Why Is Energy Storage Important

We are told that one of the problems with solar energy is that it needs sunlight. Well that's kinda obvious after all it is called solar and not lunar energy. So what happens at night. Well simply put - nothing, nyet, nadda. No sun, no energy.

Let's face it those lovely solar panels on your rooftop will just generate electricity in amounts dictated by the amount of sunlight available and this generally means from 10am till around 3pm depending on where you are. So this means that you are unlikely to use exactly all the electricity that is generated. If you generate less than you are using, you just continue to draw power from the electricity grid as you would have normally done. If you don't use all of what your panels generate the excess gets fed into the power distribution grid.

Now wouldn't it be a great idea to be able to store that excess energy so that you can make use of it at night when your panels are not generating power. Sounds simple enough? well that is what I thought too and that is what you get told by the marketing folks. And yet, not too many Australian suppliers that I have come across are promoting storage.

But recently, I heard another side of the story. While the whole storing of electricity seems like a great idea for the consumer, an engineer explained to me, in simple terms that it is essential to maintain a level of stability in the electricity distribution grid in order to ensure reliable supply. So while it is comparatively easier for a large Utility company to control how much power to feed into the system, imagine the situation with hundreds of homes feeding tiny amounts of power into the grid. So in layman's terms being able to store and release this excess power from the grid will help stabilise the system and this is where storage comes in.

So while putting my consumer hat on, storage seems like a nice thing for a home system, for the grid, it is not a nice to have but an essential regulating mechanism. It is my understanding that this becomes a real problem when the amount of power being fed into the grid from uncontrolled sources reaches a certain threshold. We have not reached that point yet in Australia or at least we are not aware of where we are at.