‘Substantial sums’ must be invested in storage to prevent reliance on gas engines

The Energy Research Partnership has called for a “substantial sum” to be invested in energy storage to prevent Britain becoming reliant on gas and diesel engines to fill gaps in renewable generation.

The group, whose members are drawn from government, industry and academia, said funding for storage research has tended to be drawn towards short-duration lithium-ion batteries due to the lure of the rapidly growing electric vehicle market.

The public-private partnership said more funding must be channelled toward medium and long-duration storage technologies that can to fill a similar role to gas engines.

“Increasingly the UK’s electricity supply is reliant upon gas and diesel reciprocating engines to plug the gap when renewable generation is limited due to weather conditions,” it warned in a new report. “Short-term engine operating cycles of less than ten minutes result in very low electrical efficiencies and high levels of localised air pollution.”

To address the issue, the report said: “Immediate and substantial sums of government and private investment (through research, development and guaranteed market pricing) is needed to transform the current capacity for future energy storage to one that is fit for purpose in 30 years’ time.

“Without urgent action, the UK is on the path to missing the net zero target by 2050 despite how much green energy we can generate. Current storage models alone, are not robust enough or meet the economies of scale needed for future energy demands and generation scenarios.”

The report said the issue will be greatly magnified by the decarbonisation of heating, whichever form it takes: “Analysis suggests that switching to primarily heat pumps would mean that energy supplied by electricity would increase more than three times, with a daily swing in demand that can be as high as 25 per cent , with winter demand double that of the summer.

“Meeting this demand could mean installing large amounts of generation capacity that operate primarily in winter to respond to seasonal and weather swings. Storage could be effective for balancing on both the supply and demand side.

“Whilst technologies exist for storing heat for a few hours and between days near the end user, they are not a solution to addressing the challenge of seasonal variability in heat, because of their low energy density, and the sheer quantity of heat that needs to be stored. Innovation is developing low cost and high energy density seasonal heat storage to decouple heat demand from the electricity system.”

Whilst using hydrogen to provide heat would reduce stress on the electricity system, the report said “it cannot be stored in the pipe networks to the same extent as natural gas, so hydrogen storage facilities would have to be built to meet the daily and seasonal variability in demand.”

“The lack of business case that can benefit both the energy system and investors is the main challenge for energy storage deployment beyond ancillary services for the grid,” the report concluded. “To remove this barrier requires both the costs of storage to come down and for the value of the services it provides to go up.”

It continued: “To fill the gap in medium-long duration energy storage by the time it is needed will require an innovations systems approach, including support from research through to deployment. New energy market frameworks that provide revenue streams for other energy storage services and give equal opportunity for different solutions in the markets will provide the pull for further private sector investment.”

The Energy Research Partnership said the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy should also convene working groups with the Energy Systems Catapult to assess the potential capabilities of different energy storage technologies and with Ofgem to develop strategies to attract private investments to the sector.

Earlier this week, Statkraft announced it had secured a contract with AMP Clean Energy to trade and optimise its planned 175MW fleet of “urban” gas engines, which it is currently in the process of building.