1/Over the past three months, I’ve undertaken a very deep dive into energy-storage. I’ve read tons of literature, spoken to professionals and policy makers, eventually giving me a view of the current landscape. I’ve got pieces coming soon in @routefifty and @pvmagazine
@routefifty @pvmagazine 2/ I see the term ‘intelligent layer’ is ubiquitous and probably overused in tech but it couldn’t possibly be more apt and on point for energy-storage. Software + energy-storage makes, and will make, a clever, arbitraging entity that will perform crucial work in electricity.
@routefifty @pvmagazine 3/ One surprise and one you-should-not-be surprised from my recent tour through the latest in energy-storage. First, all the historical fretting and modeling about the problem of surplus energy from solar and wind should have been better informed about how market work. In short..
@routefifty @pvmagazine 4/…wherever free pennies can be picked up someone will devise a way to do so. Yes, it’s early, but arbitraging the nexus of supply+demand in storage is already here. Only scaling is required, and you should not bet against that scaling. So, the supposedly big problem...
@routefifty @pvmagazine 5/…will generally be a problem everyone can see, but which never quite arrives. Meanwhile, the true surprise is that early, more rudimentary forms of vehicle-to-grid experimentation and even operation are already underway. And it’s not even necessary for full, bi-drectional...
@routefifty @pvmagazine 6/…interoperability to have arrived, just yet, before manipulations to demand, say from EV fleets, can start taking place. Energy-storage as a market maker, even in current limited roles, is here, and it’s just what you would expect from market functions: pricing the future.
@routefifty @pvmagazine 7/ To make this simple: energy-storage combined with software is something we’ve never had before. Inserting that capability into what has always been a fairly simplistic system of power generation—replete with inefficient and antiquated pricing behavior—is a very big deal. Huge.
@routefifty @pvmagazine 8/ Going forward, electricity from wind and solar are wonderful but ultimately just a commodity. The action will be around the software design. And a final thought: which domains will embrace energy-storage first? The policy opportunity here, for early adoption, is great.
10/ I've written the cover story for the next issue of @pvmagazine on the emerging capability of vehicle-to-grid interoperability, which we're seeing advance now in charging networks, and at the level of the vehicle:
10/ Here comes @pvmagazineusa today with a terrific full issue covering the latest in energy storage, including my piece on early vehicle-to-grid developments: pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/10/31/spe…
11/ BNEF out with a new estimate of energy-storage opportunity. about.bnef.com/blog/energy-st…
12/ You were probably not aware that water heaters, fitted with a radio capable device that, utilizing sub-carrier capabilities (RDS) of FM, could take a signal from a utility to heat, or not heat--thus turning them into batteries. And yet, here we are: routefifty.com/smart-cities/2…
13/ There are roughly 125 million households in the US, and at least as many water heaters. If we can decide on a standard, like CTA-2045 (somewhat akin, operationally, to USB), then water heaters in the future will ship with that standard, becoming energy-storage-device capable.
14/ A US vehicle-to-grid EV charging company I've started to cite more in my work on energy storage is @eMotorWerks and I recommend you learn about what they do. You could read about their recent work here: emotorwerks.com/about/enewsso/…
15/ Concept that can take people just a bit of pondering to fully understand: if you can command fleets of EV or water heaters to *not* charge, en masse, at specific times, that is functionally the same thing, from a grid perspective, as "putting energy back" into the grid.
16/ Operationally too, with a device like a water heater, is that you actually need the water heater tank to be cold in order for it to receive surplus energy from the grid at a time when demand is low. Ergo, a battery is really anything that....acts just like a battery.
17/ There's an economic proof to the value of grid-interactive batteries as well. There is already value, as in value being pad by the market, to bundled fleets that can shift their charging demand to other times. V1G is no less a breakthrough than V2G, from a market perspective.
18/ I'll make this point again: if you understand markets, arbitrage, price discovery, impacts at the margin--then you already have a huge leg up in understanding the energy storage space because beyond the operational tech, energy storage is and will be about markets.
19/ Where do markets set their price? At a very sensitive place called the margin. And that's exactly where energy storage is now arriving. Rule: a little does a lot. So water heaters are a big deal. Full PGE report: bpa.gov/EE/Technology/…, My story: routefifty.com/smart-cities/2…
