Navigating and Facilitating the Energy Storage Boom

Our team is deep in the trenches of some of the biggest utility-scale clean energy projects in the world. More and more solar projects are paired with storage to increase system resiliency, enable a stable flow of supply to match demand, cut costs and much more. We expect the U.S. to quickly increase standalone storage and solar + storage installations in the coming years to achieve President Biden’s federal goal of 100% clean energy by 2035. The past decade alone has brought transformational growth to the size and adoption of these solar projects and has set new standards for integrating large-scale energy storage into project plans to capture and provide balance for electricity generation and demand.?

Across the solar industry we have seen EPCs, developers and manufacturers quickly embrace the storage boom. EPCs and developers benefit greatly from integrating storage into their projects. Storage has been proven to manage energy ramps in the evening, lessen curtailment risks, lower prices through arbitrage, unlocks time of use rates and ancillary services, offer backup power during emergencies and more. Developers should also consider integrating storage components that are capable of handling more diverse energy inputs and have a flexible output to feed in a mix of energy resources.?

Many of Ideematec’s projects co-exist with large-scale storage components and our team is familiar with the process of providing trackers to a solar+storage project. Our team leans on a few best practices and product features that enable us to work harmoniously with these projects:?

• We join approved vendor lists to show our intent to support mixed resource projects.?
• Our trackers are designed to integrate seamlessly with storage projects by supporting unique module sizes and weights. Modules are clearly important but we are also paying close attention to the way our technology influences output for storage.?
• Our engineers are constantly innovating system designs for optimal integration in mixed resource projects. For example, future trackers may evolve to directly attach to storage while most larger-scale projects currently house storage brackets outside of the system.?

Ideematec's team members have years of experience in developing solar + storage projects and are constantly tracking the regulatory environment and barriers to adoption to stay ahead of the curve. Through our own experiences and many conversations with module and storage manufacturers, we know that EPCs and developers must adapt quickly for the future of storage. In order to achieve this major ramp up to increase storage nationwide, we must lean on policy advancements from the local, state and federal levels and create a regulatory framework that values energy storage’s position as a market player.