New regulations are paving the way for a boom in coupled storage

Coupled storage, the pairing of renewable energy generation with storage facilities, is experiencing a huge increase in popularity and availability. But what is making companies invest in this more expensive product?

Installing storage combined with variable energy technologies seems like a no-brainer. Having storage in conjunction with solar PV systems or wind turbines provides energy flexibility, allowing customers to rely upon on-demand renewable energy and giving you the option of storing energy during hours of high productivity. However, employing the benefits of coupling storage systems to generation plants is beginning to play a much larger part in improving the flexibility and efficiency of the national electricity grid. As a result, many companies are producing more and more coupled storage systems.

Energy storage has an increasingly important role to play in regulation and other ancillary services as it can provide actions like congestion management and the dispatch of resources in a matter of minutes or hours. This complicated process is how the larger grid manages itself, and within a synchronous area, a balancing act is constantly played between generation and consumption by the combined interaction of all interconnected parties. Lightsource bp , is one such company investing heavily in coupled storage. In Italy, they have partnered with TEP Renewables Ltd to install around 200MW of solar PV facilities in northern Italy and both have committed to coupling storage.

While the benefits of coupled storage are felt in the immediate role it can play in regulating the grid, storage also has an important future in long term capacity expansion over years and decades. Because of the intermittent nature of solar and wind resources, the capacity value of these kinds of power plants is substantially lower than that of a traditional fossil fuel plant. Adding storage facilities to solar, wind and hydro power plants not only increases their role in the ancillary services market but adds capacity value to their assets, further increasing the reliability of renewable power, and reducing the need for fossil fuel power plants.

Although regulation has been slow to keep up with the potential of storage, many nations are starting to catch on. This year India has begun to legislate for a combined Energy Storage Obligation, alongside its existing Renewable Purchase Obligation. This is part of a long term plan by the Indian government to reach 500GW generation capacity from renewable sources by 2030. In order to achieve this, the Central Electricity Authority has calculated that a massive increase of storage will be needed to integrate this power into the grid. Discussions have also begun between India and the UK to increase electric mobility and develop co-operation on recycling in the battery market.

Whilst India, the UK, Australia, the US and China have been acknowledged by the industry as the main sources of interest for storage products, most of continental Europe has been slow to follow suit. The war in Ukraine has dealt a massive shock to the system to the EU’s energy policy and a massive scale-up of electricity storage facilities is crucial for the EU to keep the cost of electricity low and meet their net zero goals. An energy-independent Europe is an impossibility without the quick deployment of storage systems to enhance network stability, ease congestion and massively upscale capacity.

The contrast between areas of high and low uptake is the massive discrepancy in quickness of legislation and market-seeding activities by government. Storage is part of the holistic framework necessary to stabilise and modernise the low-carbon grid of the future. Industry is waiting in the wings, let’s hope governments speed up.