Why Battery Storage Will Be the Solution to Using More Renewable Sources of Energy

By Chloe Fair

The United States’ Electricity Grid consists of a top-down system. This means that the electricity is generated then passed down through transmission lines until it reaches a citizen’s home. The top-down system means that it is entirely one-way; once the electricity is sent down the lines, it cannot come back up. This means that the supply of electricity must equal the demand, because if there is extra, it will just go to waste since it cannot return back up the chain. With coal power plants and other non-renewable energy sources, that can easily be accomplished because these power plants can be quickly turned off or on to keep up with energy demand. With non-renewable energy sources, that is another story. The current most popular non-renewable energy sources, like wind energy and solar panels, are completely dependent on the weather for how much energy they can accumulate in a day. This means that it is about as consistent as the weather, which is not at all reliable. 

So, what happens when the demand for electricity suddenly decreases? The energy is already down the chain, so it goes to waste. This then causes problems when the next day, the demand increases, and the nonrenewable energy sources cannot accommodate. Maybe the wind is not strong enough to turn the turbines, or the sun is not shining as brightly on the solar panels. Then, we face a blackout. If the excess electricity from the day before had been saved, then this could have been prevented. The main example of this issue is the recent blackouts of Texas. Texas is on its own grid system, meaning they are not connected to that of the rest of the nation. They do this to avoid being connected to the government, but then when they have blackouts they are on their own. Electricity generation is a necessity of all people, so it is an issue that people will need to solve together. California, with their excessive use of renewable energy sources, produces a lot of electricity, way more than they need. They are actually the “nation's top producer of electricity from solar, geothermal, and biomass energy”. If California’s electricity generation could be stored and then utilized by others when needed, not only would it help places like Texas when they are in need, but it also could greatly reduce the use of nonrenewable energy uses. California gets a great amount of direct exposure from the sun, giving them a lot of electricity generation from solar panels. This is something many states do not have as much access to. So, while California can afford to switch to solar panels instead of nonrenewable sources, other states cannot because they would not be able to generate enough electricity. If we can better utilize California’s excessive access to renewable energy, we can solve more problems than one. 

Battery storage is the answer to no longer wasting the potential California has to help out electricity generation in other states and simultaneously reduce the use of nonrenewable energy sources. We do currently have battery storage techniques, such as the rechargeable battery, the hydroelectric dam, and ice storage tanks. The rechargeable battery “stores chemical energy readily convertible to electricity”, the hydroelectric dam “stores energy in a reservoir as gravitational potential energy”, and the ice storage tanks “store ice frozen by cheaper energy at night to meet peak daytime demand for cooling”. These are just a few of many other energy storage techniques that people have discovered. So why haven’t they been applied yet? The same reason that the solution to air pollution has not been found. We have the technology to completely wipe out air pollutants, but it would cost 30 billion dollars that countries simply do not have. Discovering more solutions for energy storage is not the problem, making them possible to actually implement is. This means finding ways to make the material cheaper, creating more benefits such as subsidies for companies that choose to make the long-term investments, and negotiating any way to make the technology for energy storage more accessible. Until those problems are addressed, there will be no changes made.