Guest Post: The Value of Short-term Energy Storage for Renewable Energy

This is a guest post by Robert Fares, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin researching the benefits of grid energy storage as part of Pecan Street Inc.'s ongoing smart grid demonstration project . Robert is contributing a series of guest posts discussing grid storage technologies, and how storage could benefit the electric grid. You can read the first post in his series here . A lot of the time, grid energy storage is discussed in the context of renewable energy. Storage is cited as a necessary solution to the diurnal nature of solar and wind energy. "We need storage because the sun doesn't shine at night." "Wind energy is greatest at night, so we need storage to shift wind energy to the daytime." While there is some truth to these statements, they don't reflect the real need for energy storage on our present grid. [More]