Hydrostor recently partnered with Heatmap Labs to explore some of the ways that renewable energy and long duration storage are transforming the grid. Download the white paper. In this post we dig more deeply into one of the central findings: the energy storage tipping point.
GRAPHIC: Energy source growth graph
What is the tipping point?
First, the good news. The generating capacity of renewable energy will soon eclipse natural gas across the United States. And California—the country’s most populous state—is already there, with over 50% of the state’s electricity coming from renewable sources.
This is a global trend. While fossil fuels represented 63% of global electricity generation capacity in 2020, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) expects 90% of global electricity to come from renewables by 2050.
Now, the urgent news: Once grids reach more than 50% renewable electricity generation, grid-scale energy storage is needed to pair with these renewables and ensure system reliability. This is the Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) tipping point.
Why is the tipping point urgent?
Renewable energy is plentiful and affordable—but not as stable or consistent as fossil fuels. From California and New York to Ontario and Australia, grid operators have demonstrated that grids need long duration storage of at least 8- to 10-hours to reliably replace fossil fuels with wind and solar.
In other words, the more renewables you add to the grid, the more storage you need to make up for their intermittency. LDES provides the crucial flexibility and reliability to smooth out the intermittency of renewable sources and maintain grid stability. For renewable energy to successfully scale and support a stable, reliable, and resilient grid that works for all communities and businesses, we need to invest in LDES immediately.
LDES is ready to solve this problem at scale
Long Duration Energy Storage (LDES) solutions are capable of storing energy for 8 hours and beyond, with some technologies potentially offering durations of 24 hours and beyond. While there are different types of LDES—including chemical, thermal, electrochemical, and mechanical—they are all able to store excess energy safely until the grid needs it, and then deploy it to the grid so it can be used on demand, wherever it’s needed.
One example is Hydrostor’s own Advanced Compressed Energy Storage (A-CAES), a zero emission LDES solution that can be flexibly sited around transmission interconnection points. Once built, Hydrostor’s storage plants have an operational life of 50 years or more, with minimal degradation. And unlike many of the promising but still nascent LDES technologies, Hydrostor’s A-CAES relies on the same supply chains and skilled labor force that has built and maintained the world’s natural gas infrastructure. In other words, the skills and materials needed to deploy A-CAES around the world are already in place.
It’s time to get our policy house in order
Mitigating climate change, storing renewable energy, and stabilizing the grid are not the only reasons we need urgent investment in LDES solutions. Just a few years ago, most utilities were predicting flat or moderate load growth. That is no longer the case. Two factors—growing demand from the push toward electrification, and the rise of hyper-scale data centers—have transformed the energy forecast. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) now projects that data centers alone will account for an eye-watering 9% annual rate of increase for energy consumption U.S. After decades of flat load-growth, many aspects of the grid are going to need updating if they’re going to be able to accommodate this new demand.
On top of growing demand, increasingly extreme and erratic weather events put additional stress on our grids, impacting both supply and demand.
We know LDES can store clean, extra energy—including from days when the sun or wind gives us more energy than we need—and deploy it to our communities when it’s needed, whether that’s because part of the grid is down due to winter storms or demand for AC spikes during a heat wave. But LDES infrastructure doesn’t happen overnight. It requires ambitious and pragmatic investment by policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels. And California, New York, Canada, and Australia already show us it’s more than possible—now.
The bottom line: Our successful transition to clean and firm power depends on LDES. LDES is the missing key to successfully unlocking the full potential of renewable energy and ensuring we have a reliable grid that works for communities and economies around the world.
This new report from Heatmap Labs and Hydrostor explores how LDES technologies are becoming essential to support the transition to a renewable-powered grid—examining various LDES technologies, their applications, and how policymakers and stakeholders can encourage their development to address the evolving needs of our energy systems.