Energy Storage – How Solar Can Always Meet Demand
Thermal energy storage enables concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) facilities to operate in a more flexible manner that allows both the developer and the local utility to maximize the value of a plant’s output. Richard Baxter explains why, with storage, the sun always shines on CSP.
Thermal energy storage provides a number of significant commercial benefits to the operation of a concentrating solar power (CSP) facility. Storage allows the plant to be optimized to address the peak load profile of a utility; it provides the operational flexibility required for the CSP facility to be more competitive and create the most value as a project; and it is a zero emission solution to the eternal ‘variability’ question that dogs much renewable generation, particularly when it is grid-connected. In short, storage enables a CSP facility to operate as a reliable and flexible low-carbon resource replacement for fossil generation.
Thermal energy storage is therefore an important technology that will play a key role in moving solar power into the mainstream of the power generation mix. CSP technology is a real, near-term solution to achieving widespread solar power facilities in the tens and thousands of megawatt class, and energy storage is a key enabling technology to make these facilities operate successfully in today’s power market.
Thermal storage technologies are designed to improve the availability and dispatchability of a solar thermal power facility — thereby enhancing its overall value. In the long run, thermal storage will help integrate more solar power into the generation mix by enabling CSP facilities to shoulder a greater component of the daily power demand in many regions of the world.
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