The Growing Role of Stationary Energy Storage in Powering Business Operations

Stationary Energy Storage

Energy storage plays an increasingly important role in empowering businesses with resilient and cost-effective power solutions. As technologies like lithium-ion batteries have advanced, stationary energy storage systems have proliferated across diverse commercial and industrial applications.

Battery Chemistries Evolving to Meet Business Needs

Lithium-ion has emerged as the dominant battery chemistry for stationary storage due to its high energy density and relatively fast charge/discharge rates. However, other chemistries still play niche roles depending on application requirements. Stationary Energy Storage Lead-acid batteries remain popular for backup power due to their low cost but have limited lifetimes. Flow batteries offer high discharge ability but at greater expense. Sodium-sulfur batteries can provide daily cycling for grid applications. New emerging technologies like lithium metal, zinc-ion, and lithium-sulfur also show promise. Going forward, customized chemistries optimized for power delivery profiles, lifetime, safety and economics will define viable storage options.

Mitigating Utility Bills and Demand Charges

One major application is reducing peak energy demand and utility bills. Many commercial customers pay steep demand charges based on their maximum power draw in a billing period. Installing battery systems to shave this peak can generate significant savings. For example, a 100kW lithium-ion system saved a California school district over $30,000 annually by curbing air conditioning use during peak pricing hours. Data centers, grocery stores, and others have realized similar return on investments of under five years. As rates rise to incorporate more renewables on the grid, the payoffs will only increase.

Reliable Backup Power and Resilience

Ensuring operations continue uninterrupted during blackouts or other grid disruptions is another key driver for stationary storage adoption. Hospitals, manufacturing plants, telecom towers and other mission-critical sites rely on battery backups for emergency power. Combining solar or other distributed generation with storage also builds energy security. After Hurricane Maria, a Puerto Rico children’s hospital run entirely on an integrated solar-plus-storage system became a community refuge, highlighting the disaster-response benefits. As climate impacts hurricanes and wildfires intensify, flexible, renewable microgrids will take on growing strategic importance for businesses.

Facilitating Renewable Energy Integration

By smoothing intermittent solar and wind power, energy storage allows greater penetration of renewables on the grid. Itplays a vital role in maintaining frequency regulation and resource adequacy as more variable generation comes online. Utilities worldwide are deploying utility-scale batteries for grid stabilization and renewable capacity firming. In California, Pacific Gas & Electric is pioneering stationary storage aggregated as a virtual power plant resource. As renewable portfolio standards ratchet higher, seamless storage-enabled renewable integration will underpin low-carbon electricity systems and offer competitive advantages to businesses.

Optimizing Operations Through Demand Flexibility

Beyond traditional backup and resilience functions, stationary storage is starting to empower new commercial and industrial grid services worldwide through aggregation platforms. By providing load shifting, peak shaving and ancillary services from flexible battery assets, businesses earn revenue streams while optimizing energy usage. For example, large retailers partnered with an Alaska utility, using batteries to shift a total 4MW of cooling load and collect over $1 million through a demand response program in 2020. As more utilities and grid operators deploy dynamic pricing and compensated flexibility programs over the next decade, opportunities will increase for energy storage to create new shared value streams between grids and businesses.

The confluence of falling costs, evolving needs around reliability, resilience, and renewable integration as well as emerging revenue potential from flexible loads ensures stationary energy storage will remain a growth industry for powering business operations into the future. While technology, applications and enabling policies continue advancing, one thing is clear - stationary storage presents major opportunities for commercial and industrial customers to both cut energy costs and strengthen enterprise energy management in coming years. As storage deployment expands, it will play an increasingly multifaceted role empowering low-carbon, economically-viable operations across all business sectors.

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