Energy storage is picking up pace as renewables did a decade ago. It is perhaps the crucial missing piece of the puzzle to bring about greater penetration of renewable energy and accelerate the smooth global transition to clean energy.

With developed nations already striving to be big storage players in the industry, new energy storage projects are now seen to be sprouting in emerging markets, primarily driven by the rapidly falling energy storage costs. Indeed, it has been estimated that approximately 80GW of energy storage capacity is expected to come from developing countries from the existing 2GW today.

A common trend amongst the reports on energy storage is that the rate at which storage is being deployed poses a challenge to the traditional grid system within the next five years. In other words, we may be looking at a hybrid between a decentralised power system and the existing central design and dispatch system.

As the demand for electricity goes up and with increasing renewable sources in the energy mix, what is clear now is that utilities must now be alive to the impending integration of energy storage for it is the trending solution to increase the flexibility of the grid to meet with the daily cyclical demands.

[View source.]