Future of Energy Storage - Oorja, Huolì, Energie, Sakti Series 1

The art of Storage has meant different things across different cultures and timelines in the history of mankind.

Storage was looked as a way to secure basic necessities, and people looked to this concept as a way to utilize abundance in the times of scarcity. This could have a larger connotation being obsessed with ‘saving for a rainy day’ and utilizing the future needs in an optimal way. It was not until the latest century, that scientific scrutiny was finally applied to concept of abundance and storage.

Energy is a key source in the makeup of the universe and matter and storage is a key variable towards the solving the equation of limitless energy equation.

Energy or Oorja /Huolì/ energie/ energia/ sakti/ energiya - these words combined are known to more than 4.5 Billion people in different language around the world but the essence is the universal underlying need of E- mc2. Humans will take E in whatever form we get it. 😊

I will break the whole narrative in to three series as the content is long for readers and as a thinker for me to keep them in rapt attention.

Series 1 is what you are reading

Click here for Series 2 - we look into companies which could shape future in battery and hydro.

Click here for Series 3 - we look into companies which could shape future in thermal and crystal ball gazing. 😊 

As the race for climate action escalated (Al Gore campaign) in the start of the century, the need for an alternative structure becomes all the more important and essential.

The last decade of action has led to the pricing efficiency of the renewables, solar panels and wind farms panels have reached all-time lows, leading to gigawatts (GWs) worth of renewable energy generation.

But some say say, “What would you do when the wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't always shining.”

On a bright sunny day or a whistling windy day, we've got a super abundance of electricity, in other scenarios, the renewables are still catching up on delivery expectations.

The real issue is to ensure there's always energy on demand no matter the time of day or weather, is one of the biggest challenges in the industry. That’s brings up to come up with a good way to store energy and draw it as and when needs arises.

Globally, the wind energy market will hit 8.5 % CAGR till 2025 and install nearly 325 GW, reaching close to 980 GW by the timeline. No small feat considering we were have taken 20 years to reach at 651 GW at the end of 2019.

Solar PV generation is estimated to have increased 720 TWh in 2019, overtaking bio energy to be third largest renewable electricity technology.

And it's not stopping there. It’s on an accelerated path to install and change the research technology to Perovskite solar cells. Each of the sector warranting a story of their own and creating an impression on the energy timeline of Earth.

We know today that solar PV and wind are the least expensive way to generate electricity and others are now catching up..  In particular, the price of solar photovoltaics has plummeted far faster than all forecasts predicted, after China flooded the market with cheap panels in the late 2000s.

Every money manager/ investor/ govt did not believe that solar was going to ever stand on its own without subsidies. Today as solar has gotten cheaper, so too have lithium ion batteries, the technology that powers electric vehicles, our cell phones and laptops.

And thanks to improved manufacturing techniques and economies of scale, costs have fallen 90% since 2010.

Now, wind or solar plus battery storage is often times more economical than thermal power plants, that is, power plants that only fire when demand is high.

One of the current option also revolves around lithium ion batteries. Currently, the prices of lithium ion is dropping though with the usage scale which it can amass, it will remain too expensive for most grid-scale applications.

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In order to be economically viable for grid scale levels, we need to look at a further cost reduction of atleast 10 to 15x. Currently, lithium ion batteries just can't store more than four to five hours worth of energy at a price point that would make sense. There are a lot of research which are currently in pipeline but not yet feasible on economical and viable scale of mass production yet.

Plus, they pose a fire risk and their ability to hold a charge reduces drastically over time. To address this, there are cadre of entrepreneurs experimenting with a variety of different solutions. 

Now we're seeing flow batteries, which are liquid batteries, and we're seeing other forms of storage that are not chemical or battery-based storage. Honestly, one can’t but be amazed with the scale of research which is currently happening in this space and these each has serious potential with far reaching implications changing the way we will look into stored energy in the decades to come.

But this doesn't mean lithium ion is necessarily economical for other grid applications. The cost structure wouldn't coming down to the point where it can serve those tens to hundreds of hours applications. 

Basically, the market is ripe for competition.

End of Series 1.

In the next series, let’s look into which technologies could prevail, but the undeniable holy grail will be to figure out a better way to store energy.