Still, Manghani says SolarCity’s proposed installation is unique in two respects - the first being its size. to provide dispatchable solar energy, meaning that the utility can count on electricity being available when it’s needed, even hours after the sun goes down.” It is not, however, the very first use of energy storage at a grid or utility scale, says GTM Research’s Manghani. SolarCity says the installation is “believed to be the first utility-scale system in the U.S. “But we expect the price declines to continue in a way that this will be feasible here in the near future.” Hawaii came first for the obvious reason: cost. “You always see these technologies being adopted there first, due to the high price of energy,” Rive says. Rather, thanks to storage, its use will be shifted to other hours of the day - removing one reason that power plants have often been powered by various types of fossil fuels (on Kaua’i, diesel), which of course can burn at any hour. Once that happens, solar energy will be no longer confined to simply being used when the sun is shining, at least on Kaua’i. The biggest news is when the energy would be supplied: the evening. “What makes this exciting is basically that it’s dispatchable solar that will be available at night,” says Peter Rive, the chief technology officer of SolarCity. The system is slated to be running by the end of 2016, said Rive, and will likely use Tesla batteries for the energy storage component. The battery will draw power from an accompanying solar array. SolarCity and the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative jointly announced last week that they’ve entered into a solar power purchase agreement in which SolarCity will provide 20 years of power from a 52-megawatt-hour battery installation that will be able to send as many as 13 megawatts of electricity to the island’s grid. Indeed, SolarCity - which is chaired by Tesla CEO Elon Musk - has just announced plans to bring precisely this combo to Hawaii, a state that continues to lead the way when it comes to the adoption of solar and batteries, thanks to its towering electricity costs, which are the highest in the nation. Manghani adds that while there have been pioneering initiatives and pilot projects prior to now, it does appear that this solar plus storage technology is beginning to arrive. “In the last few months we’ve seen the frequency of these project announcements go up,” says Ravi Manghani, an energy storage analyst with GTM Research. So is it happening? The answer seems to be yes - 2015 has seen several key announced, completed, or experimental grid-scale projects pairing batteries and solar photovoltaic panels. The ultimate effect might be to displace electricity generated from coal or natural gas, and convert an inherently “intermittent” renewable energy source - solar - into a more constant one. In May, when Tesla Motors announced its new battery product to vast media buzz, the talk was all about people putting batteries in their solar-powered homes, and thereby becoming that much less reliant on the grid.īut there was always another and perhaps even bigger side of the story - the idea that very large scale batteries or battery packs could help out the grid itself by storing large amounts of solar energy for use in the evening or at night. Published by the Washington Post on September 16, 2015.
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