The Renewable Energy Association (REA) believes that energy storage could hold the key to addressing future capacity crunch.
The National Grid warned on Wednesday that spare capacity in the grid will hit an all-time low next winter as the result of the closure of a number of power stations. The National Grid has managed to secure 2.56GW of reserve power at a cost of £36 million through the capacity mechanism. With more power stations set to close in the future, the severity of the situation will only become more acute.
In the National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios document, the grid operator notes that “electricity storage could be significant for the future balancing toolkit” but is currently being restricted by policy and regulatory developments.
The REA believes that energy storage provides a “huge opportunity” for the UK grid infrastructure. James Court, head of external affairs at REA said: “It is essential that the government adopts new technologies to solve these ongoing grid problems, both to prevent increasing bills for consumers and to provide energy security.”
The association believes that energy storage will alleviate short-term grid issues which are currently hampering renewable developments across the UK as developers increasingly face uneconomical quotes for grid reinforcement works.
Court continued: “The REA is calling for a coherent national grid strategy that recognises the importance of solar and energy storage and the role they can play in solving grid issues.”
The National Grid report stresses throughout that while storage is unlikely to be the “single solution” for grid stability and frequency response issues, there is an unquestionable need for it that will only increase in the future.
National Grid found that cost competitiveness for storage could be achieved through a number of routes and argued that in order for storage to “unlock its potential” only one or two developments would need to be realised, listing them as legislation recognising storage as a separate entity, targeted policy support for early adopters, the introduction of time of use tariffs to encourage self-consumption and continued cost reductions.
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