Blog by Paul Cooley, SSE Director of Renewables Development
To decarbonise our energy supply we are increasingly turning towards low carbon energy sources. However, one of the toughest challenges facing the energy sector is how it can deliver this low carbon energy to people without adding unwanted costs to household bills or hampering future security of supply.
One possible solution to this problem is large scale energy storage, which can deliver flexibility, resilience, and lower bills.
Large scale energy storage offers a number of benefits. It can store low carbon energy then deliver it to customers when they really need it, give National Grid increased flexibility to respond to short-term variations in demand, and hold back energy when there is too much for the network to handle.
These services benefit society and the bill payer as we can improve renewable generator performance, reduce the amount of fossil fuels we import and burn, build fewer power plants and reduce the cost of electricity networks. This makes our energy system greener, more affordable and still provides the resilience to ensure our electricity supply is secure.
However to date storage has suffered from the lack of a suitable market structure to stimulate deployment. That is why we have contributed significantly, alongside DECC, the Scottish Government and key players in the energy industry, to the Carbon Trust’s new report.
The report makes a compelling case for the benefits of energy storage whilst also, crucially, highlighting the barriers that currently exist. Energy storage needs a level playing field, clear long term policies to enable its deployment and a market structure that recognises the benefits that it can provide to society in terms of flexibility and resilience.
The report also found that deployment of energy storage could result in savings of up to £2.4bn a year by 2030. This translates to average household bills being cut by as much as £50 a year.
At SSE we have first-hand experience of the crossroads the energy storage market has currently arrived at. Back in December 2013 we secured consent to build a 600MW pumped storage hydro scheme called Coire Glas at Loch Lochy in the Highlands.
Projects such as Coire Glas have the potential to deliver the benefits of storage on an, as yet, unrivalled scale. However, despite the obvious benefits that pumped storage offers, making a Final Investment Decision to progress the £800m scheme remains on ice because we cannot see a way round the commercial and regulatory challenges.
These include changes in the existing transmission charging regime for pumped storage and lack of a satisfactory and supportive long-term public policy and regulatory framework.
Energy storage is not a silver bullet, but it does offer a genuine way to provide resilience and flexibility to a decarbonised energy sector in the UK, in an affordable way. This report from the Carbon Trust spells out in black and white the need for reform around policy and market structure for energy storage. We have the tools to build suitable sites – now we need the right regulations and market structures to unlock the benefits for consumers.
To read the report see: www.carbontrust.com/energystorage