023-2043: Grid microgrid delayed electricity by 6 hours to seasonal“. In one scenario, they show that five technologies could trade at $30-$45 billion levels in 2043 — pumped hydro, reinvented pumped hydro, CAES, advanced conventional construction batteries ACCB, and solid gravity energy storage. The need will be far greater. However, most are not yet proven in LCOS and scalability, and some of them may not make it. Also controversial are RFB, LAES, fundamentally more limited hydrogen storage and certain other technologies. Each of them will likely reach $5 billion to $20 billion levels in 2043, but some could exceed our current expectations as their technologies improve. As new data comes in, we will adjust our forecasts. Lithium Ion Batteries? No chance.”
