Statement to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development regarding Fiscal Year 2004 energy storage research, development and deployment program funding.

 

The Energy Storage Council (ESC) appreciates the opportunity to provide the following statement to the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development regarding energy storage research, development and deployment program funding for Fiscal Year 2004 (FY04).  ESC urges the Congress to recognize the critical role that innovative energy storage technology must play in enhancing the security, performance and productivity of the national electric transmission grid.  Several critical programs funded by Energy and Water Appropriations are essential to the development and deployment of innovative storage technologies.  The success of these energy storage programs will play an important role in resolving the nation’s electric transmission system problems. 

 

Energy Storage Council Recommendations

 

Additional funding is urgently needed for governmental agency/industry/national laboratory partnership efforts to ready and deploy energy storage technologies.  This includes not only the continuation and expansion of current programs, but new projects that analyze the impact of large-scale energy storage deployment on the security, reliability and efficiency of local, regional and national electricity infrastructures.  

 

Electricity Reliability - Energy Storage R&D –   Increase to $10 million in FY04

 

The Department of Energy’s Energy Storage R&D efforts under the Office of Electric Transmission and Distribution need should be funded at $10 million in FY04, a 24 percent increase over last year.  The President’s FY04 Budget Request level is inadequate and will limit results to a few, small-scale energy storage projects.  The request is also woefully inadequate to address critical large-scale storage program needs, even though the need for a large-scale program is discussed in the details of the Budget Request, as follows:

 

 “Large scale (MW) energy storage systems can significantly reduce transmission system congestion, help manage peak loads and increase the reliability of the overall grid.  Energy storage also benefits transmission system stability by injecting power to damp out system disturbances.  Such disturbances have led to grid collapse and widespread blackouts.  Storage will help relieve transmission bottlenecks through better operations, one goal identified in the National Transmission Grid Study.  These activities also support Chapter 7 National Energy Policy recommendations to develop a comprehensive energy delivery system.” 

 

 

Energy Security and Assurance

 

Continued support is also critical for Energy Security and Assurance programs.  These resources support the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s efforts to monitor and protect the physical U.S. energy infrastructure.  The funding also supports the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center efforts to develop sophisticated models and simulation capabilities for critical infrastructures.

 

Substantial Public Benefits

 

Substantial public benefits arise from the ability of energy storage to enhance existing electric system capital assets already in place.  Energy storage technologies extend the capability of the transmission grid – considered to by many to be the most vulnerable component of the electric power industry and the sector that has the lowest average utilization rate.  By supplying power when and where needed, energy storage technologies can help to create a more secure, reliable and responsive electric transmission grid.

 

Energy storage facilities can also help maintain transmission grid stability by providing ancillary services, including black-start capability, spinning reserves and reactive power.  Smaller scale energy storage technologies support power-conditioning services at the distribution stage.  In general, energy storage functions as a “shock absorber” for the nation’s electric infrastructure to enhance its security, reliability and efficiency.

 

Various energy storage technologies are suited to different functions throughout the electricity supply chain, with most able to perform multiple roles.  Some storage assets, such as compressed air energy storage (CAES) facilities, are sources of both transmission-level ancillary services (including reactive power) and real power.  Such large-scale energy storage facilities are capable not only of injecting large amounts of power into the grid quickly when operating in generation mode, but also of taking large quantities of power off the grid quickly when operating in compression mode.  Smaller scale storage technologies, including batteries and flywheels, are well suited to providing bridging power and power conditioning services.  This wide variety of capabilities supports an array of policy objectives. 

 

Enhancing Homeland Security

Energy storage technologies promote national security interests in today’s environment of heightened concerns regarding the vulnerability of our energy infrastructure.  By permitting the “pre-positioning” of electric energy sources on the load side of transmission constraint points, energy storage facilities can ensure continued deliveries of energy if a transmission line is unavailable due to an emergency.  Energy storage facilities can further aid in the recovery of transmission systems and generating facilities from upsets caused by natural or man-made catastrophes by providing black-start service and spinning reserves.

 

Assuring Electric Reliability

One of the important roles for energy storage is to promote efficient operation and expansion of the transmission grid.  The ability to “store” and rapidly “withdraw” electric energy allows the provision of critically important services such as voltage support and black-start capability. 

 

The most effective way of expanding transmission grid capability will not always be traditional lines and substations.  Energy storage solutions can augment, reduce the need for, or even eliminate the need for major transmission upgrades that have become increasingly difficult, costly and time-consuming to implement.  

 

Deploying energy storage facilities as sources of energy at or near load centers can substitute for transmission capacity, when load is separated from generation by constrained transmission paths.  Storage enables “time-shifting” and the de-coupling of production and consumption of electric energy, thus reducing the criticality of transmission facilities that link production and consumption centers. 

 

Such ancillary services can enhance electric transmission system reliability much as gas storage has enhanced gas transmission system reliability.  In this respect, large-scale energy storage technologies can provide beneficial impacts on the electric transmission grid similar to those realized through high performance natural gas storage technology employed in salt cavern storage and conventional reservoir-based gas storage employing new horizontal well completion technologies.

 

Stockpiling a Strategic Supply of Electricity

Electricity markets are unique among major commodities in their almost complete dependence on a moment-by-moment matching of supply (i.e., generation of energy) with demand.  Other commodity markets to a greater or lesser degree incorporate storage mechanisms that permit some de-coupling of supply and demand.

 

Traditionally, the electricity grid has compensated for the lack of storage, at least in large quantities, by maintaining large reserve margins in electricity generation and transmission.  In essence, the electricity grid functions as one huge “just in time” inventory system, and this is a major reason (from a technical viewpoint) why it is most difficult to create stable and predictable electricity markets. 

 

The development of natural gas storage serving the wholesale gas market following deregulation of the natural gas industry in the late 1980s demonstrates the positive role energy storage technologies can play in promoting reliability and security in the electric energy sector.  In fact, energy storage could have an even larger impact on electric energy markets than it has had in natural gas markets.  The electric industry is three times the size of the gas industry and operates on a much faster and more dynamic basis—what happens in the gas market on a seasonal or monthly basis happens daily in the electricity business. 

 

Enabling Renewable and Distributed Generation

In addition, energy storage technologies can enhance the viability of renewable electric generation technologies by, for example, “smoothing” the delivery of power generated from wind and solar technologies.  This can greatly increase the value of renewable power by transforming low value, unscheduled power into high-value products that can be scheduled into the market (e.g. sold into the on-peak periods). 

 

Energy storage technologies also facilitate the use of distributed generation as a substitute for transmission upgrades in transmission-constrained markets.  Energy storage technologies used in conjunction with distributed generation can improve the reliability of those assets by providing power conditioning service as well as “bridging” power to essential equipment during outages, thereby making distributed generation viable in a broader range of applications.

 

A number of economically viable energy storage technologies exist today representing a wide spectrum of capabilities, and have a number of applications.  They are listed on the following page.

 

The Energy Storage Council (ESC) supports the energy storage community in its effort to accelerate the introduction of energy storage systems and technologies into the marketplace.  A top ESC objective is to raise awareness of the role of energy storage among, the public, policy-makers and private business.   For more information on energy storage, please see our website at www.energystoragecouncil.org or contact ESC Executive Director, Jason Makansi at (314) 621-0403 and ESC Government and Public Affairs Counsel, Jeff Abboud, at 703-623-0698. 

Text Box:     energy storage technologies   Batteries - A number of battery technologies exist for use as utility-scale energy storage facilities.  Many of the large-scale battery installations have used lead-acid battery technology, but other battery technologies such as sodium-sulfur and Lithium ion are quickly becoming commercially available.  These facilities have a number of applications in the generation, transmission and energy service sectors.   Compressed Air Energy Storage (“CAES”) - CAES systems use off-peak power to pressurize air into an underground reservoir (salt cavern, abandoned hard rock mine, or aquifer) which is later released, generally during peak daytime hours, to power a gas turbine/generator for power production.  Compressed air energy storage is the only commercially available technology other than PHS that is able to provide very large energy storage deliverability (above 100 MW in single unit sizes).  CAES facilities permit energy produced off-peak by low-cost baseload generating units to be “shifted” to peak periods, when transmission capacity is becoming increasingly constrained.  Because CAES facilities allow power inexpensively produced by baseload units in off-peak periods to be sold during peak periods when electric power is more valuable, they can provide the benefits of what might be considered “time-delayed exchanges” of electric energy.    Flywheels - A flywheel energy storage system stores energy through accelerating a rotor up to a very high rate of speed and maintaining the energy in the system as inertial energy.  The flywheel releases the energy by reversing the process and using the motor as a generator.  These systems have increasingly been targeted for power delivery capabilities in the 500 kW range, with the main focus for development of the technology in the power quality and reliability market.    Pumped Hydro Storage (“PHS”) - PHS facilities exist in sizes up to 1000 MW and generally consist of two large reservoirs.  Water is pumped from the lower to the upper reservoir during off-peak hours, using off-peak electric energy, and later released back down to the lower reservoir, passing through hydraulic turbines and generating electrical power.  PHS represents by far the largest mechanism (in terms of capacity as well as sheer size) for “storing” electric energy in use today in North America (at a total installed base of 19 GW, PHS by the early 1990s represented nearly 3% of all U.S. summer peaking capability).   Regenerative Fuel Cells- Also known as redox flow-cell batteries, fuel cells can store and release electrical energy through a reversible electrochemical reaction between two electrolytes.  The scale of fuel cell facilities is a function of the size of the electrolytic tanks employed, and large fuel cell installations are practical.  Large-scale (12 MW to as much as 20 MW) regenerative fuel cell installations are currently under construction in the U.S. (in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s service territory) and the U.K.  These installations can compensate for transmission system constraints in specific areas.