Keeping current: How advancements in electricity storage can save money for consumers
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PERSPECTIVE Keeping current: How advancements in electricity storage can save money for consumers
David Kolata, Citizens Utility Board Chicago, Illinois, USA (Received 30 August 2018; accepted 2 July 2019)
ABSTRACT Advances in storage and battery technology offer value to the electric grid and individual budgets, with the potential for electric vehicles (EVs) to significantly lower household transportation spending as the best current example. Cost-effective storage is a holy grail for the electrical grid and for consumer advocates. Storage potentially provides opportunities to help lower overall electric system costs, such as by time-shifting, frequency regulation, reducing the cost of renewables integration, and helping to more cheaply balance supply and demand. It also provides opportunities to help individual budgets, with the potential for electric vehicles (EVs) to significantly lower household transportation spending as the best current example. While there are thus many good reasons for advocates to be bullish on electricity storage, maximizing the full consumer value depends on continuing the impressive cost declines of batteries and other storage technologies we have seen over the last decade. It is important for states, regional power markets, and public utility commissions to get policy right. Keeping up with the evolving storage market and maximizing consumer and environmental value will require proactive policies aimed at facilitating integration, aligning incentives, and promoting innovation. Given the great potential, now would be a good time for stakeholders and policymakers to start moving forward. Keywords: energy generation; energy storage; storage
DISCUSSION POINTS • Keeping up with the evolving storage market and maximizing consumer and environmental value will require proactive policies aimed at facilitating integration, aligning incentives, and promoting innovation. • Nothing is more encouraging from a consumer advocate point of view than the continuing cost decline of batteries and other storage technologies.
Keeping current: how advancements in electricity storage can save money for consumers This is the most interesting time in the energy space since Samuel Insull perfected the modern utility model in Chicago over one hundred years ago, in large part because of the tremendous cost declines in energy storage technology.7 Cost-effective storage is a holy grail for the electrical grid and for consumer advocates.
Consider that the electricity enabling you to read this article was generated a fraction of a second ago and that generators immediately deliver whatever they produce from moment to moment. Next, consider that electricity itself is not only an essential service but also the lifeblood of the modern economy. Without power, the world as we know it would simply not be able to function, and it is for good reason that the electrical grid is acknowledged as one of the most important inventions ever. But, finally, consider that electricity demand can vary substantially from month-to-m
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