Major Changes Are in Store for Electricity Industry

As the battle to phase out fossil fuels heats up, finding economically viable ways to store surplus electric power is becoming vital.

Inventors are in a race to find the best way of storing electricity to make the most of renewables and cut the use of fossil fuels.

Currently, when more power than needed by consumers is produced by sources such as wind turbines or solar panels, some of the electricity is wasted.  But that is changing.

Governments have realized that one of their biggest challenges in cutting the use of fossil fuels is to store surplus electricity for use at peak times.

At present, coal and gas plants are left ticking over or running at below capacity, ready to be turned on to full load to meet peak demand.  This greatly adds to greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK’s Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology believes that energy storage has vast growth potential as a business opportunity, and is a key to future stable electricity supplies.

The technologies being supported in the UK, US, Japan and Germany - and in other countries where renewables are growing fast – include pumping water up hill, producing hydrogen, turning air into liquid, storing heat, compressing air, and building giant batteries.

The most widely-used method worldwide at the moment is pumped hydroelectricity storage.  At periods of low demand at night and the weekend, low-cost surplus electricity is used to pump water uphill to a reservoir.  During the day, the water is then released through turbines, and the electricity produced is sold at a premium rate during peak periods.

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