Why is the roll out of energy storage so important for achieving the Paris Agreement targets?
With renewable energy growing in importance, effective storage will be vital. And as costs continue to decline, the potential to achieve growth could be huge.
Decarbonising the electricity supply will require a huge expansion of renewables to replace thermal generation. Doing this raises the problem of renewables’ intermittency: how do we cope when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining? In addition, the variability in generation that results from adding renewables into the energy mix can put an enormous strain on the grid.
Storing renewable energy with lithium-ion batteries can play a key role in solving this issue. Adding as little as four hours’ worth of storage to renewable projects can enable them to better match supply with demand. Adding storage effectively ‘firms up’ the supply of electricity and goes some way to giving it the reliability characteristics of fossil fuels, as well as being able to ease pressure points on the grid.
