Companies are increasingly looking to batteries to help cut energy costs. Batteries can smooth out power-availability fluctuations from renewable sources, of course, but they can also save money with energy from traditional sources, letting companies buy power from the grid at night when prices are lower. Further, companies can use batteries to limit utility demand charges.
Cassandra Sweet, writing in The Wall Street Journal, reports that J.C. Penney will save $6,000 per year on its power bills at each six Southern California stores by installing Panasonic lithium-ion batteries.
She cites GTM Research figures showing that last year, U.S. companies, universities, and commercial property owners installed more than 250 energy storage systems with total capacity of 64.1 MWh, up from 48 systems and 12.2 MWh in 2014. “This year,” she adds, “installations are on track to more than double, to 140 MWh.” The research firm puts the cost of battery systems for commercial properties at $950 to $1,500 per kWh.
Sweet notes that California is prompting utilities to support the installation of 1.325 MW 1.325 GWh of storage over the next five years to help balance energy flow from renewable sources and is offering rebates of up to 60% on the cost of battery systems to owners of homes and commercial property.
As for new battery technologies, she writes that Microsoft is testing Primus Power zinc-bromide flow batteries for use in server farms. Such batteries could replace lead-acid batteries and diesel generators used for backup.
Sweet quotes Brian Janous, Microsoft’s director of energy strategy, as saying, “The goal is to find the optimal technology that can replace hundreds of megawatts of batteries and create a more optimal solution for the grid.”
She concludes with a quote from Nancy Pfund, managing partner of San Francisco-based venture-capital firm DBL Partners, which is backing Primus Power and other energy-storage companies: “This is solar 10 years ago; it’s still relatively early.”
Read Sweet’s complete article here.
