VIEW ON RENEWABLES

Solar Generation and

Storage Gives Utility
Services a Run for
Their Money
BY BILL RADVAK, CEO, AMERICAN VANADIUM

t the Asia Pacific Clean Energy

Summit & Expo in Honolulu
this September, it was clear that
Hawaii is on the fast-track to adopting energy storage solutions.
Sunny Hawaii suffers from a solar power glut, with an over-abundance of solar
power. With electricity rates that run at
least twice the national average and solar
reaching equivalence with other energy
costs, the stage is set to welcome energy
storage innovations to the aloha state.
With solar and battery technologies
working together, in Hawaii and in other
states, what may be left by the wayside
are the traditional utility companies and
their regulators that have been slow to
adapt to rapidly changing technologies.
Equipped with a solar-plus-battery system, customers can take or leave traditional utility service with what amounts
to a utility in a box, reports the Rocky
Mountain Institute. This utility in a
box represents a fundamentally different challenge for utilities. Whereas other
technologies, including solar PV and other distributed resources without storage,
net metering, and energy efficiency still
require some degree of grid dependence,
solar-plus-batteries enable customers to
cut the cord to their utility entirely.
Solar combined with energy storage
systems are cost effective, commercially
available today and operate fully independent on the grid. Forward thinking
utilities look at energy storage solutions
as an opportunity to add bottom line
value to the grid.
Energy storage plays a vital role in helping America secure a clean and affordable future powered predominately by
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distributed renewables. The solar industry has installed about four times as much
solar at about one-third of its cost four
years ago. As solar costs have dropped,
so have the costs of storage technologies
such as lithium and vanadium.
As reported by BBC News magazine,
vanadium is a metal that may soon be
powering your neighborhood. Vanadium, a critical element, is growing in
importance as an alloying metal used to
strengthen steel, as well as in emerging
uses with mass storage cells for renewable
energy and lithium-vanadium batteries
for electric vehicles.
Leading the way in new grid scale renewable energy storage solutions are
vanadium flow batteries. These batteries allow inherently intermittent energy
supplies to be regulated from moment to
moment. The electricity industry refers to
such energy as dispatchable energy or
dispatchable power, which enables the
grid to balance the amount of energy being put into the wires with the demand
arising from consumers. These mass
energy storage solutions are designed to
help America deliver on its objectives for
clean energy, energy independence and
self-sufficiency, as well as targets for the
reduction of CO2 and greenhouse gases.
Vanadium flow systems utilize vanadiums unique characteristics for rechargeable energy storage, which is critical to
renewable and dispatchable power systems. Research facilities around the world
are investing in vanadium flow battery
research and development to meet the
projected global demand. The vanadium
flow system has virtually unlimited storage capacity with the ability to scale the

batteries. As a result, the vanadium flow

batterys value to the emerging renewable
energy technology sector is compelling
for many utilities and grid operators.
Efficient and economic energy storage
technologies have been cited as the Holy
Grail in unlocking the huge potential of
renewable energies and the commercial
development of microgrid technologies.
Everyone is looking to energy storage as
a complete or partial solution to a vast
number of issues: renewable integration,
cold storage, frequency regulation, spinning reserve, micro-grid, UPS, peak shaving, and many more.
On the macro level, it isnt quite the
Holy Grail. Largely, that is an honest
overstatement borne out of the surprisingly sudden and mass realization that
energy storage has irreplaceable value in
the energy value chain.
On the micro level, energy storage
clearly is the Holy Grail. As my company
is introducing our energy storage solution
to America, we are following the timetested sales strategy of identifying initial
customers -- i.e., find those with the most
pain. It is the Holy Grail for those in the
renewable energy generation side, where
for years the goal was simply to build as
much PV and wind turbines as possible
with little to no regard the variable nature
of wind and solar.
Americas smart big money investors
finally see green in the green energy sector and are putting their money where
their mouth is. With the clean tech revolution comes the birth and development
of hundreds of new companies with the
products, services and materials necessary to fuel this insurrection.
www.power-eng.com

12/15/14 11:56 AM