Thursday, December 10, 2009 5:00 PM
Senate Panel Looks At Electricity Storage
By Emily Vaughan, NationalJournal.com
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing today on improving energy storage for the nation's electrical grid, a necessary step in expanding the use of renewable energy. The fact-finding hearing gathered energy officials in the administration as well as government and private-sector scientists and engineers.
"Grid-scale energy storage technologies have the potential to transform our grid, enabling energy to delivered exactly when it's needed regardless of when it's produced," said committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
Robert McGrath, deputy director of science and technology at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said his lab recently found that the current electrical grid couldn't support more than 20 percent of total electrical generation from renewable sources. He recommended creating incentives that would promote renewable energy and energy storage in tandem. "Clearly our policies need to incentivize that and help make it affordable," McGrath said.
Storage capacity is particularly important for the development of wind energy, as it is often generated during low-demand hours. Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, recommended instituting tariffs that would pay utilities to invest in stored energy technology. "It's important to have that economic certainty to make sure these industries will grow," he said.
Wellinghoff also cited a study indicating that one source of energy storage might be parked plug-in electric vehicles, which could compensate for short power outages.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., encouraged Wellinghoff and Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy, to address the issue quickly. "We can do this in a bipartisan way," Wyden said. "Let's make sure we do it in a way that's smart and not wasteful."
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