The Big Money In Combined Storage and New Energy

Energy storage for renewables can be a good investment today, study finds; Systems that bank energy can add value to solar and wind projects.

David L. Chandler, June 13, 2016 (MIT News)

“…[The complicated economic and technology] decision may be critical to the future growth of renewable energy…[ Value of storage technologies for wind and solar energy by MIT researchers] shows how to evaluate the technology choices available, including batteries, pumped hydroelectric storage, and compressed air energy storage, and demonstrates that even with today’s prices for these technologies, such storage systems make good economic sense in some locations, but not yet in others…[What matters] to potential investors is the price curve rather than the demand curve…[The value of storage] varies widely by location, because of large variations in the frequency and magnitude of spikes in the price and how the solar and wind resources fluctuate over time…[Mostly] the costs of such systems don’t yet make them profitable enough without policy support…[But] market adoption already makes sense in [locations like Texas, California, and Massachusetts], and could be boosted with modest public policy support, which in turn would stimulate technological improvement in storage to encourage further growth…” click here for more

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