Is renewables storage the way forward?

We have already seen that renewable energy solutions are the way forward to securing less fossil fuel dependence and a carbon neutral future.

At the recent Inter Solar event in Munich the buzzword was ‘Storage’.

Until recently, storage solutions in the UK were far too expensive to be cost effective toward a Solar investment product and were therefore discounted.

As the price of Solar technology falls to accommodate a competitive market we are seeing the cost of storage solutions become more affordable also.

They are still not quite ready to be rolled out across the UK large-scale but we are seeing the trend change in Germany towards storage of renewable energy.

For off-grid PV systems, batteries provide a vital function, storing energy during sunny periods until the time it is needed. In these systems they generally can’t be avoided. But why consider them for grid-connected systems? Unless you are installing at a site where there are regular power outages, the wisdom for the last few years has been avoid batteries. So what has changed?

In Germany, the success of the PV industry means that there are now large numbers of systems spread across the German electricity grid. These high penetration levels have consequences (such as voltage control) and mean that for further expansion, measures have had to be brought in to limit the amount of PV electricity that is injected into the grid at certain times. Rather than switching off or reducing the output of a system, one very sensible alternative is to dump the surplus energy into a battery for use later.

This is something we could see across the UK in years to come and with the cost of energy rising and our dependence on dwindling fossil fuels storage solutions will become more obtainable. There will be less waste of this energy and those who suffer frequent power outages especially will benefit.

Watch this space……