Co-sponsored by: IEEE IES PES IAS

The electricity business is unique, as it is the only industry sector that sells a commodity – the MWh – without sizeable inventory. The marked lack of utility-scale storage in today’s power system drives electricity to be a highly perishable commodity whose production is the prototypical just-in time manufacturing system. Moreover, the limited storage capacity in today’s grid severely restricts the flexibility with which the grid can be operated – a particular concern for systems with deepening penetrations of integrated renewable energy resources. However, a grid with increased storage capacity may offer major benefits, such as the time-shift of energy utilization to shave the peak demand, improved harnessing of energy from renewable resources and reduction in the reserves requirements that must be met by fossil-fired power plants that pollute. Storage also has numerous applications in both short– and long–term planning and in operations over a broad time spectrum. Notwithstanding the multiple benefits that storage resources offer and their unique and salient features, the pace of ESR deployment has been slow in the past mainly due to the high costs of the technology. In recognition of the need of a bold move to reduce the costs of storage through increased demand, California (CA) has mandated the installation of 1,325 MWs of cost–effective energy storage by 2024 by the three major investor owned utilities (IOUs) – PG&E, SCE and SDG&E – under the jurisdiction of the CPUC. The procurement of the storage capacity to meet these objectives must be carried out within the CPUC framework that specifies the eligibility criteria for storage projects, the targets for each IOU, the procurement schedule and the targets for specific grid interconnection points. The CPUC mandate is a significant development as it is likely to engender similar measures in other venues, as well as act as a catalyst for the speedier large–scale storage deployment. This presentation discusses the critical importance of energy storage, the current status of storage and the barriers to large–scale storage deployment and the challenges and the opportunities in the push for storage deployment.  These challenges encompass storage technology improvement, modeling and tool development, regulatory, environmental and policy formulation areas. These issues must be resolved to make the goal of large–scale deployment of storage in future grids reality and to facilitate sustainable paths to meet the future energy needs.

Speaker(s): Prof. George Gross,

Location:
Room: Room MD267
Bldg: Macdonald Engineering Building
815 Sherbrooke St W, McGill University
Montreal, Quebec