How Is KR 2.3 Tracking?
Easily dispatched backup power is the key to making variable sources such as solar and wind power more than 99 percent reliable, matching fossil fuels.
Reliability must hold up at times of peak demand, including heat waves, hurricanes, and winter storms, when regular baseload power may be disabled.
To that end, batteries for short-term electricity storage must be used in far more home- and grid-scale renewable power installations.
But storing grid power for weeks or months will require the development and scaling of alternate methods. At present, long-term storage solutions are limited. That makes it a key R&D priority for power grid innovation (KR 9.2).
Data for KR 2.3 is sourced from BloombergNEF, which updates the average cost of short-term storage annually and of long-term storage biannually.