Harnessing The Power of Renewables

If we could capture all the sun’s energy from a single day, it would power the planet for a year. The Earth has limitless sources of renewable energy—solar, wind, water, waste, and even heat from the planet’s core—and the technology to convert this into electricity is constantly improving. But this still leaves renewable energy with a challenge: the need to time shift energy. The world needs a way to make renewable energy more consistent.

For companies like Masdar, one of the world’s leading renewable energy developers, solving this challenge is a priority. Energy storage is seen as the key to unlocking the full potential of renewable energy, delivering the constancy of supply our electrified lives demand. It will not only regulate supply into national networks, but also help increase production and decrease costs. To meet renewable energy targets, Europe will need around 200 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2030. It currently has 4.5 gigawatts. The need to innovate, improve, and install energy storage systems has become critical.

One of the oldest methods of storing energy is damming rivers for water wheels. Today, pumped hydro is one of the lowest cost energy storage solutions, using renewable energy to pump water uphill so that it can be released when needed to keep the turbines turning. Similarly, with renewables can be used to compress air for later release to turn air turbines.But both these solutions are geographically constrained, hydro requiring hills or mountains, and compressed air being stored in cave systems or disused mines. For energies such as solar and wind, often sited in deserts or offshore, the Lithium-ion battery is helping to ensure a reliable supply of renewable energy into electricity grids .

Developed in the 1970s, the Lithium-ion battery has become the world’s most prolific energy storage solution, found in everything from mobile phones to electric cars to power plants. Safe, scalable, and rechargeable thousands of times, Lithium-ion batteries are an increasingly economically viable energy storage solution available. Capable of storing more than 100 megawatts for more than four hours, they are crucial for meeting the challenge of intermittent supply. These batteries are still being improved—nanotech is increasing recharge speeds and life expectancy. And the way the batteries are managed is improving as well.

An onshore substation in Peterhead, Scotland, is home to 1.3 megawatts of battery storage called Batwind. It’s here that excess energy from Hywind, the world’s first commercial floating wind farm, is stored and managed. Using sophisticated data-analysis algorithms, Batwind determines when to store or release the wind-generated energy based on weather forecasts, market prices, maintenance schedules, consumption patterns, and grid services. This smart energy system, operated by Hywind’s owner, Masdar, helps to maximise the battery and the utility—meeting the need for continuous supply.

Batteries are so important to renewable energy that Masdar is investing £1 billion in UK battery storage, buying UK-based battery energy storage system developer Arlington Energy. The company specialises in flexible energy solutions and has already put more than 170 megawatts of assets into operation. Masdar has also licenced specialist battery management software, Kraken, that will control and optimise the performance of its batteries in real time. It’s hoped that these technologies, operating with Masdar’s renewable energy platforms, will provide a more integrated energy solution to accelerate the transition to clean energy.

An alternative solution being explored comes in the form of green hydrogen. Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable energy to extract hydrogen from water using electrolysis. The hydrogen is used to provide power, including for hard to decarbonize sectors such as heavy industry and transport. The beauty of green hydrogen is its flexibility, able to be produced anywhere renewable energy is generated and then transported to wherever it is needed. In Egypt, Masdar is tapping into its extensive solar capacity to build a green hydrogen manufacturing plant as the first phase of a four-gigawatt electrolyser that could produce 480,000 tonnes of green hydrogen each year.

The International Renewable Energy Agency has identified storage systems as a key solution for effectively integrating high levels of renewable solar and wind into the energy mix. This makes innovating and improving energy storage systems essential to meeting the global goals on climate change. The work of companies like Masdar, with its dedicated Electric Energy Storage Solutions Hub that researches advanced energy storage solutions, are pushing the boundaries of what is possible: innovating to make renewable energy all it can be.