Deploy energy storage save $600 million, get to net-zero

Source: David Dodge | · GREEN ENERGY FUTURES · | January 12, 2024

At the Decentralised Energy Conference in November, Robert Tremblay of Energy Storage Canada told the audience if you added 300 megawatts of energy storage to the Alberta electricity grid you could save up to $600 million.

We have all the tools we need to affordably get Alberta’s grid to net-zero already says Tremblay.

Tremblay said Energy Storage Canada and the Canadian Renewable Energy Alliance did the study on energy storage and they assumed that you buy energy at a low price store it and then sell it at a high price, referred to as energy “arbitrage.” This sounds like a pretty common-sense thing to do from a business perspective, but it also helps the grid satisfy peak demand and use more renewable energy.

Renewable energy such as solar and wind power sometimes produces too much energy at the wrong times and too little energy at other times, such as during the bleak mid-winter doldrums in Alberta.

“The sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing,” says Tremblay, but somewhere the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and part of the solution is to have a big enough grid to move energy to where it’s needed by expanding transmission to other jurisdictions.