storage capacity

A big year for battery storage

January 29, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A decade ago, the ability of utilities to store large amounts of electricity in batteries was basically nonexistent. In the past several years, growth in battery storage systems has exploded. As of the end of November, the US had about 24 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity in place. This is 71% more than just a year ago. Nearly half of the battery storage in the US is located in California. Texas, Arizona, and Nevada are also leaders in deploying battery storage.

Battery storage allows solar and wind generating plants to keep operating when there is reduced demand for their output and have the electricity that they produce be available later when demand rises. Storing this excess electricity essentially extends the hours of the day when clean energy can be used.

Equally important, the existence of battery storage reduces the need for peaker plants, the fossil-fueled power plants that only turn on at times of peak demand, such as during hot afternoons.

There are 1,000 peaker plants in the US and they are generally heavily polluting, inefficient, and expensive to operate. Some 63 million people live within a three-mile radius of one of them and are exposed to harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. Peaker plants also release more greenhouse gases than other power plants do for every unit of electricity they generate.

Many battery storage facilities are co-located with, or otherwise support, solar energy plants. The amount of solar energy in the US is growing rapidly and surpassed the 100-gigawatt mark in 2024. As solar power continues to expand, so will battery energy storage.

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Battery projects soared again in 2024

Photo, posted August 3, 2024, courtesy of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

How much energy storage is needed?

November 11, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Energy storage is a critical aspect of modern energy systems as they move towards heavy dependence on renewable sources such as solar and wind that don’t produce energy at the same rate all the time. Excess energy generated by solar power needs to be stored for when the sun isn’t shining; excess wind energy needs to be stored for when the wind isn’t blowing. But how much storage capacity does the energy system need to have?

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a model that can be used to project what a system’s storage needs would be if it were to shift entirely to renewable sources.

The model accounts for how energy production from renewable sources would change during different times of day and different times of the year. For example, there is much more solar energy generation in the summer when the days are longer, and it is sunny more often.

There is also the issue of short-term vs. long-term energy storage. Short-term energy storage does not refer to how long a storage device can store the energy. It refers to how long it can provide power at its rated level.

The study focused on Italy’s energy system, which has suffered in recent years because it had difficulties in obtaining natural gas from Russia due to the invasion of Ukraine.

As the world moves increasingly towards renewable power sources, energy systems need to be able to account for the variability of those sources. The new model offers policymakers critical information for use in energy system planning.

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Model Projects Energy Storage Needs for Fossil Fuel-Free Energy System

Photo, posted October 28, 2016, courtesy of Daxis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Groundwater loss

December 21, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Groundwater is the water found underground in the cracks and spaces in soil, sand, and rock. It is held in aquifers and bubbles up naturally into springs, streams, and rivers, but also is pumped out for use by people. Groundwater provides almost half the drinking water in the U.S. and is a main source of water for agriculture.

The world’s supply of groundwater is steadily declining. The combination of climate change and human population growth is increasingly diminishing groundwater.

A study by the Desert Research Institute published in the journal Nature Communications has mapped the global permanent loss of aquifer storage capacity for the first time. Computer modeling with advanced machine learning techniques has provided a detailed picture of the world’s groundwater situation.

The study found that global aquifer storage capacity is disappearing at a rate of 10 miles a year, about the size of 7,000 Great Pyramids of Giza. The loss of groundwater storage is permanent, forever reducing the amount of water that can be captured and stored because the pumping of groundwater can cause the ground surface above to sink, collapsing the space where water can be stored.

About 75% of this subsidence is occurring over cropland and urban regions. The United States, China, and Iran account for most of the global groundwater storage loss but many other places in the Middle East and Asia are experiencing significant groundwater withdrawal as well.

Most regions of the world do not have monitoring programs for groundwater pumping. The study underscores the need to better understand this issue on a global scale and take appropriate action before it is too late.

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Scientists Map Loss of Groundwater Storage Around the World

Photo, posted August 7, 2015, courtesy of NRCS Oregon via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

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Lakes Are Shrinking | Earth Wise

September 11, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A study by the University of Colorado Boulder has found that more than half of the world’s largest lakes have shrunk over the last three decades. This is a very big problem because about one-quarter of the Earth’s population lives in the basin of a drying lake. People depend on lakes for drinking water and irrigation and lakes are central to the survival of local ecosystems as well as migrating birds. Lakes cover only about 3% of the planet, but they hold nearly 90% of the liquid surface freshwater.

The study used satellite observations from 1992 to 2020 to estimate the area and water levels of nearly 2,000 freshwater bodies. These account for 96% of Earth’s total natural lake storage and 83% of that in man-made reservoirs. About 53% of the world’s lakes have clearly shrunk, while only 22% have gained water. The study estimates that about 160 trillion gallons of water has been lost over the 28-year period. That’s about 17 times the maximum capacity of Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States.

Many of the world’s most significant lakes have been shrinking. The dramatic declines in Lake Mead have been headline news for years. The Caspian Sea, which is the world’s largest inland body of water – has long been declining.

The main causes of the decline in natural lakes are climate change and human consumption. Reservoirs face an additional major problem of sediment buildup which reduces their storage capacity and diminishes their benefits of water supply, flood control, and hydropower.

Lake loss is a big problem.

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More than half of the world’s largest lakes are drying up

Photo, posted April 10, 2018, courtesy of Ninara via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Storing CO2 Underground | Earth Wise

February 19, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Capturing the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and factories and safely storing it so it can’t enter the atmosphere has long been an attractive and desirable goal. Even though the use of renewable energy sources has been expanding rapidly, it will still be a long time before fossil fuel plants go away entirely.

The most widely considered method of carbon capture and storage is underground storage. The idea is to send the carbon dioxide through a pipeline to a place where underground rock formations can store it safely and permanently. Typically, it would be pumped deep underground – often more than half a mile down – and the site would be monitored to make sure the CO2 doesn’t leak back up to the atmosphere or into the water table.

A new study looked at how much carbon dioxide the suitable geological formations on Earth can store. The conclusion of the study is that drilling about 12,000 carbon storage wells globally could provide enough capacity to store 6 to 7 billion tons of CO2 a year by 2050. That is about 13% of global emissions.

Drilling 12,000 wells is equivalent to the amount of oil and gas drilling that has taken place just in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 70 years. The study identified locations worldwide that could handle the pressures associated with storing injected carbon dioxide.

So far, less than two dozen projects exist that capture and store carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants. In total, these plants can capture about 36 million tons a year, which is far less than what is needed. But the new study at least shows that finding places to put captured carbon is not a problem.

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Ample Geological Capacity Exists to Store Large Quantities of Captured CO2

Photo courtesy of Equinor.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Milestone For Energy Storage

April 24, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The United States has now added the capacity to store a billion watts of power for one hour and it may double that total by the end of this year. According to the firm GTM Research, the energy storage industry – previously nearly invisible – is undergoing rapid growth. Much of the growth has been in homes with products like the Tesla Powerwall but has also been on the scale of the electric grid, where power companies can use storage to control when to deploy excess electricity generated from renewable sources such as solar power.