This is a guest post from AEE member AES Energy Storage and originally posted here. To learn more about membership in AEE, click here.
Whether you’re expanding an office or widening a road, gauging how much room – or capacity – you’ll need is a big challenge. You have to predict the future and guess how long your additions will accommodate your needs – whether that’s a growing staff or changing traffic patterns – so you can estimate whether it’s worth it financially.
Grid planners face similar issues when assessing how much new transmission capacity to add, such as transmission lines or substations, with the additional burden of only having a few sizes to choose from. Until recently, there has been no easy way to incrementally add capacity. It was all or nothing.
Battery-based energy storage solutions are now enabling utilities to add the right amount of capacity at a lower cost, and delivering a host of other benefits as well.