With Texas renewable power generation growing, energy secretary says storage is next challenge

Expanding America’s ability to store energy is the key to making renewable power available any time — even when there’s no wind or sun — U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told the Clean Power 2022 conference Wednesday in downtown San Antonio. “Storage is a huge priority because that’s what is going to make renewable power dispatchable,” she said. “If we can get the cost right, and if we can get the (storage) duration up, there’s this potential to turn these variable renewables into 24/7 baseload.” Increasing storage capacity could, for example, allow operators to store solar energy produced midday in batteries and send that power to the grid when demand is highest, typically in the evening.

To make that a reality, the Department of Energy’s $1 billion “earthshot” initiative is aiming to cut the cost of long-duration storage of greater than 10 hours by 90 percent this decade. Duration refers to the amount of time it takes for a fully-charged storage system to discharge that power to the grid. Most lithium storage batteries today have a duration of up to four hours. Reducing the cost of long-duration storage technology such as hydrogen would make it “the most cost effective choice for electricity consumers,” Granholm said. The Biden administration is directing more $3 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to manufacture more energy storage batteries in the U.S., she said. With solar and wind generation growing rapidly in Texas, energy storage is being explore in San Antonio and elsewhere. The amount of power generated from solar panels jumped 82 percent in April from the same month last year, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Wind generation grew 32 percent last month from a year earlier. In a San Antonio pilot project, CPS Energy is preparing to sign a contract for a 50 megawatt battery storage system and another to purchase 900 megawatts of solar power. CPS’ interim CEO has called the project a “sizable pilot.”