Houston Chronicle detailed growing demand for battery storage projects, quoting Ryan Katofsky on why the technology is seeing such a high demand. Read snippets below and the full article here.
Within three years, a surge of new large-scale battery projects is expected to come online on Texas and California's power grids, as developers seek to store electricity produced by those state’s sprawling wind and solar farms.
The Department of Energy estimates that 21 gigawatts of storage capacity will plug into U.S. power grids before 2026, more than two and half times the amount now in operation. Almost 8 gigawatts of batteries are expected to be built in Texas...
As renewable energy has grown over the past decade, natural gas-powered turbines have shouldered a lot of that load. But as lithium-ion battery prices have come down in recent years — at the same time natural gas prices have increased — power utilities are increasingly looking to large batteries to fill the gaps.
“What you’re seeing here is a technology starting to reach its inflection point,” said Ryan Katofsky, managing director at trade group Advanced Energy Economy. “Costs are down, performance is improved. There’s more awareness of the qualities (batteries) provide.”
The boom coincides with growing concern about the reliability of the U.S. power grid amid changing weather patterns linked to climate change...
"You had some people anticipating (the tax credit), so they were getting projects in the queue so were ready when the policy happens," Katofsky said. "It's a bit of a gamble, but all this stuff is."
Read the full article here.