New Grid Rules

Batteries have gained alot of hype for its price reduction that it’s outstripping predictions. For example, a 2014 report from Rocky Mountain Institute gave a few battery price projections, including one projection from Bloomberg.

Bloomberg believed that batteries crossing the $300 per kilowatt-hour threshold in 2022. Three years later, Bloomberg shared that batteries reached that price point in 2016. In 2017, battery pack prices fell an additional 30%.

Plummeting Prices

Storage costs and predictions provide hints to utilities that customers can leverage batteries and renewable energy for much control of their utility bills. Energy storage raises the value of rooftop installations. It does provide resiliency to utility outages, avoiding new utility fees. The collective decision of California customers give network services.

State residents and businesses host almost 6 gigawatts of renewable energy. Electric cars could contribute far more. If these cars were connected to the grid to charge their batteries, “The 1.5 million electric cars California expects by 2025 would have a maximum energy demand of about 7,000 megawatts, more than double the capacity needed to substantially smooth the current afternoon rise in peak energy demand.”

Batteries can substitute fossil fuel generators when it comes to stabilizing the network. The network mandates a delicate balancing act of supply and demand. One technological advantage of battery storage is that the batteries act fast and almost immediately. Batteries supply surges of power to sustain the network’s voltage and frequency steady cheaper than power plants and turbines operating on standby.

Market Rules Evolve

Large changes in market rules and reduced costs for gas competitors have decreased financial opportunity in the Mid-Atlantic network, yet batteries provide value to their customers and network. In addition to the Mid-Atlantic and California, more markets are likely to open.

A directive from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission mandates network operators to adopt rules of solar energy storage and permitting firms to combine smaller storage projects into bigger ones. If customer-sited distributed energy resources can get the financial compensation for their value, customers will probably take these opportunities to reduce their solar energy costs.

Locally made power from solar-plus-storage can undercut the more traditional utility model in a few ways. Increased value. If the cost of delivering electricity to the end user is 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, a typical utility’s prices are split between generation (about 3 cents), transmission (about 3 cents), and distribution (about 4 cents).

Power created at the power plant is worth far less than energy transported to the customer’s home or business. Distributed energy resources deploys quicker (by months rather than years) while costs decreases. This is much more efficient than it takes to orchestrate and finance a centralized power plant on its own. Move into the future with solar with the help of HahaSmart.

Try our price checker tool and see how affordable solar really is. We can also help find qualified solar installers who can help save you money on the cost of going solar. Don't forget to visit our solar blog section for more handy guides and articles, about going solar.

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