Now as renewable energy sources produce close to a quarter of total electricity production of the world and maintains the fastest growth among all other power generation plants, the technological development to ensure their smooth integration with national grids is critical both for power grids as well as for the fight against climate change, to phase out fossil fuels from electricity generation.
One of the remarkable technological development is the battery which immediately backs up intermittence caused by the change or wind or solar radiation. Several companies worldwide are trying to take advantage of this opportunity. Recently, good news came from power storage provider Stem.
The San Franciso–based company installs arrays of large batteries for utilities and industrial companies and sells software to manage them. Stem already has dozens of utility customers and has deployed more than 900 systems that combined could produce a gigawatt-hour of electricity, enough to power 100 homes for a year. A bet on Stem is a bet on renewable energy’s future.
Stem doesn’t make batteries, for good reason. The lithium-ion batteries used for commercial storage, applications have become commodities, in a market dominated by a few huge players, such as South Korean LG Chem and Chinese Contemporary Amperex Technology LG Chem.
Battery arrays can replace the expensive natural-gas-fed power plants that many utilities use to meet spikes in demand. In 2020, for instance, Australia famously bought a huge battery array from Tesla to store electricity from a large wind farm in a power-starved area of the country.
Power prices vary throughout the day. Industrial companies typically pay a rate based on the peak price they hit each month. Falling battery costs have led many to install solar energy systems with power-storage capability. These can replace some utility-generated electricity, especially during periods of peak usage.
Employing renewable power and batteries to replace energy from a utility is known as going “behind the meter.” Stem installs the batteries and provides software that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize their performance, by automatically switching among battery power, onsite generation, and grid power. This can save up to up to 30% of costs for industrial companies.