POWER May 2016 - 72

COMMENTARY
Thriving During the Energy
System Transition
David Schroeder
T
oday's energy system is ripe for disruption. Whoever designs
the next generation of energy systems will own the
platforms that will enable tomorrow's products and lock in
the emerging consumer base from the developing world.
This disruption will be as great as the shift from whale oil
to rock oil, altering the energy landscape permanently. The
line between producers, distributers, and consumers of energy
will blur. Billions of people will have access to affordable
power for the first time. The development path of humanity
will change.
The choice of how to prepare for this transition will decide the
fate of utilities, power producers, petroleum producers and processers,
and large energy consumers. Will they follow the path
of last century's forward-thinking oil barons or the whaling captains
dragged down by a commitment to stranded assets?
Batteries Can Unlock New Potential
Today's shift mimics the energy transition to rock oil, occurring
because of a perfect storm of new technology and new needs.
The development of the kerosene lamp enabled the shift away
from burning animal fats, just as today's renewable energies
provide an option for low-cost cleaner power. But it took the
additional technology advances in oil drilling to make the use
of rock oil widely available, and cheap. Today, that catalyst technology
is next-generation batteries-intelligent batteries that
have improved power, energy density, and lifespans-integrated
with software.
Intelligent batteries hold the key to integrating renewables
on the supply side and optimizing usage on the demand side.
This will fundamentally change the consumption of resources on
personal and macroscopic levels. Energy storage will seamlessly
integrate into the grid, homes, vehicles, and mobile electronics
because of new advancements in sensors, software, cell design,
and data handling. These advancements will enable the monitoring
and predicting of users' behavior, market energy prices, and
the surrounding environment-including weather and expected
local demand.
Businesses, municipalities, and homeowners will optimize
their costs by cycling fluidly through the use of a mix of locally
and centrally generated and stored energy. One can imagine a
home or business energy storage system that is controlled by
algorithms to predict the likely energy demands for the building
based on weather and occupancy information, plus auxiliary
energy uses such as electric vehicles that may require fast charging.
Combining these demand projections with expectations
about production from a local solar array and projections of grid
energy prices will enable decisions to optimize energy storage
system use. The consumer system could also communicate its
availability to utilities to participate in ancillary services markets,
if that would be the highest value use.
72
Integrating Smarter Technologies
Utilities risk being sidelined as a combination of regulatory price
caps and renewable subsidies enable wealthy and middle-class customers
to detach from the grid to use solar and wind power for more
and more of their needs. But utilities and large power end users
can embrace the shift to renewables and help shape the grid of
tomorrow by coming together to design, build, deploy, and own the
future energy system. They can create the generation, transmission,
distribution, energy storage, and end-use technology infrastructure
capable of integrating high levels of renewables onto the grid.
The connection of energy storage systems to sensors, gridlevel
data, and control algorithms will provide end users with
reliability. It also will provide utilities with a system that better
optimizes peaker plant lifetimes and utilization. Users will be
able to squeeze every ounce of value out of systems by combining
predictive modeling of grid use, weather conditions, and
battery degradation with real-time input of costs, solar and wind
farm output, and energy application usage.
Minimizing Risks of New Technologies
The challenge for utilities and large power end users comes in
deciding what system to build. Because of the integrated nature
of the energy system of the future, pivoting on infrastructure
once it takes hold will be difficult and expensive. Those who
embrace the transition early and who can discern the optimal set
of options for each application and the optimal combination of
technologies will win. They will draw the most value from storage
technologies and associated systems.
Many technology options exist for each system component-
sensors, software, chemistry, and hardware. Battery chemistries
are particularly difficult to value because new claims about energy
density, power, lifetime, cost, and safety arise nearly every
week. Finding technologies that will maximize value requires
understanding component interactions.
The risk of choosing sub-optimal technology can be lessened
by a deeper partnership between private industry and public research
institutions. The public sector has more than two decades
of experience working at the leading edge of energy storage research
with technical experts around the globe. Public research
laboratories provide access to multidisciplinary research teams
and the best energy storage research and development tools.
Private industry has the infrastructure and business know-how to
integrate and commercialize innovations in the energy sector.
While a disruption to the energy system of today is coming,
opportunity exists for large and small businesses to participate
in the disruption and ultimately profit from it. ■
-David Schroeder is deputy director, Argonne Collaborative
Center for Energy Storage Science (http://access.anl.gov) and
associate professor in the Department of Technology at Northern
Illinois University.
www.powermag.com
POWER | May 2016
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POWER May 2016

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