The US Department of Energy just announced the Long Duration Storage Energy Earthshot, an effort to achieve a 90 percent reduction in the costs of energy storage in the next decade. The Department is allocating $1.16 billion to fund activities and opportunities to reach this goal.
Solar and wind technology have already achieved huge reductions in levelized costs and the natural next focus is how to store the energy they produce.
The Long Duration Storage Energy Earthshot will help enable the full transition to a clean energy based electrical system and reduce our reliance on toxic fossil fuels that are responsible for much of our carbon emissions that are warming the planet and causing these severe weather events.
Reducing energy storage costs benefits everyone by improving the resiliency of our electrical grid, especially as we’re seeing more frequent and severe weather events. Our electrical grid is transitioning from a centralized grid (one source sending electricity to many users) to decentralized (many sources sharing to many users). This reduces the likelihood of a single point failure causing a large scale electrical outage. Recent examples of this kind of failure include the late June decision by Avista to cut off power in Spokane because their grid was overtaxed and likely to have catastrophic, long-term equipment failures. Similar issues arose in Texas in February.
Puget Sound Solar installed a 503Kw solar array that produces electricity stored by OPALCO’s battery storage system.
The Long Duration Storage Shot will consider all types of technologies – whether electrochemical, mechanical, thermal, chemical carriers, or any combination that has the potential to meet the necessary duration and cost targets for grid flexibility.
Check out our Energy Storage page or read about one of our customers experiences with his solar+storage system and when you’re interested in securing your energy, please give us a call at 206-706-1931 or complete the form below.
